Central to the current controversy about Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks is the fact that Snowden was a “private contractor.” In fact, over this past weekend, various commentators have asserted that 30% to 70% of the national security personnel are now “private contractors”: that is, employees of corporations—and typically multinational corporations—and not of the federal government.…
The following is another item that I am re-posting from Futility Closet (www.futilitycloset.com). It is re-posted with the permission of Greg Ross, who maintains the site. You can have daily updates delivered to your e-mail each morning. ************************* Titles of actual publications collected by librarian Eric v.d. Luft: How to Abandon Ship (1942) How to…
For most of my professional career, I have believed that institutions, more or less, happen upon a seminal moment in their evolution. Indeed, when approached about consulting or management opportunities I typically first begin by looking at some combination of ethos, culture, board and management leadership, and cold, hard numbers to determine the possible. It…
On June 15, the American Association of University Professors at its annual meeting voted unanimously to place National Louis University of Illinois and Southern University, Baton Rouge on its list of censured institutions for violations of academic freedom and tenure. AAUP First Vice-President Henry Reichman declared, “What happened at National Louis was ominous.” The AAUP…
Over the last four to five weeks, several fascinating examples of photo-journalism and photo-essays, graphic representations of scholarly research, and richly illustrated book reviews have been published online. The Atlantic publishes daily photo-essays in its In Focus feature. A recent addition to the series is “Welcome Back to Earth, Commander Hadfield,” which includes photos taken…
One of the tired adages about American higher education is that the role of the university president is “to live in a big house and travel the world with a tin cup in one’s hand.” The commentary on the implosion of Gordon Gee at Ohio State University this week picks up on this theme to…
Earlier this year, I posted a review of Saving Higher Education: The Integrated, Competency-Based Three-Year Bachelor’s Degree Program. The book describes an alternative to the two most common “three-year” baccalaureate programs: the Accelerated model and the Prior Learning model. In the Accelerated Model, students essentially take overloads and full summer loads in order to complete…
This is a re-post from the On the Issues blog maintained by the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org/]. ************************* If you read the news, listen to legislators, or watch TED talks, you might think MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are just about providing free access to high-quality courses for anyone who wants…
This is a re-post from the On the Issues blog maintained by the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org/]. ************************* After a brief experiment in charging tuition, Germany—the strongest economy in Europe and one of the strongest in the world–is abolishing fees at its colleges and universities. Why? As quoted in a recent…
Here is another item from Futility Closet (http://www.futilitycloset.com/), re-posted with the permission of Greg Ross. ************************* It was British wordplay expert Leigh Mercer who coined the classic palindrome “A man, a plan, a canal—Panama” in Note & Queries on Nov. 13, 1948. He later said that he’d had the middle portion, PLAN A CANAL P, for a…