Guest Blogger Mary Collins taught at Johns Hopkins University’s MA in Writing Program for 12 years and is currently an Associate Professor of Narrative Nonfiction and Director of the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development at Central Connecticut State University. She offers this post as a continuation of Norm Wallen’s article for Academe online called “Critical Thinking–Again?” “My…
FutureofHigherEd.org • #futureofHE • facebook.com/FutureofHigherEd _________________________ The “Promises” of Online Higher Education: Profits With so much national focus on the “promises” of online higher education to expand access and to reduce costs, one truth about online higher education rarely mentioned is that it is big—Very Big—business. Understanding and assessing developments in online higher education require…
Promoters of MOOCs and online courses make big promises about the value of this latest trend in higher education. MOOCs and online courses, we are told, will both expand access to higher education and reduce its costs for just about every “stakeholder”–for institutions lacking the resources to provide needed courses, for governments hard-pressed to provide…
After all of those horror stories about senior citizens who are still paying off their student debt and parents who co-signed loans from private lenders and are now obligated to pay off the student debt of their deceased children, how nice to finally get an “upbeat” story on student debt. Erik “Silo” Dahl, a computer-science…
An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org] _______________ A recent report, “Separate & Unequal,” released by the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, is introduced with a provocative statement: “The higher education system is more and more complicit as a passive agent in the systematic reproduction of white…
Silvio Lacetti is a recently retired professor from Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. While attending a retirement party for a colleague, he happened upon an intriguing idea: What if, rather than having a single retirement party, he organized dozens of small dinners, with one of his old students at each? And rather than…
I received the following e-mail yesterday afternoon: ________________________ Martin, last night the NRA successfully recalled two Colorado state senators who had voted to pass good gun safety laws. Democrats had more money and district demographics were in their favor. But the election came down to turnout and Republicans had more intensity and more reliable voters. The biggest challenge facing…
Last week, the Princeton Review released its annual rankings of U.S. colleges and universities. In the category “Top Party Schools,” the University of Iowa was ranked #1, moving up from its #2 ranking last year and bumping last year’s “winner” West Virginia University from the top spot. A spokesperson for the university responded to the…
On Monday, September 9, Ohio Conference AAUP President John McNay delivered testimony [full text provided below] to the Higher Education Reform Study Committee–a new standing committee started in the Ohio House of Representatives over the summer. The committee has embarked on a “road show,” traveling all over the state to public and for-profit colleges to discuss…
Part 4: Create a National College Equivalency Test Similar to the GED. [Explanatory lead to the first post in this series: Richard Vedder is distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In an earlier post, I pointed…