The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Now Reading

Friday Book Reviews

Four books that have been across my desk recently: Higher Education Accountability. This is a short and sweet book by Seton Hall prof Robert Kelchen which provides maybe the best taxonomy of accountability measures in higher education measures I have ever seen.  Internal/external, to government, to the public – you name it, its in there, all with copious references to major events in US higher ed over the past ten years.  It perhaps occasionally resembles notes for a course a bit

Read More »
March 23, 2018 No Comments

University Commons Divided

A couple of months ago I reviewed Christopher Newfield’s The Great Mistake and said it was a great book that was very much worth reading, despite the fact that I disagreed with its central premise.  Well, I have another one of those, and it’s Peter MacKinnon’s new book: University Commons Divided: Exploring Debate and Dissent on Campus. What MacKinnon – ex-President of the University of Saskatchewan (1999-2012) and Athabasca University (2014-2016)  – has produced is a truly marvellous re-cap of all the major

Read More »
March 16, 2018 No Comments

Robot-Proof

If you’re looking for a book that is not too heavy, analyzes how changing technologies impacts skills, and does a great job of sketching out some possible attractive responses from higher education institutions: have I got a book for you.  It’s called Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Joseph Aoun. You’re surprised, I can tell.  The book does have the kind of title that suggests it has a point of view that ordinarily would set me off on

Read More »
March 1, 2018 1 Comment

Science Federalism

A couple of months ago, I read a rather interesting book called National Innovation Systems and the Academic Enterprise, which is a collection of essays edited by David Dill and Frans van Vught.  It’s a collection of essays about national – and in the case of the US, subnational – innovation policies, and while the quality of the national essays is a bit uneven (the Canadian one was marked mainly by overuse of the word “neoliberalism” and excessive off-point moaning about

Read More »
February 14, 2018 2 Comments

The Case Against Education

Sorry for the delay this AM, all.  Long flight over the Atlantic yesterday. There is a new book out from George Mason economics professor Bryan Caplan called The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money.  It’s causing some brouhaha south of the border (you may have seen this article in The Atlantic). There is a longstanding argument in economics about how to measure gains from education.  Basically, there is the “human capital” view, which says that

Read More »
February 1, 2018 1 Comment

One Thought to Start Your Day

One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...