Once upon in the ’80s, a time of undergraduate education I experienced as a student and can vouch for, dorm rooms at colleges looked surprisingly dingy. This was the case also at very expensive liberal arts schools, one of which I attended. I remember being slightly taken aback upon seeing my dorm room for the…
An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org] _______________ In a recent article, Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University, pinpointed several misconceptions about higher education that are driving our national discussion and policy. He tackles, for instance, the almost exclusive emphasis on college as an agent of…
Note: This was originally published on Raging Chicken Press earlier today. I did my PhD work at Miami University. No, not in Florida – Miami University in Oxford, OH. There was a t-shirt in the bookstore that always provided a snarky retort to those who made the assumption that I was writing my dissertation in Florida:…
This originally appeared in Raging Chicken Press on October 21, 2013. It is a fairly long article detailing changes in Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) policies regarding new buildings and capital projects. The more I looked in the financial schemes at the system within which I work, the more it became clear that…
Note: This article was published earlier today on Raging Chicken Press. An excerpt appears below. You can read the full article by clicking the link at the end, or you can go to the original article now by clicking here. Last week, Clarion University announced what it called a “bold, ambitious workforce plan” that will…
This article was originally posted on Raging Chicken Press. I will be posting a series of articles about the incoming chancellor, Frank Brogan, in the upcoming weeks. Last week the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) Board of Governors chose Frank Brogan to become the next Chancellor of the 14 public university system. Brogan…
Ever since the attacks on public sector unions, working families, and public education in Wisconsin that began just over two years ago, my own writing has changed. It’s become less…well, “academic.” I find myself more interested in plowing through company SEC filings on Lexis-Nexis than some of the newest scholarship in my field. Don’t get…
It’s been a little over two weeks since Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett delivered his annual budget address. Corbett’s office signaled in advance that his proposed 2013-2014 budget would not be as draconian as the previous two. I think it would be fair to say that the governor would have to work extraordinarily hard to try…
The other day, an article appeared titled “The Ten Least Stressful Jobs of 2013.” Normally, I wouldn’t pay any attention to such an article (I think rankings of the sort provided are puerile, at best, and extremely uninformative and unhelpful), but this one places “university professor” at the top–and I am quoted in it. The reporter…