Blogs

We recently discovered some old photos of our daughter's first Halloween. At 18 months, covered by a red hooded cape, she walked from house to house in the pitch black night, collecting candy in a wicker basket. She marched away from us as we stood on the sidewalk, confident on stout, stockinged legs. We later learned that on that same day a 25-year old graduate of our university, Teresa Halbach, drove alone to an Auto Salvage yard to photograph cars, where she was taken captive, horribly raped and murdered.

Teaching, consulting and blogging about strategy and competition in higher education means that there is an endless supply of reading material, themes to explore, people with strong opinions . . . and innovative ideas.

Yesterday I received two emails in rapid succession that fairly begged for a single response. One of them seemed quite confident in asserting that developmental education is a cash cow for community colleges. The other seemed equally confident that developmental education is a money drain for community colleges.

I am one of those higher ed administrators who started my career in teaching. Relatively quickly I moved from a full-time faculty gig to the start-up life, and then into educational technology.

There have been several news items this week about textbooks -- not surprising since we're well into the back-to-school season. And despite all the hype and promise for innovation that digital content was meant to bring about, the news is pretty ordinary: it's mostly about cost savings. As such, are we being limited by our preconceived notions of what textbooks are meant to be?

When it comes to change driven by digital opportunities, it seems a lot of the proposed solutions simply trade one problem for a new one.

Ask any graduate student about their Lit Review and each would have a few not so pleasant things to say about the process. Fellow GradHacker Andrea Zellner previously wrote about ways to survive a Lit Review, but what happens when you’ve survived and the Lit Review is no longer your biggest priority?

Did you know that community colleges don’t just send transfer students; they also receive them? It’s true. But the entire policy world doesn’t seem to know that.