Opinion

In a perfect world, I would grow and raise my own food and cook every meal that I ate from scratch. I enjoy cooking because it’s so rewarding to eat something you made and that you know all the ingredients that go into it. But grad school has challenged my love of cooking in many ways.

Lucinda Roy reflects on the experience of reading her book on the Virginia Tech killings out loud -- cover to cover -- for a recording.

At this writing, I’m still reeling from the news of the Boston Marathon explosions. Rumors are flying, and nobody yet knows who did it or why. I hope that by the time people read this, we’ll know.

Almost five years ago I wrote my first blog post for Inside Higher Ed. At the time I had a daughter about to graduate from high school, and a son just finishing elementary school. While my child care needs were vastly different from those of my colleagues with children in pre-school, still in many ways I planned my days and my semesters around my children’s schedules. In that first post, I noted the many things I no longer needed as an academic parent—“a lactation room, on-site daycare, or reduced work hours to be with an infant . . .. a referral to a good nanny, or a preschool that's open in the summer, or help installing a carseat.”

The difficult academic job market gives new responsibilities to professors who are asked by undergraduates about pursuing Ph.D.s, writes Martin S. Edwards.

Forget MOOCs. The true challenge to higher ed will come from models that use cognitive science and technology to remove faculty members from the center of the learning process, writes Richard Holmgren.

As I write this, I am stuck in a small town in Ohio after an accident on the freeway on my way home from a conference. (I hit a semi wheel that came off a truck and smashed my car’s suspension system. I’m fine but, sadly, my car is not.) Whether it’s a semi wheel, a sick child or spouse, our own illness, family issues, or something else, at some point in our academic career, life gets in the way of our work.

A single college struggling could be a sign of management failure. Entire sectors of colleges struggling suggests something deeper.