*A Drive-by Post* Inside Higher Ed’s Matt Reed wrote a stellar post on higher education enclosure today. Matt generally goes stellar but he was really speaking to me today. I had to highlight some of what he teases apart. The first was a widely shared piece by Clay Shirky. It’s one of those broad-scope piecesRead More “Sweeping HigherEd’s Crystal Stairs**”
Tag Archives: #LowerEd
Wacky Weed, Tacky Racism: The HigherEd Dead End
I will live a long time and not forgive the Internet for making me read David Brooks’ New York Times weed opus. If you missed it, I apologize in advance. This week David Brooks responded to Colorado’s recent decriminalization of marijuana with a retrospective on his own experience smoking the wacky tobacky. In “Weed —Read More “Wacky Weed, Tacky Racism: The HigherEd Dead End”
Dude, Where’s The Race in Your Class Analysis of HigherEd?
A key status marker of any profession is engagement in fights about the state of said profession. For the past few weeks a particularly public fight about adjuncts and academia has been waged across blogs, online media and social media. I do not want to jump into that debate. I do not have a dogRead More “Dude, Where’s The Race in Your Class Analysis of HigherEd?”
What I Know For Sure
Nothing. Sorry for the bad title but I just read three issues of Oprah magazine on a long cross-country trip. It seemed right. 2013 was a busy year for highered, research, and yours truly. A few round-ups and random thoughts about 2014: At UVA’s Carter G Woodson Institute I had the privilege of connecting theRead More “What I Know For Sure”
Crystal Ball Blogging: “Next Generation HigherEd”
Tom Vander Ark has a book called “Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World.” He also has a website, Getting Smart. Vander Ark also knows the future of higher education: Next-generation higher education systems will share ten elements: States replacing accreditation with performance contracting around outcomes (including real writing and math standards). LearnersRead More “Crystal Ball Blogging: “Next Generation HigherEd””
The Audacity: Thrun Learns A Lesson and Students Pay
Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity, one of the most high-profile private sector attempts to “disrupt” higher education discovered inequality this week. Thrun has spent the last three years dangling the shiny bauble of his elite academic pedigree and messianic vision of the future of higher education before investors and politicos. He promised nothing short ofRead More “The Audacity: Thrun Learns A Lesson and Students Pay”
SJSU Talk on The MOOC Moment: Ethics, Discourse, and Promises
I had the privilege of speaking to the San Jose State University community at two talks hosted by the California Faculty Association, Department of Philosophy and Center for Ethics yesterday. For such talks I often provide resources and materials in a post before I lecture as to free up the audience to engage rather than record.Read More “SJSU Talk on The MOOC Moment: Ethics, Discourse, and Promises”
Presenting Selves: Race, Social Class, Gender and Intersectionality in Ethnography
This should have been, if not easy, then certainly not a disaster. When I was in admissions I killed my peers in productivity because I spoke the same language as our students. While my history of poverty was comparatively shallow, it was not non-existent. I’ve used the oven to a heat a home and washedRead More “Presenting Selves: Race, Social Class, Gender and Intersectionality in Ethnography”
Story Behind The Story: Does HIgherEd Know Its Neediest Students During the Shutdown?
This week’s column at Counter Narrative picks up on the national discussion about the federal government shutdown. As a highered person I have kept an eye on how the shutdown will affect students. I’m not the only one. But by day two of the media coverage it did seem that I was the only oneRead More “Story Behind The Story: Does HIgherEd Know Its Neediest Students During the Shutdown?”
A Quick Note on For-Profits and Policy Interventions
We have a theoretical conundrum when it comes to explaining the expansion of for-profit colleges. Gilbert, Saunders, and Stoddard (2013) sum up this conundrum as a puzzle of why so many would self-select (Chung 2012) into expensive, narrow career training with contested outcomes. That puzzle limits effective policy interventions. As you can see in theRead More “A Quick Note on For-Profits and Policy Interventions”