Filter & Sort
I blame cats and dogs
Well, maybe not the pets themselves. Maybe more their owners. Especially when it comes to dogs, because dogs can't help the fact that for millenia they've been bred for subservience. Cats, on the other hand, might have to take the rap themselves.
Virtual Community and Physical Space
Summer is the time when many faculty members vacate our shared campus space and retreat to home offices (or travel)...
How It Sounds
In a conversation a few days ago, some thoughtful faculty noted in passing that the state’s constant drumbeat about job placement and STEM fields -- two different things, btw -- was becoming a factor in faculty morale in the humanities and social sciences. They heard every invocation of college-as-personnel-office as an attack on what they do, and as a harbinger of even-more-diminished resources to come.
Good Strategy . . . and Not-So-Good Strategy
These past few months have been a bit of a reading frenzy.
Celebrating 'The End of Money'
Currency is truly an anachronism. We continue to hold on to our paper money and our coins because - well because why?
Vision and Decentralization
CUNY’s New Community College, in New York City, is attracting plenty of attention in higher ed circles. It’s an attempt to apply a panoply of best practices in raising graduation rates to a population that desperately needs it. Whether it becomes an exemplar of a new model, or withers on the vine as an expensive boutique project, remains to be seen.
How to remain productive over the summer
Summer is here, and for most of us it is also spelled as v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n: sunny days, ice cream, mint juleps, children at play, and long family evenings. But this is not all there is to it…
What Does the "Twilight of the Elites" Mean to Elite Higher Ed?
My wife and I were both born in 1969. Here is a short list of debacles, missteps, and failures that we've witnessed in our time on the planet: stagflation, the energy crisis (gas lines), the tech bubble, the 2nd Iraq war, the housing bubble, and the great recession (and you can add to this list). Another way we could describe the past 40 or so years, if feeling negative, could be: rising inequality, stagnant real wages, rapid increases in health care and education costs, growth in structural unemployment/underemployment, and political polarization and ineffectiveness in the face of these challenges.