My latest in Forbes: will #Covid and #Zoom, Coursera, Southern New Hampshire University,and @Google Career Certificates prove to be a passing tremor across the landscape of #highereducation — or do they signal The Big One? If your crystal ball on the #futureofeducation needs refreshing, here’s an excellent place to start. An important new book by Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt on which #universities will thrive, survive, or wither.
Affiliations and personal history
October 11, 2021 by
Since I write about education, technology, and media, I thought perhaps an extra disclosure of my affiliations, past and present, would be useful. I am a graduate of New York City public schools: PS 148 and JHS Joseph Pulitzer Junior HS (remember those?) Jackson Heights, Queens; Kakiat Junior HS and Spring Valley High School. Hebrew […]
The Day I Got Hooded (40 Years Late!)
June 13, 2019 by
Maybe someday I’ll write the full story of why I didn’t attend my first Princeton graduation, but for now, I am grateful that I got a second chance. And what a chance! Thanks to Sarah-Jane Leslie, Dean of the Princeton Graduate School, I was invited to participate in the doctoral hooding ceremony that I was too […]
Big news! Wikipedia matters in higher ed!
June 21, 2016 by
In case you need a reminder about the glacial pace of innovation in #highered, here’s a news story that some professors are learning to use Wikipedia. Wait, what? This article should have appeared in 2006. Indeed, it is wonderful to read about enlightened faculty, such as Duke’s Susan Alberts, a biology professor who told Washington Post reporter […]
Who was your Fletcher? I’m listening to Charlie Parker and thinking about #Whiplash. You must see it.
January 4, 2015 by
I bet we have all had a Fletcher, someone who wanted the best from us. Or is it someone who wanted the best and got it in the worst way? Or is it someone who had absolutely no idea what our best was….and was just a sadistic bastard? I have had a few Fletchers in […]
On Quality, Quantity, and Cost in #Higher Education
June 27, 2014 by
You expect to pay less today for a computer than you did ten years ago. But universities are more like media companies than computer manufacturers, so imagine if universities were subject to the same disruptive market forces as, let’s say, newspapers, what would things looks like? The Economist has three terrific articles on higher […]
Speaking of giants: Congrats, Macaulay Class of 2014 graduation!
June 9, 2014 by
To the Macaulay Honors College, Class of 2014 — Do you remember the first time we met, back in 2010? Under a certain giant whale? Right from the start, I knew you were something special. But I’d almost forgotten about that welcome reception at the American Museum of Natural History until we asked you a […]
Attention college students: if you want to know what to do RIGHT NOW to unlock the secrets of a successful future, click here. #highered
May 6, 2014 by
Today’s release of the Gallup/Purdue Index is mind-blowing in its findings — and yet they are all intuitively obvious. All college applicants should be thinking about this, as they go about the process of selecting a college. All college students should be testing their experience against these findings. Unless you’re about to graduate, it’s not […]
The Confidence Gap: check this out.
April 17, 2014 by
A review of personnel records at Hewlett-Packard found that women applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100 percent of the qualifications listed for the job. Men were happy to apply when they thought they could meet 60 percent of the job requirements.
Ding, dong, the #SAT is…not quite dead. My 2 cents on where College Board and Coleman got it right, plus a roll-up of some press.
March 6, 2014 by
He’ll be blamed for doing too much, for doing too little, and for thinking that he can swap the Darth Vader cloak of the College Board for the Technicolor Dreamcoat of Sal Khan. But really, let’s give a major t/h to David Coleman for acknowledging the failure of the SAT. For saying bold words like […]