It’s a new year, and we’re dusting off the crystal ball to make new prognostications about the future of global higher education. But first, let’s evaluate the predictions we made last year to find out what we got right (and wrong) in 2013. We correctly predicted that there would be greater pushback against foreign branch […] … learn more→

This week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has offered up a veritable smörgåsbord of wearable technology. We’ve seen devices of all kinds to tempt us into this new age. So now is the time to decide what you want from them and how much information you are willing to hand over to your friend […] … learn more→

Chicago State University (CSU) administrators have sent another letter attempting to shut down or censor the CSU Faculty Voice blog. In November, AAUP VP Hank Reichman called CSU’s earlier letter to the blog “a thuggish effort to bully and frighten, with no legal or moral justification.” This new letter is even worse, and clear evidence […] … learn more→

There are some posts that punch you in the gut a little. Lately, for me, those posts have been about life in academia. About \’the system\’. Whether or not it failed people. This post was one of them. It hit me hard. But it made me think, too. The post, \”The afternoon I decided to […] … learn more→

As Americans enter 2014, there is grave concern among our political leaders that we are lagging behind other nations in terms of our children’s scientific literacy. An international survey confirmed in December that many American kids don’t understand science, and that they continue to fall behind children from other nations—many much poorer than we are—in […] … learn more→

How happy do you feel today? How satisfied are you with your life? Do you think your life has any worth? These are the kind of questions increasingly put to survey respondents as academics and politicians pick up the baton of raising the population’s subjective well-being. What was once perhaps the preserve of self-help gurus […] … learn more→

Yesterday, I ventured out of the house—just barely beyond the front doorway—just enough to confirm that I preferred to remain inside. I do not have a baseline for what is “too cold,” but when I become cognizant of the individual hairs inside my nostrils, it is too cold for me. “Polar Vortex” is a wonderful […] … learn more→

The US is in the midst of an oil boom. Shale gas has grabbed much attention, and rightly so. But it is shale oil (a light, crude oil found in shale or tight sandstone, and also known also as tight oil) that could more radically redraw the geopolitical map. What factors might determine this? There […] … learn more→

Overly positive, inflated praise such as “terrific!”, “you did incredibly well!”, “perfect!” is very common in western countries. At first glance this might not seem a bad thing; heaping praise can only make people do better – right? Parents often give such praise to children with low self-esteem, in an effort to boost their esteem. […] … learn more→

Iman Salehian talks like a techie. Ask about her studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, and she mentions many tools that make the web tick: metadata schemas and content-management systems, CSS coding and GIS mapping. Her major? English. Ms. Salehian is at the vanguard of a different kind of humanities education. If […] … learn more→