Opinion

House of Cards, a Netflix streaming only drama starring Kevin Spacey, may have a few things to teach us in higher ed:

I'm more and more convinced that assessing/accounting for environmental sustainability only makes sense at a regional scale. While "region" isn't precisely defined, it's something smaller than most nations, smaller than most US states (except maybe on the eastern seaboard), larger than a city, certainly larger than any campus. But sustainability extends beyond its environmental aspect, and for other (social, economic) forms of sustainability, the regional scale is even more critical. Certainly, it seems so in a US context.

On a recent Tuesday it was over 60 degrees before sunrise in Chicago (setting an historic record), while it is dropping to 7 degrees by Friday. I’m not going to list the reasons why we should care about global warming nor the indisputable facts that back it up. (Bill McKibben’s recent article in Rolling Stone magazine does a better job than I ever could.)

Insights from the University of Amsterdam on the development of their first MOOC (to be launched 20 February 2013).

For-profit colleges are having a rough go of it these days. Just this week, Everest College (a branch of Corinthian Colleges) was forced to shut down operations in Milwaukee after only two years, during which it burned through two presidents. In my own state, Attorney General Coakley has announced a broader investigation into various for-profit providers in the wake of the abrupt closure of American Career Institutes.

One of the scholarship fund-raising activities my University hosts is an event called “Class Acts.” It’s a talent night where faculty and staff put on an evening of entertainment, and all proceeds from the ticket sales go towards Entrance Scholarships. It’s a fantastic evening, often resulting in many surprises – who knew that our registrar was an Opera singer, or that one of our librarians participates in poetry slams?