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by Jacky Brighton
Dearest Jack,
In keeping with the tradition of writing postcards from the holidays home to yourself, here’s a letter from your nearly-enlightened self in the year 2013.
In the last years I have learnt so much about myself that I feel the need to pass some of Continue reading “Dearest Jack”
What would you tell your high school self?
by: Sarah Stroup (Q4Colleges.com)
Dear Sarah,
I am Sarah of the future writing to you to provide you (us?) with some perspective on how your life right now will look once you are seven or eight years down the road. If you are tired of people trying to tell you what to do, how to think, and who to be, then I don’t blame you. Old people love to try to give young people the answers, if only just to feel like their age is useful somehow. If you are already annoyed enough to stop listening, then it’s possible that you don’t need my advice because you already have enough confidence in yourself to go get yourself into scrapes, have adventures, and prosper. Ultimately, that’s what I want to say to you anyway. Continue reading “Old People Love to Try to Give Young People the Answers, if Only Just to Feel Like Their Age is Useful Somehow”
What would you tell your high school self?
by Adrienne Rodney (Q4Colleges.com)
Hi Adrienne,
You probably have an idea (or wish) of what life will be like at 32. I’m sure you’re very successful (you want to be a publicist, right?), thin, educated and probably married with children. I’m sure you also got to where you wanted to be by 27. Am I right? Is this what you imagine?
Unfortunately life doesn’t work the way you want it to. That doesn’t mean life is worthless, just that what you envision is not always reality.
Life at 32 will be NOTHING like you think it will be, but that’s okay. There are some lessons I’ve learned along the way that I’d like to pass to you.
1. Don’t let others make important decisions for you.
I’m going to let you in on a secret. You’re going to want to Continue reading “Life Is Never What You Expect It To Be, And That’s Okay”
Are we preparing students for the professional world?
By Carol Geary Schneider (AAC&U)
Envision this: You’re an employer, interviewing a candidate for an entry-level position in your unit. The applicant is very direct.
“I’m in it for the money,” she explains. “I make all my choices on the basis of how much I can expect to earn. I chose my major based on earnings reports. I applied for this particular position because you pay more than any other company in the region. Actually, I’m a bit sorry that I didn’t stop with a two-year degree, since I read in the newspaper last week that I could have made almost as much in my first job with half the time spent on college. I hate thinking about all the time I wasted.”
You have no difficulty deciding not to hire this new graduate. The job applicant who arrives talking money first, money only, lacks common sense, and career sense, too.
And yet our candid candidate did Continue reading “The Narrowing of the American Mind”
How will open online courses affect the future of education?
By Kevin Carey (New America Foundation)
In the spring of my freshman year in college, I took “Principles of Microeconomics” in Lecture Hall 1, a 400-seat auditorium. The professor was an economist and thus possessed a certain perspective on human nature. On the first day of class, he explained that our grades would be based on two midterms and a final. If we skipped the first midterm, the second would count double. If we skipped them both, the final would count for 100 percent of our grade. I may or may not have waited until the hour ended before walking out the back door of Lecture Hall 1 toward the nearest bar.
Fifteen weeks later, suddenly mindful of various dire warnings from my father about passing grades, continuing financial support, and the strong connection between them, I cracked my Continue reading “Into the Future With MOOC’s”
What would you tell your grandchildren?
by Brooke Allen (Q4Colleges)
Dear Grandchildren,
You and we have a common enemy: your parents.
This is just the natural order of things. Parents and children put each other through hell everywhere. Your dysfunctional family is no big deal.
Think about it. You imagine you are the center of the universe even though you can’t even wipe your own butt. Unless your parents sell you into slavery, you cost way more than you are worth. The reason babies are cute is because otherwise parents would kill them.
And your parents are the Devil incarnate. They are hell-bent on controlling you – telling you what to do, how to do it, and what to think. Even if by some miracle you feel your parents are not idiots it is only because they are good at manipulating you. If children were not dependent on their parents they would kill them. Continue reading “Perhaps Someday We Can Forgive Our Common Enemies”
Should “caveat emptor” be the operative philosophy when we market to students, or should we hold ourselves to a higher standard than, say, a car manufacturer?
by Brooke Allen (Q4Colleges.com)
Emory University confessed that for 11 years it has been fudging data it sent in for U. S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges rankings. The publisher said that, “Our preliminary calculations show that the misreported data would not have changed the school’s ranking in the past two years (No. 20) and would likely have had a small to negligible effect in the several years prior.” (Read the article here.)
This second confession by U. S. News only serves to prove that their ranking methodology is deeply flawed. Since integrity is such a major part of character, confessed cheating should drop you to Dead Last in the rankings, and a cover-up should get you barred altogether pending review by the accrediting authorities. Continue reading “Is Cheating by Colleges Just Another Clever Marketing Ploy?”
What is your mission?
by: Brooke Allen (Q4Colleges.com)
My personal mission is to be of meaningful help to my people.
Who are “my people” exactly? If I were Armenian I might consider my people to be Armenians or if I were a lesbian then they might be lesbians.
I am neither of those.
I’m a 59-year-old Caucasian male with a mostly useless master’s degree.
And my people are over-educated Westerners.
This mission came to me after Continue reading “My mission is to be of meaningful help to my people. But who are “my people?””
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