Blogs

There has been lots of speculation about the future of HBCUs. While some of this has played out in the media, there is also an on-going conversation within this sector about what needs to happen to ensure a viable and productive future. Both conversations are sensitive in nature complete with nuance and divergent views concerning which directions are best. There are, however, a few clear environmental signs that demand the attention of everyone concerning the future of HBCUs regardless of one’s current position.

Gone is the day when I have read everything the NYT has in the technology section and I am searching around for more, or, better yet, thinking about all of the issues out there that they have not covered. For some time now, and especially since Jill Abramson took over as executive editor, the Times has been doing an excellent job of covering Internet issues. The coverage reflects the important place that those issues have in society. The integration of Internet issues into our everyday life means that it is no longer necessary to explain that "Internet" refers not simply to a technology but a world-class historical phenomenon, meaning further that it touches every area of human experience.

Mitt Romney’s plans for higher education thus far are silly, but not catastrophic. Already that puts him ahead of much of his party.

I'm not too proud to beg Facebook to consider including educators at the table during the design of the Facebook phone.

Indonesia was one of the first to give significant autonomy to a select group of its universities. In the first years of post-1998 democracy, which included significant moves to decentralise education, Indonesia introduced a significant scheme to reform its higher education system. Of more than 3,000 higher education institutions across the archipelago, four were selected for a pilot programme that gave greater academic freedom and financial autonomy. So why has the MoEC now proposed to withdraw the autonomy granted to chosen universities little more than a decade ago, with the view that, if the pilot programme was successful, it might then be extended to more and more institutions?

What happens if (when?) the public money vanishes from “public” higher education?

My kids are counting down to the last day of school. This morning I heard the daily update: 9 days left. They’ve had it. They are both exhausted and tired of the grinding routine: wake up early, long day at school, homework, dinner, daily afterschool programs, choir, piano lessons and practice, etc, etc. Swim practices have stopped, as the season is over, but the (considerable) time this frees up quickly dissipates into special end of year performances, practices, field trips, ceremonies, and although a little different, these weigh on my kids too. Summer vacation is looking good in their eyes. I blogged before about how our family is relocating across the country this summer. This will certainly shake things up this summer – a cure to the blahs of long-term, rigorous school routine.

I am working on a presentation today, a riff on a theme I have often mentioned in these blogs under the title: The Internet transfigures humanity. In the course of reviewing the history of U.S. higher education in the twentieth-century, I reread President Eisenhower's farewell speech. In search of understanding the context around which he coined the famous "military-industrial complex" phrase, I discovered that higher education has a walk on role in the drama. Here is what President Eisenhower had to say: