Opinion

An eccentric or unpredictable action syn see CAPRICE. Such definitions leave Julio Alves thinking about words, precision and dictionaries.

The theme for this year’s League for Innovation conference seems to be “where is everybody?” Attendance seems visibly down from last year. Last year’s conference was in San Diego. This year’s is in Philly. I’m not saying that’s the reason; I’m not saying that’s not the reason

Today is the end of the first week of teaching in the South African academic year. It’s been an experience that any academic at any university around the world would recognise: the chaos of finding timetables and new lecture venues, the inevitable problems with IT and parking spaces, the long queues at university bookshops, and in the midst of all this, a new group of anxious, happy, first year students.

Names are powerful. That’s why I understand Georgia Tech’s “X-Degree.”

Being a good girl has gotten me this far, but to go any further, I'll have to figure out how to be bad.

I think that I'm ready to part with my most cherished physical books. Only a couple of years ago this thought would have been unimaginable. Books are the center of our culture, the core of my belief system, and the basis of my personal philosophy. I am a person of the book (literally).

Why might a political scientist writing about higher education employ the concept and term power less than he did in the early years after getting his political science degree? It’s only a relative difference; I continue to engage the concept and term more than do higher education scholars outside my home discipline, but still . . .

I was reminded a few weeks ago, in response to a situation I will outline in the next paragraph, of how important customer service is throughout education and especially at the very competitive higher education level. And by customer service, I am not suggesting a weakening of standards; rather, I am just suggesting that we, especially in private higher education, do all that is necessary to minimize administrative hassles and in that way help our students succeed.