Business and Technology Bring Continuous Innovation – But Will Higher Education Take Advantage?

Making sense of ever-changing conditions is one of the primary functions of the mainstream business press. Regardless of one’s line of work, publications like  The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the Harvard Business Review offer a lenses and perspective on the almost incomprehensible dynamism of human economic and technological activity. They are…

The Conflicting Economies of Credit Hours and Learning

A systemic problem in higher education is the academic credit system.  An academic credit is a unit of time, a measure of currency, that was originally designed to help with the tracking of faculty workload. In that economy, it is a relatively reliable measure.  In the economy of student learning and accomplishment, however, the academic…

Get Educated, Live Longer

The August issue of Health Affairs, a leading journal of health policy research, has an article that starkly highlights two Americas: one that is educated and full of promise, and one that is not educated and truncated. Titled “Differences In Life Expectancy Due To Race And Educational Differences Are Widening, And Many May Not Catch Up,”…

Cheap – A Liberal Arts Challenge

Ellen Ruppel Shell, Boston University journalism professor and author, is a smart and informed writer. In her latest book, Cheap: the high cost of discount culture, Shell looks at the rise of discount culture – discount shops, outlet malls, and the proliferation of the cheap.  Cheap, she takes pains to point out, is not the…