What is normal in higher education today? When we think of a college we often picture young people, popular football games, lectures halls and the academic quad. However, traditional students, the 18-21 year-olds who live in dormitories, make up less than 20% of all who study in higher ed. One of the great strengths and…
Category: Deanspeak
Posts about the wide realm of higher education from a deanly perspective
Why Can’t Higher Education Be Ahead Of The Curve?
The flagship organization of higher education, AAC&U, publishes several themed periodicals. Key among them is Liberal Education. Focused on undergraduate education and liberal learning, the quarterly provides a national forum about teaching, learning, undergraduate issues and leadership. The Winter 2012 issues of Liberal Education focuses on the “completion agenda.” Carol Geary Schneider, president of the AAC&U,…
Practical Reasoning From an Impractical Perch
It takes a certain degree of hubris to assign oneself the responsibility of investigating and learning about something popular and effective – and then making recommendations about how it should be rethought. Higher education, however, has no shortage of experts eager and willing to tell others what to do and how to do it. Knowledge,…
How To Leading The Right Way (Provided There Are Folks Who Want To Be Led)
Tournaround Leadership for Higher Education, by Michael Fullan and Geoff Scott, starts tartly with a barb: “it has been observed that elementary school teachers love their children, high school teachers love their subjects, and university professors love themselves.” Powerful words. If only the authors had maintained that critical distance the book would warrant an in-depth review. Instead, the authors’…
Hacking Through Policy Thickets – Higher Education, Accreditation and Financial Aid
What’s the best way to support higher education? It’s a very tricky question to answer and in many ways, it’s almost as hard to figure out who to ask. The United States is without a national system for higher education. The government most certainly sets policy, but it does so without the clear agency one…
Organizational Culture and Higher Education
Edgar H. Schein’s Organizational Culture and Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2010), now its fourth edition, is one of the most important works in explaining organizational culture as well as defining the field. The title is today much more than a course in an MBA; it rates a wikipedia site and can be its own degree program at…
Innovation and Differentiation
Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring’s The Innovative University is an important book. Christensen is the Cizik Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Eyring is a long-time administrator at Brigham Young University-Idaho. Bringing them together are shared ties with Harvard and BYU-Idaho, two very different institutions who have charted different paths towards success. Despite a baffling…