where higher education & the real world meet
Accenture, a global professional services company, is one of my college’s most active and generous business partners. We have learned so much from them through meetings, projects, collaboration, and day-to-day interaction. Consistently collegial and extraordinarily professional, the team at Accenture have helped to strengthen us and our students – and we’re not even their clients.…
At the request of a neighborhood high school principal, I recently gave a short speech at their commencement. I was honored by the request, but to tell the truth, the invitation gave me pause. I’ve been to several high school graduations, including my own, and for the life of me I cannot remember who spoke…
What does a student know and how do we know that they know it? This fundamental question in higher education drives learning outcomes assessment, a critical component in providing a quality education. Those that are more removed from the classroom and assessment committees may not to give much consideration to the ongoing demanding work that…
Peter Cappelli, the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, is a prolific author, advisor to governments and organizations, researcher, scholar and influential public intellectual. He’s been called one of the worlds most important business thinkers. In 2015, he took a break from his academic and management…
Academia is an odd place, sometimes a world unto itself. Higher education’s traditions, titles and ceremonies are unique, and can be obscure and remarkably persistent. Why, after all, do students pay fees to a bursar and move a tassel on a mortar board at graduation? Why do faculty publish or perish? For those of us…
Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, is one of higher education’s most influential leaders. ASU has accomplished tremendous improvements under Crow’s tenure, growing enrollment, student successes, and an international profile as a global research institution. It is an institution constantly innovating and many look to ASU for ideas. Crow is a doer, a thinker…
Charles Sykes believes that higher education has lost its way and its purpose. He is angry and sees higher ed as a gigantic scam. Sykes assembles as many complaints, criticisms and shortcomings as possible in an unremittingly shrill jeremiad, Fail U.: The False Promise of Higher Education. It paints a extraordinarily dire picture of higher…