BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL As colleges lay out their strategies to become more sustainable over the long term, there are uncertainties that can dramatically affect their abilities to do so. Some are programmatic, based upon unpredictable market conditions. Others rely on personnel decisions that shape an institution’s ability to be both flexible and creative. A…
BY MARTIN KICH The Trump Administration’s “Made in America Week” is a cruel con on the working-class Americans who voted for him—and not just because almost all Trump, Inc., products continue to be produced by cheap foreign labor. It is an insult to the intelligence working-class Americans because it ignores the very obvious reality that…
BY HANK REICHMAN Responding to the Trump administration’s decision to replace the National Commission on Forensic Science with an in-house law enforcement task force and a yet-unnamed adviser, four prominent associations of scientists, led by the 120,000-member American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), on June 9 called on the Justice Department to reverse…
BY JONATHAN REES AND JONATHAN PORITZ A lot of people we know were beating up on an essay by Jeff Selingo in the Washington Post a few weeks ago. [See, for instance, Hank Reichman’s analysis here.] We certainly agree that putting tenure on some kind of clock won’t do anything to save universities money in…
BY MARTIN KICH In an article published by Smithsonian Magazine, Megan Gambino interviews data journalist Ben Blatt on his recent efforts to apply data analysis to literary works. Here are the opening paragraphs of Gambino’s article, which frame the interview: In most college-level literature courses, you find students dissecting small portions of literary classics: Shakespeare’s…
BY BILL BERGMAN Guest blogger Bill Bergman is Instructor of Marketing at the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business. Students in the college classroom are growing much quieter these days. Technology is robbing them of self-assured verbal skills displayed by previous generations. They also live in dread of giving the wrong answer in class that could tarnish…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In an article for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Gary Robbins reports: “Los Angeles Valley College in Valley Glen said it paid $28,000 in bitcoins to the hackers, who had used malicious software to commandeer a variety of systems, including key computers and emails. “’It was the assessment of our outside cybersecurity experts that…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for the website of Michigan Radio, an NPR station, Steve Carmody reports on a Michigan State study conducted by Prof. Susan Ravissa. In one of her lecture courses, 127 of the 507 enrolled students agreed to have their use of the Internet tracked during 15 of the 50-minute class periods.…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In a recent item on its website, University Business reports the following from its annual survey of “campus technology leaders”: Statements Tech Leaders Say Will Apply to 2017 75% anticipate greater enrollment in online courses 60% predict they will expand their online education program options 49% predict they will expand their online learning infrastructure 32% predict additional resources will be devoted to online…
BY JONATHAN REES I’ve been reading a lot of books about the history of maps and mapmaking lately. Apparently, one of the great myths of cartography is that medieval maps would label sections of unexplored territory “There be dragons” in order to discourage people from going to those places. Of course, even had this actually…