BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s recently released their updated outlooks for American higher education. The news is not good. Moody’s revised its 2018 outlook for higher education from stable to negative “as aggregate operating revenue moderates while expense growth increases.” Moody’s vice president, Susan E. Shaffer, elaborated: “the annual change in…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about how disruption will play out in American higher education. My hopes – and concerns – reflect a bedrock belief that America’s colleges and universities operate on an unsustainable finance model that must adapt to new realities. It is impossible to predict how many…
This summer I am teaching online, in part because many students prefer to take classes online. Summer is the time for mischief, experimentation and creation—there is just something about that added sunlight, all sorts of plants I know not the names of in bloom everywhere—it just makes you want to try something new. In my…
The following piece by Christopher Newfield, Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, first appeared on the blog, “Remaking the University,” which he runs with UCLA Professor Michael Meranze. It is reposted by permission. Must innovation disrupt everything so that society might have new and better things? Widespread fatigue with this idea…