Where is the churn?–Longevity in Higher Education

I have enjoyed reading Brian Rosenberg’s insightful and provocative book on issues in higher education (Whatever It Is, I’m Against It, Harvard Education Press). I agree with much of what Rosenberg has to say, although I have a different take on one issue he raises. He points out that the apparent permanence of colleges and …

It’s All in the Timing

People commonly claim that a college education, particularly a liberal education, is not worth the investment. This is despite the fact that some of the most strident voices against higher education among national leaders are themselves products of liberal education. But study upon study has shown these claims of poor outcomes to be untrue, even …

Eight Billionaires

I recently had the pleasure to go to an academic conference for which I had no professional expertise, as a spouse of an attendee. Mostly I enjoyed local museums and coffee shops, attending only a couple of the meeting events. But the one plenary talk I went to was addressing the question of when and …

SCOTUS and the Service Academies

I just listened to a webinar on the significance of the Supreme Court’s decision on race-based college admission. I was struck by two elements of the discussion—one highlighted, and the other barely mentioned. The first element was emphasized at a number of points: this decision will have the largest impact on the small number of …

Why the Ridiculous Price Tag?

In a recent post, I raised the question of whether we should think of in-person higher education as a charity, or as a luxury. In either extreme, the question of cost looms in the background, so I thought I would take a poke at what we can expect of cost, and why this sort of …

AI: Threats and Opportunities

I just finished a board meeting, and board members, like the press and your neighbors, were talking about ChatGPT. It is pretty remarkable. It can do an ok to good job at generating text that reads pretty well, and you can bet it will only get better. In higher education, the initial chatter has been …

Higher Ed: Luxury or Charity?

Should four-year residential college be a luxury for the rich, or a subsidized charity for the poor? A standard technique employed in my field is to look at limiting cases—the most extreme examples along some continuum to understand better the compromises, and the inevitables, that occur in the midway. In the case of financing higher …

Where Are They?

Liberal education and extra-terrestrials!? Hear me out--I think outer space may give us serious evidence of our path to extinction--a path I think we could avoid. It took a while for folks to figure out that the earth was not flat, but instead a globe. It looks pretty flat, after all. Our size, in comparison …

Please Feel at Home

Recently we learned that the University of Illinois flagship campus (UIUC) is instituting a required  “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Statement” as part of the dossier for promotion and tenure. This action has already received national notice, including both praise and criticism. Less prominent in the higher education press, on March 16, the Ursinus faculty …

Opening with Omicron

I have received a number of inquiries about Ursinus’s plan to open in late January with students on campus and classes in person. In light of Omicron, shouldn’t we be following the lead of other institutions by keeping students off campus and beginning remotely? My short answer to this is that if we really do care about …