Opinion

This one’s a little bit self-indulgent, but I hope my wise and worldly readers will bear with me. I think the answers will be of wider interest.

I don't know much about K-12 education. Beyond the fact that I have two kids (8th and 10th grade) in our local public middle school and high school, and that I spent 12 years in public primary and secondary schools, my knowledge of the sector is embarrassingly skimpy.

When asked about how you're doing on your academic work, does your heart race, adrenaline spike, or do you just go numb? If you answered, “yes” to any of these questions, you are in “triage” mode, just trying to stem the bleeding of your time and energy enough to complete your tasks and (hopefully) get a few hours of sleep. However, you probably want more out of your life and work than this.

It's not always easy to just move on from wanting a traditional academic position.

Given how busy professors are, it makes sense to link outcomes assessment to grading, rather than create redundancy by piling the latter on top of the former, Mark Salisbury writes.

Rep. Michael Honda and Sen. Jack Reed argue that schools and colleges need to work together to ensure that school leaders, and especially instructors, are ready for the classroom.

Over the weekend I had a fascinating conversation over Twitter with Aaron Tay, a brilliant young academic librarian at the University of Singapore. (I’m not the only one who thinks he’s smart; Library Journal named him a Mover and Shaker last year.) We were discussing Library Journal’s recent report, covered right here in Inside Higher Ed, about students’ views of academic libraries.

What could public higher education do with a significant, sustained funding source dedicated specifically to innovation?