Humanities and Jobs Data: What’s the Real Story?
Escalating attacks on the humanities often cite the problem of employment for humanities majors; a new report shows otherwise.
Pearson Launches a Comprehensive Textbook Solution for Students. What Are Its Prospects?
Pearson is offering online access to its entire textbook collection for $15 a month. Will students go for it?
Pluralism vs. Monoculture in Scholarly Communication, Part 2
Calls for a monoculture of scholarly communication keep multiplying. But wouldn’t a continued diversity of models be healthier?
Book Review — The Traps of Big Data Revealed in "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy O’Neil
The new book, “Weapons of Math Destruction,” calls out many worrying trends in the application of big data, with particularly salient entries on higher education rankings, for-profit universities, the justice system, insurance, and employment.
Libraries Receive Shrinking Share of University Expenditures
Over the past three decades, the research library has been receiving a smaller proportion of the university budget. Does this trend reflect the failure of library administrators and the declining relevance of libraries? Or does it tell the story of self-control and growing efficiency against a backdrop of spiraling higher education costs?
Stick to Your Ribs: Back to School: Rethinking the Textbook
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s 2011 post on the challenges and the strategies for moving textbooks into the digital era.
What Does "Unsustainable" Mean?
We breeze by the statement that “scholarly publishing economics are unsustainable,” without contemplating what it actually means, how deep it goes, and why it has been allowed to get this way.
Is the Higher Education Bubble About to Pop?
The potential higher education funding bubble may be more likely to burst, with the LIBOR scandal revealing another weakness in the system, trends in admissions and discounting showing the effects of the recession, and American politics locked up in partisan nonsense.
Ask the Chefs: "What's the Biggest Elephant in the Room?"
What issues aren’t we talking about enough? The Chefs discuss a surprisingly wide variety of elephants — from consumerization to emerging crises to legacy problems.
Libraries Receiving a Shrinking Piece of the University Pie
Over the past three decades, the research library has been receiving a smaller proportion of the university budget. Does this trend reflect the failure of library administrators and the declining relevance of libraries? Or does it tell the story of self-control and growing efficiency against a backdrop of spiraling higher education costs?
Back to School: Rethinking the Textbook
There are many new companies seeking to disrupt the college textbook model. Here is a taxonomy of the strategies, with some comments on the likelihood of their being adopted.
Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Higher Education
With a bad job market for PhDs and heavy student debt, should we reexamine our expectations of higher education?
Blackboard May be the Target of a Takeover
Blackboard is the target of speculation about a takeover, the WSJ reports. What might this mean?
Is Higher Education the Next Bubble to Burst?
With escalating costs and questions about results, higher education is attracting skepticism from an Internet mogul who knows a bubble when he sees one.
Britain Has Sneezed: Will the U.S. Catch a Cold?
Britain’s response to economic hard times might infect the US higher education system, and lead to major cuts in the humanities and social sciences.