Confessions of a Community College Dean

I’ve been a fan of Kevin Carey’s for some time. He gets a lot right, and even when he’s off, he’s interesting. This week he's true to form.

One of the reasons I like President Obama is that he’s clearly a Dad. I don’t just mean that he has children; I mean that he’s obviously an involved parent. (If you haven’t seen the video of the two-year-old at the Medal of Honor ceremony, check it out. Obama responded as a seasoned parent would.)

I need some help from my wise and worldly readers on this one. A longtime reader writes: Do you know of any data, reporting, etc, on the information-seeking habits of transfer students when looking at four-year colleges? I would make a guess that some things are the same, but if there are differences, then we should be taking them into account.

The last time I wrote about Sandy Shugart, I gave him a bit of a hard time. Based on his essay last week, I regret that. It’s a wonderful piece, well worth reading. It’s about the “completion agenda,” and the useful and destructive ways that it can be interpreted.

The dean of the Health division -- which includes nursing -- and I took a field trip to a local health care provider to talk about working together to give nursing students some exposure to what goes on there. These wouldn’t be full-fledged clinical placements -- we already have those -- but a sort of structured introduction to a part of the health care system that isn’t always top-of-mind for nursing students.

Apparently, New England is in line for a “repent your sins” snowstorm on Friday. I know this because I heard it from at least a dozen different people on campus. Then again from the kids.

For-profit colleges are having a rough go of it these days. Just this week, Everest College (a branch of Corinthian Colleges) was forced to shut down operations in Milwaukee after only two years, during which it burned through two presidents. In my own state, Attorney General Coakley has announced a broader investigation into various for-profit providers in the wake of the abrupt closure of American Career Institutes.

What’s your philosophy on “technology time” for your kids? We have a few techie toys around the house that the kids enjoy using: a kindle fire, a nook running android, and an ipod touch. (For those keeping score at home, all of those were bought used, and all work quite well. I’m not sure why this option isn’t more popular.) There’s also the family laptop on which TW and I do work, and the kids play Minecraft.