For a recently written full-throated critique of elite private higher education in the United States – not a political action or lawsuit, but instead a book – check out Poison Ivy by Evan Mandery. In lively prose, mixing personal experience with scholarly research, Mandery argues that elite higher education harms students, communities, and the overall…
Category: Deanspeak
Posts about the wide realm of higher education from a deanly perspective
Shining Light on Community Colleges’ Impact
America’s Hidden Economic Engines: How Community Colleges Can Drive Shared Prosperity is a short book from Harvard Education Press. Edited by Rachel Lipson, co-founder of the Project on Workforce at Harvard, and Robert B. Schwartz, emeritus professor of education at Harvard, the volume is part of a larger series on Work and Learning. The workforce…
Learning to Love (and Use!) Data
Amid the sea of tutorials, reports, books and worksheets about higher education and data, finding a clearly written study of data and change management is most welcome. Please consider Brad C. Phillips and Jordan E. Horowitz’s Creating a Data-Informed Culture in Community Colleges: A New Model for Educators. While I cannot speak to how new…
Educational Leadership Primer: Round 1
If I were asked to help a new academic leader, a curious person who knew little about higher education and sought to ground themselves in their new position, I would assign (not recommend) Academic Leadership and Governance in Higher Education. This is a tome, a bible for higher education leadership. The full title includes further…
Organizational Transformation and Governing Boards: Many Ways and No One Path
ASAE, The American Society of Association Executives, is a membership group for those that manage associations, nonprofit and for profit. The organization has a research arm, a Center for Association Leadership, certifications, professional development, and a century plus history. They are good resource, and I recently came across one of their publications that I found…
AGB: Benchmarking Boards
Few of us in academia give deep and consistent thought to higher education governance. We tend to take it for granted until something significantly changes. And rarely, unfortunately, is the change easy and well received. It is understandable, for academic governance can be somewhat of an abstract concept. We are all somewhat familiar with the…
The Dean of New Things Embraced Change
In the past half-century public higher education, like so much of America, has changed dramatically. It’s a vastly different landscape, with millions more attending college as the economy – the world – demands new skills, new knowledge, and new ways of doing business. The City University of New York, one of the largest systems in…