Opinion

Carolyn Foster Segal assesses the year just past, and finds that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

I still remember the terror and thrill of having my own class to teach for the first time.

The fact that MOOCS and online courses have sparked new conversations on your campus about teaching and learning is a terrific development. We should be grateful whenever attention is paid to teaching. The problem is that neither MOOCS or online courses are, in themselves, a strategy to meet the challenges we all face in higher ed. MOOCS and online courses are a means, not an end, and should be understood as such.

In the last year or two, many challenges have been made to lower the cost of earning a degree, create differential pricing based on major, or allow individual professors to set the cost of their on-line courses. A high quality blend of liberal arts and professional training will never compete with pressures for new, low-cost options if price alone is considered. When playing the game Let’s Make a Deal, many excellent institutions will lose out to these economic pressures unless they respond with much more than good economic arguments.

Here are my suggestions for what higher education might resolve to do in the New Year. What are yours?

It's time to set your research aside and to think about the undergraduate classroom, writes John Fea.

In the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook, Susan Herbst -- president of a university in the shadow of Newtown, Conn. -- assesses the tragedy's implications for her institution, and others.