22 janvier 2016

By Matt Reed. I had sympathy pains reading Paul Fain’s piece last week about Western Governors University and the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Education. The piece does a nice job of outlining what amounts to a clash between a broad direction and legacy regulations. More...

By Matt Reed. I'm hoping to steal shamelessly from some wise and worldly readers at other places. 
Too many colleges treat faculty as a cost, rather than an asset. Professional development is often reduced to travel or webinars, and then cut when things get tight, which they nearly always do. More...

By Matt Reed. Yesterday’s discussion in the New York Times about free community college is well worth checking out, if you haven’t seen it yet. I was particularly taken by the contributions from Sara Goldrick-Rab and Nikki Edgecombe, who both recognize the key role of public higher education in providing opportunities for people who otherwise might not have them. More...

By Matt Reed. The quote from the president of Mount St. Mary's University about “drowning bunnies” went viral for the obvious reason that it’s almost cartoonish in its apparent villainy. For full effect, I have to picture him twirling the ends of his handlebar mustache and cackling as he says it. More...

By Matt Reed. Increased diversity among college students leads to decreased political and economic support for higher education, says a new study.
This is not news to those of us at community colleges. More...

By Matt Reed. I was heartened to see that the MLA spent some time discussing the realities of teaching English at community colleges. The discussion sounds like it was a good and honest first-level attempt to deal with some basic realities. More...

By Matt Reed. People who know me know that one of my favorite phrases is “playing the long game.” It means favoring sustainable, gradual, long-term changes over Big Splash interventions that often leave destruction in their wake. That’s probably why this story made so much sense to me. More...

By Matt Reed. Musicians sometimes say that the hardest part of playing is listening. To be really good, particularly in a group context, you have to be able both to play well and to listen well.  You have to hear how you sound, how the others sound, and how things fit together. Some terrific players never make it to the top level because they’re so busy with their own sound that they don’t listen. More...

By Matt Reed. What happens to places that export most of their talented young people?
Serious stagnation, if not worse.
This is where community colleges can serve a purpose better than anyone else. Their graduates tend to stay in the local area. More...

By Matt Reed. Why is so much administrative writing so bad?
For the same reason that many syllabi are so horribly written. More...