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The idea to use NPR as model for how higher ed could change is not my own. I heard the analogy of how higher ed could evolve to mimic the NPR model from a colleague at a conference, and the idea has stuck in my head. (Perhaps you have heard the analogy before?).

Last weekend I was able to catch up with several Mama Phd friends who live in New York City. Many of these women are my age, but have (smartly) waited to have children until their careers/degrees/relationships are more established. Two friends have several tots under ten running around while seeking tenure, publishing books and chairing departments. I was impressed by how these friends still manage to be turned on by new ideas as much as by their partners. Indeed, many of these friends have taken motherhood out of their homes and into their research, art and service work.

Teaching a class in Strategic Management and consulting in this area to colleges and universities and companies in the higher education space, I’m asked a lot about various tools and techniques that can be effective in diagnosing problems and generating ideas/solutions, and the answer is that there are many. Perhaps too many.

Exploring an issue raised in the comments to the first post: the question of faculty-authored textbooks.

Last week a colleague at Cornell asked me to give a talk to his class on intellectual property. I found myself explaining the historical dynamics behind the American Revolution, Constitution and a free-market political economy. "Unless you were a pirate," I said, "you could not trade anywhere in the world from England without a license." Another quote: "The first law to establish exclusive rights, a monopoly in copyright, dates back to 1557 when Elizabeth I squelched counterfeiters use the new technology, the printing press, to manufacture fraudulent documents for everything, including Royal charters to trade.

I love this question. A new correspondent writes: "Do you (or any of your wise and worldly readers) have any advice about looking for or finding clues to a college's culture, before you actually work there?"

I've seen a change in the students in my classes. And I wonder if that's a good thing.

Albert Einstein is said to have explained that he didn't memorize things that could be easily looked up. "[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books," he said. "The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think." I cannot remember something unless I've written it down. Therefore, having ubiquitous capture is key to my everyday life. A key part of my ubiquitous capture system includes a reference bank where I can draw on previously found, researched or created items and integrate them into my workflow. I refer to this as my "memex."