The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

NPR Interviews Expert On Land Grant Universities

One hundred fifty years ago, Abraham Lincoln signed a law that transformed agriculture and education, and transformed America along the way. Named after its congressional sponsor, the Morrill Act of 1862 directed the states to create institutions of higher learning for the study of agriculture and mechanics, and provided 30,000 acres of public land to each state for the purpose. These land-grant universities include MIT, Cornell, the California state universities and Texas A&M, among many others. They support farmers, ranchers and gardeners, and, of course, they face 21st-century challenges, beginning with funding. Read more at:
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/05/156301146/land-grant-universities-and-future-of-agriculture

Despite The Predictions Traditional Higher Education Has A Strong Future

Higher education as we know it is about to come to an end. After all, there are no jobs for college graduates, certainly not for liberal arts students. Moreover, even were such students employable, they come out of school so burdened with debt that they will never dig their way out.  As college presidents who hear such proclamations over and over again, we find ourselves suppressing the urge to yawn. We take comfort in the fact that for more than a century predictions about the impending demise of classic higher education have met the same fate: They have been utterly wrong. Read more at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-adv-glassnerschapiro-education-college-20120703,0,5206719.story

Daniels Aims To Do For Purdue What He Did For Indiana

As Republican governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels has been an efficiency maven, and his scalpel has gone after higher education along with everything else. He has also introduced price competition by welcoming Western Governors University Indiana, a low-cost online college that, among other heresies, gives credit for experience. The announcement that Daniels will become president of Purdue University led to speculation that he is eager to make a mark in the roiling universe of higher education. Read more at:
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120701/EDIT05/307019970/1021/EDIT

MOOCs Could Help Transform Higher Education

Amid a sputtering recovery that has shone a spotlight on the dearth of qualified workers in particular segments of the economy, many in the business community view MOOCs as a key part of the solution. And at a time when rising college costs and growing income inequalityoccupy the national debate, some say the platforms that offer MOOCs could potentially transform higher education. Giving millions of students around the world access to high quality classes could help shrink the gap between the haves and the have-nots. "Higher education will change; the system is unstable," says Kevin Werbach, a Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor, who is teaching a MOOC on Coursera this summer. Read more at:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3028

Better Civic Engagement Programs Will Help Higher Educaton Transform

Colleges and universities find themselves in a double bind, one external and economic and the other internal and existential. Public tolerance is withering for increasing tuition as legislative appropriations shrink and student debt continues to grow. Amidst a weakening public commitment to learning about the breadth and depth of human experience and the natural world, universities and colleges are under growing pressure to reduce higher learning to merely a transaction as opposed to a transformation. I believe that comprehensive and demanding civic engagement programs will help colleges and universities find new relevance. Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-guarasci/civic-engagement-programs_b_1630919.html

Ohio's Public Universities Set A Progressive Agenda To Repair Higher Education

The presidents of Ohio’s 14 public universities are developing a “progressive agenda” to address funding and academic challenges facing higher education with an innovative spirit instead of fear, according to Wright State University President David Hopkins. University presidents have identified eight “vulnerabilities and opportunities” — from the perception of student debt to the future of online education — at their annual meeting held earlier this month through the Inter-University Council of Ohio. Read more at:
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/public-universities-face-funding-academic-challenges-1396963.html

College Trustees Are Bringing A Business Focus To The Boardroom

The governing boards of colleges and universities are increasingly demanding that their presidents perform more like corporate chief executives, much to the chagrin of academics who say treating colleges as businesses doesn't fit the mission of higher education. Experts say the recent moves largely have been spurred by federal and state funding cuts. In addition to improving fundraising, universities are increasingly looking for ways to use resources efficiently, cut costs and develop new revenue sources. Read more at:
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120627/SCHOOLS/206270376#ixzz1z6YsPTIi

Kevin Carey On What's Behind The Rising Cost Of Higher Education

The debate reflects the growing concern over the debt burden many take on to get a college education. About two-thirds of bachelor's degree recipients borrow money to attend college, and collectively, student debt has topped $1 trillion. Kevin Carey, the director of the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation, believes the student debt crisis reflects larger, troubling trends in higher education — among them excessive spending by colleges and universities, which drives up tuition, and declining government support for public universities as state and local governments face budget crises. Read more at:
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/155766786/whats-driving-college-costs-higher

Higher Ed Should Leverage Technology To Fix What Is Broken

Setting aside the specifics of the Virginia drama, university leaders desperately need to transform how colleges do business. Other information industries, from journalism to music to book publishing, enjoyed similar periods of success right before epic change enveloped them, seemingly overnight. We now know how those industries have been transformed by technology, resulting in the decline of the middleman — newspapers, record stores, bookstores and publishers. Colleges and universities could be next. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/opinion/fixing-college-through-lower-costs-and-better-technology.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss 

 

Higher Ed Has Economic Benefit For Lower And Upper Classes

How much mobility do Americans really have? Are they stuck in the income class they were born to? The answer depends largely on whether you went to college. As the report notes: Without a degree, children born to parents in the bottom income quintile have a 45 percent chance of remaining there as adults. With a degree, they have less than a 20 percent chance of staying in the bottom quintile of the income distribution. Read more at:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/how-to-escape-a-lowly-socioeconomic-class-go-to-college/?ref=business