Opinion

What happens if (when?) the public money vanishes from “public” higher education?

My kids are counting down to the last day of school. This morning I heard the daily update: 9 days left. They’ve had it. They are both exhausted and tired of the grinding routine: wake up early, long day at school, homework, dinner, daily afterschool programs, choir, piano lessons and practice, etc, etc. Swim practices have stopped, as the season is over, but the (considerable) time this frees up quickly dissipates into special end of year performances, practices, field trips, ceremonies, and although a little different, these weigh on my kids too. Summer vacation is looking good in their eyes. I blogged before about how our family is relocating across the country this summer. This will certainly shake things up this summer – a cure to the blahs of long-term, rigorous school routine.

I am working on a presentation today, a riff on a theme I have often mentioned in these blogs under the title: The Internet transfigures humanity. In the course of reviewing the history of U.S. higher education in the twentieth-century, I reread President Eisenhower's farewell speech. In search of understanding the context around which he coined the famous "military-industrial complex" phrase, I discovered that higher education has a walk on role in the drama. Here is what President Eisenhower had to say:

Thomas C. Terry asks why academics who would never joke about or question the beliefs of many groups are so quick to mock or criticize Mormons.

I did it! I made it all the way through a MOOC, submitting the final assignment in Coursera's Computer Science 101 this afternoon.

When skyrocketing college tuition becomes the target of public critique, I tend to think about the recent study of spoiled American middle class children as opposed to academic salaries.

There's a lot of talk about the future of the humanities and humanities education here at Congress 2012. Guess who is missing from the discussion?

If you read The Economist then Time to Start Thinking is your kind of book. There is something almost soothing about a book that is simultaneously well-written and depressing. Somehow learning about the decline of the U.S. from a Brit -- Luce is the Washington Bureau Chief of London's Financial Times -- feels more palatable than similar arguments made by an American.