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The black box of higher ed
Quick Rorschach test: “Our education system in the US is broken.” What do you picture when you hear that? A K12 classroom? Or a college campus? I could be wrong, but my hunch is that 80%+ of people’s...
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Cura (Management) ex Machina
I have previously written about how the recent MOOC frenzy distracts from the massive and growing threat that university bureaucracy presents to the impact – and survival – of many higher education...
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Nigeria gets serious about graduate unemployment
Nigeria’s leadership has reacted to reports of the – comparatively modest – university graduate unemployment rate of 24% by launching a new state funded internship initiative. The national government...
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The Teutonic Model Loses Some Shine?
Like many, we are enamored with the German system of higher education. There is much to like about their Fachhochschule (Universities of Applied Sciences). They are closely linked with industry,...
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Proving Hamlet Wrong
Malcolm Gladwell has a compelling piece in the New Yorker this week about the life and work of the philosopher Albert Hirschman which inspired me on my late night Joburg to Nairobi flight tonight....
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Kenya’s gangster graduate
Prominent article in the Standard in Kenya telling the story of Tim, a university graduate in Nairobi who couldn’t get a job and turned to crime. This may be an extreme case but sadly it’s not a total...
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Technology may someday replace professors…with teachers
In designing a tech-enabled higher education model, we hear a lot of concern about whether we’re replacing professors with computers. Given graduation rates from the biggest purely online universities,...
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Mind the Gap
University Ventures has a great post about the need for more management talent in higher education. It also highlights the gap in service-delivery entrepreneurship between K12 and higher ed that we...
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Lets talk about risk, baby
Lets talk about uni-ver-si-ties. Lets talk about all the good things there can be (with apologies to Salt-n-Pepa). Risk is not as exciting as sex, but it is at the core of dramatically improving higher...
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Universal university trends
Dramatic price increases. Spiraling student debt. This must be higher education in the US, right? Sadly, the higher education news out of sub-Saharan Africa is echoing that of the US these days, with...
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Dreams deflating on the tarmac
The Kenyan press continues to buzz with stories on higher in education in the country. Like others, this article seeks to bludgeon the reader with the human faces of the crisis. This one, however,...
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Why is Nairobi so…
I loved this article in the Atlantic on understanding US cities through Google autocomplete. The idea is you type in “Why is [City X] so” and see what Google prompts you to fill in. My previous...
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Weekly roundup
Bunch of interesting posts and developments this week, including: 1) University Ventures post on how the youth unemployment crisis has thoroughly hit US shores — with a great graphic on why employers...
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Magic powers
Kepler is featured in a piece in Scientific American this week. The author, Jeff Bartholet, really gets at the stakes for each student that applies: Kepler received 2,696 applications for just 50 slots...
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Ride ‘em in, rawhide
This week’s roundup — brought to you with good vittles, love & kissin’: 1) Tom Vander Ark has a great piece on Boosting Employability preaching the gospel of ed-to-employment (disclosure: we’re the...
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The Cargo Cult of University Accreditation
Universities across the world are still built in the model of the earliest higher education institutions – Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard. Schools from a time when education looked very different than it...
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Joy and Testing
It’s been really interesting to watch the shifting sands and emphases in the fight to claim the high ground in U.S. K12 education reform. One flavor of disagreement in the national debate seems to be...
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Biochem? Whoops, I meant sociology
Cass Sunstein had an interesting piece this week sharing some research about why we have a shortfall of science majors at the undergrad level. Spoiler: more students want to study science, but early...
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Moneyball-ing student selection
In ‘The Signal and the Noise‘ – which I’ve been reading and highly recommend – Nate Silver discusses how an individual or company can translate even a modest advantage in statistical insight into a...
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“Quality is the best business plan, period.”
Great interview with John Lasseter, with some advice that’s applicable everywhere: Everything I do and everything Pixar does is based on a simple rule: Quality is the best business plan, period. He...
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