The Boy Turns 18
The Boy got his first sample ballot in the mail last week. It’s for an uncontested primary, but a ballot is a ballot. He has mentioned that he’s paying more attention to politics now that he’ll have a...
View ArticleWho Should Control Faculty Lines?
“departments are best positioned to understand their particular needs, and yet the vast majority of a department’s budget is controlled by those above them. Rather than lines, imagine instead a...
View ArticleThe Start of a Necessary Conversation
Every year at the AACC, I make a point of attending the Community College Research Center reception. The CCRC folks are terrific people doing crucial work; I’ve been a fan of theirs, publicly, for...
View ArticleAgreement from an Unlikely Source
I’ve followed political debates in the US long enough to have a pretty reliable sense of who will line up on which side of a given issue. That’s why I was surprised to see this blog post at The Grumpy...
View ArticleEntry Level Pay
This weekend Will Simpkins, from Metropolitan State University - Denver, posted a great question on Twitter:Been thinking about salary lately - and how (particularly underfunded) institutions can raise...
View ArticleComparison Ads
I had a conversation on Monday with someone on campus about reaching out to some of the populations that for-profit schools tend to target. I made the obligatory reference to Lower Ed, then noted how...
View ArticleInheritances
The Girl is wrapping up her freshman year of high school this month. She’s a “band kid,” happily playing trumpet in the marching and concert bands even though her first musical love is the piano. She...
View ArticlePurges
Admittedly coming from a different context, I was fascinated by the article in IHE on Thursday about new presidents starting with purges of senior staff. The article takes the position that purges are...
View ArticleThe DeVry Reunion Picnic
For the past few years, some former employees of the North Brunswick (NJ) campus of DeVry have organized a reunion picnic at a local park each June. I went again last week.It’s a strictly unofficial...
View ArticleAlumni as Voters
Honestly, I’m embarrassed that I haven’t asked this sooner. But here goes.Public funding has been so flat for so long that it’s easy to forget that it’s a choice. It’s a choice that could be made...
View ArticleIntergenerational Justice
(Thanks to @BryanAlexander for highlighting this.)A month or so ago, I was walking with a few colleagues back to our offices. They were all older than I am, and all of them have worked here much...
View ArticleThe Illusion of Solidity
If you haven’t seen Brendan O’Malley’s piece on the closure of Newbury College, near Boston, it’s well worth reading. Apparently O’Malley taught history there, as a full-time professor, for a few...
View ArticleIn Which I Try to Decipher our First College Bill
So I received the first bill from UVA for The Boy. It covers his first semester.As an object of interpretation, it’s remarkable.I won’t even address the total amount, other than to say, the decimal...
View ArticleCreative Uses of Philanthropy
What’s the most (constructively) creative use of philanthropy you’ve seen at a college?I say “constructively,” because most of us have heard stories of featherbedding, corruption, and “side door”...
View ArticleThat First Life Preserver
What does a good first outreach to a struggling student look like?I have a pretty good idea of what it shouldn’t look like. In my own freshman year of college, I was surrounded by affluent prep school...
View ArticleYes, But: Humanities at Community Colleges
The Community College Research Center (CCRC) just issued two reports on the state of the Humanities at community colleges in the US. One looks at the proportion of students who major in humanities,...
View ArticleGraduation, from a Different Perspective
Over the last twenty years, I’ve been to over 30 college graduation ceremonies, always in some sort of official role. DeVry had three ceremonies per year, so in those years, the numbers added up fast....
View ArticleAn Alternate Proposal on Free College and Loan Forgiveness
It would be difficult to come up with a more destructive policy assumption than the idea that public services should be subject to income caps. Yet even folks who consider themselves progressive --...
View ArticleRevisiting a Favorite
Chuck Pearson reminded me of this piece from 2012 this week. Reading my old stuff usually makes me cringe, but this one holds up better than some. The Stonewall riots happened 50 years ago this week....
View ArticleFriday Fragments
I’m guessing that others have thought of this, though I haven’t seen it done elsewhere. Does anybody use a learning-community model for developmental reading? We’re looking at mimicking the structure...
View ArticleCold Front
The news from Alaska, about a possible 41 percent cut in state support to the University of Alaska, came as a shock. The president of the university declared six-week furloughs, and may declare a...
View ArticleA Neglected Variable
The Boy is trying to make money this summer to contribute to his college expenses this fall. He’s an EMT, and he signed up with a local private EMT company to work for it. He has gone through...
View ArticleThe Business Model Problem
About twice a week I’ll see someone on the interwebs say something along the lines of “why don’t public colleges stop messing around and just fix their business model? It’s obviously unsustainable!”...
View ArticleMAD, We Hardly Knew Ye…
MAD magazine has announced that it’s fading away, retreating to reissues of old material. I have to admit, that news hit me hard.I grew up on the MAD of the 1970’s and early 1980’s (which already...
View ArticleFriday Fragments
From the “sentences I never thought I’d write” file: Earlier this week, I got retweeted by Martina Navritilova.The possibility of that never occurred to me.The joys of social media…--I don’t know why...
View Article
