Ask a group of traditional college students – late teens and early twenties in age, seeking the baccalaureate and living in a residential hall/dormitory – what higher education is preparing them for and they will shout out the response in unison: “The Real World!” They are not talking about MTV, either. Their belief that the…
Tag: value proposition
In Search of an Interesting College Student . . .
Exactly how ineffective is higher education? How much is wrong? Please, please, let me count the ways. A book a week, a screed a fortnight and an expose daily seem to be populating the media, each of which take a different tack highlighting the many woes of American higher education. In this melange of negativity…
Who Is The Party Pooper?
Craig Brandon’s The Five-Year Party makes me think of reheated coffee: sometimes necessary but always bitter, acidic, and thin. A former journalism professor at Keene State, New Hampshire, Brandon has assiduously collected bad new and bad results throughout higher education in order to populate this book. He weaves together the negativity into an extraordinarily bleak…
Poor Options, Smart Choices
If, sadly, a twenty-two year old is killed by a bus, the news media will quickly report the untimely demise of a man. Ask a group of middle-aged Americans about a twenty-two year old who lacks a full-time job and lives in his parent’s house, and they would be unwilling to call that person an…
On Trust
Trust is an essential component of markets. Trust enables exchange, facilitates planning and commitment over time, and in many ways is the oxygen of contemporary life. The explosive rise of commerce over the internet has precipitated a bevy or articles on the twenty-first century “trust economy” and I anticipate that the phrase and concept will…
How Much For That Higher Education in the Window?
Part of the Jossey-Bass Wiley Series, Selling Higher Education: Marketing and Advertising America’s College and Universities by Eric J. Anctil is an unusual publication. A monograph with a valuable perspective on a key part of higher education, the book is neither as critical nor as prescriptive as one might expect. Lisa Wolf-Wendel, the series editor,…
But What About Me?
Christine Hassler wants to be the go-to author for the twenty-year-old generation. Her latest, the 20 Something Manifesto: Quarter-Lifers Speak Out about Who They Are, What They Want, and How to Get It builds off an earlier work, 20 Something, 20 Everything and is probably found in your local bookstore’s self-help section. “You are not…