Opinion

My husband and I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary this past January; we have been together another two years. In the early days of our dating, my husband was game enough to seek out the odd and strange things that surrounded us in central Missouri. We have seen the beginning of the Santa Fe Trail, the largest salt lick in the Western Hemisphere, the world’s largest concrete goose, one of the purported world’s largest pecans, the room where Jesse James was shot and killed, and a “castle” in the Ozarks called Ha Ha Tonka.

With persistent pressure for increasing income entrepreneurial universities may pounce on any new market niche if it promises potential students. Domestic branch campuses are yet another element in the increasing commercialization of higher education.

Is a College Education Still Worth the Price? costs $2.99. I'm not quite sure if a college education is worth the price (something on my mind as I'll be paying two sets of tuition in 2017), but I am sure that the Schwartz's book is well worth this investment.

We are just completing our search for the founding dean of our School of Engineering and Applied Science. The finalists are all impressive but the search process itself has also been impressive.

Like many parents, I have been following the Trayvon Martin story with outrage and with deep grief for his family. And also like, I am sure, many parents of teenage boys, I am guiltily aware of feelings of relief and fear in the mix — relief that it wasn't my kid, and fear that next time it might be.

What’s New at UVenus: ● If you missed our #femlead Twitter chat on Bridging the Global Divide in Higher Education, hosted by Anamaria Dutceac, you can find the transcript here.

Stephen Downes made a comment in passing yesterday, calling Khan Academy's online video library a MacGuffin, "something [that] provokes learning, but isn't." I've been stewing about the analogy ever since.

These days I'm a little obsessed with Moneyball, the book and the film. Michael Lewis's story of the transformation of the Oakland A's through data-driven decision-making and a commitment to rethinking the game even in the face of resistance from old-school scouts isn't inspiring in the way we think of come-from-behind, underdog sports stories.