By Eric Stoller. In the last two months, I've spent time at Starbucks locations in the United States, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. My usual experience at Starbucks consists of purchasing a beverage and/or something to eat. I've probably spent a ridiculous amount of dollars, pesos, and pounds at Starbuck. Read more...
By Matt Reed. Most of the time, I try to strike a relatively measured and thoughtful tone here. The report “Redeeming America’s Promise” merits an exception. Just before the Great Recession, my state -- along with many others -- made a de facto policy decision to shift the lion’s share of the cost for public higher education from the state to the students. Now that enrollments are in retreat, we’re in serious austerity mode, even as we’re increasingly subjected to “performance” funding on what state funding we do get. Read more...
By Matt Reed. A few weeks ago, in response to an IHE article about the new book Community Colleges and the Access Effect, by Juliet Lilledahl Scherer and Mirra Leigh Anson, I pledged to read the book and report back. As promised... It reminded me of the time I spent reading Christopher Lasch, back in the 90’s. It’s well-written, it makes some great points, it fires off some nice zingers, and yet, when all is said and done, it falls victim to its own largely unexamined assumptions. Read more...
By Liz Reisberg. I read with dismay that the State Department is planning a new program to provide professional development in the US for young African and Asian leaders. While I celebrate any new international educational initiative, I do not understand why it has to come at the expense of the Fulbright program. Read more...
By Barbara Fister. Joshua Kim raised a question yesterday that helped me build the bridge I was trying to construct between two stimulating blog posts that seemed connected, though I wasn’t sure how. One, a Gigaom post by Laura Hazard Owen, describes the ways some writers are framing the Hachette-Amazon dispute in terms that echo Tea Party rhetoric: we’re scrappy independents standing up for freedom against the elites and the snobs. Read more...
By Barbara Fister. Imagine a service that will let you get your hands on almost any book you want, however obscure or expensive, for a very low price. Imagine the opportunity to indulge your curiosity impulsively and read all you want to without going broke. We call it Interlibrary loan and if we had to invent it today, it probably would lead to Congressional hearings and new laws banning it - unless some hot tech startup invented it and called it “Uber for books” or something. Read more...
By John Warner. I’d wager that Charleston has more great restaurants per capita than any city in the world. This wasn’t always the case, apparently. Last year I interviewed Chef Sean Brock of Charleston’s Husk and McGrady’s for a magazine article and he told me about coming to Charleston from Wise County, Virginia, for culinary school and being excited to try this regional dish called “Hoppin’ John” he’d heard so much about. Read more...
By John Warner. According to the Inside Higher Ed report of his on-stage Q&A at the National Association of College and University Business Officers, Bill Gates was identified as a “voracious” reader of education-related texts, be it of “grand treatises” or “bone-dry technical reports.”
Given Gates’ apparent sincerity and desire to improve education at both the K-12 and college and university levels, I believe we can take him at his word. Read more...
By Joshua Kim. Higher ed and publishing. By Joshua Kim. I’m torn about how to handle some invitations to connect on LinkedIn./https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
