I am excited and pleased today because I am holding my new book, Harnessing America’s Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning (Jossey-Bass, Jan. 2010), in my hands. It lives up to its title, I think, describing how our technology-rich environment, populated with platforms, networks, social sites, and downloads, makes possible a level of access and completion in higher education that has been unattainable up to this point. I illustrate this point with a number of examples. Primary among them is being able to self-assess your experiential learning and then, if you wish, get it reviewed formally for academic credit , all on-line. continue reading

As a former community college founder and president, I share Jill Biden’s passionate advocacy for community college students and the institutions that serve them. If we are committed to successfully serving marginalized learners, doubling our graduation rates, and strengthening our workforce, community colleges are an essential part of the solution. continue reading

President Obama has sent a strong and badly needed message of philosophical and financial support for community colleges. But they, and their students, are still in deep financial trouble in many states whose economic recovery is key to the national economic recovery, including California and Florida. continue reading

On April 24th, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan deepened the administration’s attempt to spend student loan money more effectively while increasing student persistence in higher education. Right now, the debate is focused on the lending institutions and the best way to get money to learners. continue reading

A co-worker recently shared with me this YouTube video:

Maybe you’ve already seen this clip (more than 3.8 million folks have viewed it … I admit to being a bit behind the times, technologically speaking). If you haven’t, then I encourage you to check it out. continue reading

President Obama gets it.  In his February 24 address to the Congress he set an ambitious goal that by 2020 the US would once again lead the world with the highest percentage of college graduates.  On March 10, in a speech to the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce he said, “Never has a college degree been so important.” and noted that the US had dropped out of the top ten to 11^th in the world rankings. continue reading

I am officially depressed about the economy. What finally did me in was this triple whammy of bad news:

• The Dow Jones industrial average fell below 7,000 for the first time since 1997.
• The unemployment rate rose to 8.1%, the highest since 1983.
• Even Warren Buffett had a bad year, with Berkshire Hathaway’s net worth declining by $11.5 billion in 2008. (Here’s the link for Mr. Buffett’s always entertaining annual shareholders letter. I particularly like the way he summed up last year: “By yearend, investors of all stripes were bloodied and confused, much as if they were small birds that had strayed into a badminton game.” Quite the visual, huh?) **

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Mr. President,
Thank you, once again, for your inspirational challenge, calling on all Americans to pursue some form of education beyond high school. Since I am writing a book about rethinking higher education, I have been thinking seriously about the challenge you have thrown down.

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In my previous posts, I have shared a bunch of statistics about adult learners/non-traditional students - their average age, their average household income, etc. While numbers have their uses, I think it is always

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Talk about disingenuous. Making a proposal that rolls back 65 years of educational progress, Charles Murray has just tried to re-invigorate his sputtering war on America’s middle and working class people. After a career committed to keeping capable people out of higher education based on arguments of intellectual inferiority, Murray has invented a new road to get to his favored destination: De-couple the BA/BS degrees from job qualifications, take most post-secondary education outside of continue reading