Opinion

For-profit higher ed evangelists, agnostics, and critics should all read Change.edu. If you are inclined to see for-profit higher ed as a positive force for innovation in post-secondary education (as I am), then you will find much to like in Rosen's argument for the place of proprietary institutions in the higher ed ecosystem.

Russ Olwell offers advice on how arts and humanities faculty members can achieve his suggestion for a New Year's resolution.

The end of 2011 was a mad, crazy flurry in our household. Between the season’s added extras: visits from family and friends, shopping for gifts, driving kids around, a science fair experiment (etc) and finishing some high priority work items over the holidays we did manage to catch up on some tasks (and sleep!) postponed through much of the fall. Still, a lot still remains to be done.

A philosopher explores the nuances of rudeness, gossip, and other all-too-human tendencies. Scott McLemee has a look.

I’m wondering if there are other productive ways of using January.

I'm not innocent, naive, or in need of protection. Why does that mean I also need to be cynical and pessimistic?

Joshua Kim raised an interesting question on Tuesday. In just an hour, he was able to get a whole bunch of books and chose among formats for preference and price. The fact that Amazon makes it insanely easy to buy books – but makes it difficult or impossible to share them (thanks in large part to publishers) leads him wonder about the dominance of Amazon and the impact on libraries. If Amazon is able to instantly satisfy those who can afford to buy all of their books, will those happy shoppers opt out of supporting libraries? Are libraries, crippled by publisher restrictions, becoming unattractive options by design?

Sakai: Free as in Freedom (Alpha) by Chuck Severance comes at a particularly interesting time in evolution of the LMS ecosystem.