Opinion

In my last post, I talked about how having to account for greenhouse gas emissions from off-campus behaviors started me on the path to realizing that you can't build a sustainable campus in an unsustainable city (or town, or countryside). Thus, while my official charge is to change the Greenback campus, my thought process focuses more and more on changing the Backboro metropolitan area.

Felicia B. LeClere considers the pros and cons -- for institutions and for grad students thinking about their careers.

President Obama and other politicians shouldn't embrace science and technology by neglecting history and other fields, writes Kenneth Pomeranz.

I am sure you, or some of your fellow trustees, noticed Thomas Friedman’s op-ed (‘Revolution Hits the Universities’) in this weekend’s Sunday New York Times. There are some major caveats, though, to factor in when it comes to the Thomas Friedman/Moody’s/et al, argument; the one buzzing and humming through the system right now, propelled as it were by people, firms and organizations with vested yet often unstated interests in making you feel concerned, if not agitated.

Are more expensive colleges better? Working at a community college, I’d have to say “not necessarily.” They could be, and sometimes they are, but it depends on how they use that money. That’s why this piece -- about a study of liberal arts colleges showing little relation between cost and value -- didn’t especially surprise me.

Step one: annoy the composition professors. Step two: the foreign language professors.

When I decided to enter graduate school, I was attracted by the prospect of studying topics deeply and having the time and the space in which to do so.

The success of an academic IT department depends largely on that unit's alignment to the culture of the larger academic organization. Actions, behaviors, and a general outlook that may be appropriate for another industry (and in fact may be recognized as "best practices" within the larger IT world), may result in complete failure within higher ed.