Blogs

We had another great discussion in the Strategy and Competition in Higher Education class last night, along with a very special guest speaker.

The day before the "Pineapple-gate" story broke -- that is, the nonsensical questions on the New York state eighth grade reading assessment -- The New York Times' David Brooks called for more standardized testing in colleges. Some thoughts on a future of pineapples and robot-graders.

As the school year winds to an end, many parents of high school seniors are making final decisions with their budding college freshman about where to attend college. Not so in my family. We are waiting with bated breath to see if my son Nick actually graduates. He’s developed an extensive case of high school burnout, and if it were not for the talents of his AP history teacher, Adam Gadnis, and Nick's ability to take some classes online, I don’t know if my son would be walking down the aisle and throwing up a cap in June.

This story in IHE generated quite the firestorm yesterday, and for good reason. Apparently, the Education School at the University of Southern California has decided to ban certain adjuncts from teaching at any other college or university as a condition of employment.

Have you signed up for the Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success course?

Job descriptions for Student Affairs professionals frequently list technology proficiency requirements. Most of the time, those requirements include fairly banal things like email or MS Office. In 2012, those items feel like they are equivalent to making fire. We've been making fire for a long time folks. What's the next standard technology-related item that we should include on position descriptions? I think that one of the next items is going to be fluency with conducting conversations via voice/video over the web.

First off, let me thank Paul Haeder for his extended comment on a recent post. My heart is definitely in synch with the position he expresses, although my head is convinced that trying to sell sustainability by direct frontal assault won't work (indeed, hasn't worked). And expanding on that heart-vs-head thing . .

Internationalization has become an indicator for quality in higher education. The growing importance of internationalization in higher education on the one hand and the diversity in rationales, approaches and strategies of institutions and programmes on the other hand, call for an assessment of the quality of internationalization and the realisation of a system of certifications to define the progress and status of the internationalization at the programme and institutional levels.