By Steven C. Bahls. The sudden closure of Sweet Briar College despite its $85 million endowment challenges all of us in higher education with the emotional and complex issue of when a struggling college should close. There is no shortage of opinions among presidents, and others, as to whether the Sweet Briar College board decided prematurely to close the college. Read more...
By Eric Stoller. Leadership within an organizational context is full of complexity, nuance, accountability, and a responsibility for myriad tasks and outcomes. In higher education, most of our organizational structures are constructed of hierarchies that are theoretically meant to create opportunities for day-to-day success and career advancement. Leadership affects morale which in turn impacts organizational culture. Read more...
By Lee Skallerup Bessette. I have been blogging and on Twitter for almost five years (officially five years on March 25th). It seems like a lot longer. I feel like I’ve always been blogging and on Twitter. 
By Herman Berliner. Last Sunday I attended the closing ceremonies of the Long Island National History Day competition and I was enormously impressed. I was impressed with the work done by the middle school and high school students who were part of National History Day. And I was impressed by the enthusiasm and support of the family members and the mentoring and volunteer staffing provided by dedicated teachers. Read more...
By John Warner. I was looking forward to engaging seriously with education researcher and think-tanker Kevin Carey’s new book, The End of College, but then I read this sentence in his recent New York Times op-ed that was inspired by some of the material from the book: “The failure of MOOCs to disrupt higher education has nothing to do with the quality of the courses themselves, many of which are quite good and getting better.” Read more...
By Barbara Fister. Quite a few librarians noticed when Joe Nocera, a columnist for The New York Times, profiled Kevin Carey, director of the New America Foundation’s educational policy program and author of The End of College. The gist of the column: College costs too much, and that cost comes from luxuries we can’t afford - like libraries. Read more...
By Barbara Fister. Many academic authors by now have heard the phrase “predatory publishers.” It’s usually associated with a list of fraudulent pseudo-publishing operations maintained by Jeffrey Beall, whose crusade to name and shame these shady opportunists has made it to The New York Times. What worries me far more than these fairly obvious scams are the emerging business practices being used by highly profitable publishers with long and distinguished pedigrees that are treating open access as a new revenue stream that can be both open and closed – earning money through subscriptions and author fees. Read more...
By Michael Friedman. In a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dr. Carol Holstead reported on her experiences banning laptops in her journalism course: “Although I am an engaging lecturer, I could not compete with Facebook and YouTube, and I was tired of trying.” More...
By Allison Dulin Salisbury. The primary function of most MOOCs today is the dissemination of knowledge to the world. What would it look like if the opposite were true? What if MOOCs convened communities and individuals to focus on co-creation rather than dissemination? This fall Davidson College partnered with Middlebury College and OpenIDEO, a collaborative platform where people come together to tackle the world’s most pressing issues. More...
By Matt Reed. Arizona’s move to eliminate all operating funding support for community colleges was both shocking and not. It’s the logical conclusion of a longstanding trend, surprising mostly in its speed and clarity. And it even makes a kind of cynical sense. Read more.../https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
