Did the holidays come and go without you finding the perfect gift for the new community college president on your list? Or the aspiring college president? Rest easy – I have two reading recommendations. Even though full-time administrators rarely curl up with a book, I am confident that these two volumes will be read, studies,…
Author: David Potash
Institutionalized Inequity and Chicago Real Estate
Beryl Satter’s Family Properties: How the Struggle Over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America is a brilliant book. A historian with a personal history with Chicago real estate, Satter’s father, Mark Satter, was a lawyer and landlord in Lawndale, a working west-side neighborhood in Chicago. Mr. Satter died in 1965, short on funds and…
Beautiful Collection – Nagle and Picking Up
Twenty some years ago at New York University I met an engaging and super smart anthropologist, Robin Nagle. She had a reputation as a very good teacher (well-deserved) and I was carried away by her enthusiasm and curiosity. We started talking about her interests and she told me that she was fascinated by garbage. I…
Scott Nearing – Much to Admire, Less to Like
Scott Nearing was one of the most influential thinkers of the homestead movement. His book Living the Good Life, written with his wife Helen in 1954, marked a critical development in the concept of a sustainable lifestyle. The Nearings’ promotion of living simply from the land was no post-WWII American anti-consumerism fad. Instead, it was the…
Neighborhoods and the Great American City
Chicago is a big and complicated city. As a newcomer, I read widely to get a better understanding of my new home. The staff at the Unabridged Bookstore, an independent in the Lakeview neighborhood, has organized a section filled with Chicago books, ranging from the coffee table variety to academic monographs. On that shelf with a…
Performance Funding & Academic Incentives
Can a funding scheme based on for-profit world motivation make a positive difference in the not-for-profit world of higher education? I am optimistic – but not for the reasons that policymakers may suppose. Public higher education in the United States is increasingly supported through Performance Based Funding (PBF). A recent report by the Education Policy…
Round-Table with Secretary Duncan
Friday morning Secretary of Education Arne Duncan met with 15 college presidents of HSIs (Hispanic Serving Institutions) at the HACU national conference in Chicago. As president of Wilbur Wright College, I joined in the hour-long discussion. The Secretary’s aim was to ask for feedback about President Obama’s plan for college affordability. It was the first of many sessions Duncan expects to hold…