Demise of the University

“Perhaps the higher-education fuse is 25 years long, perhaps 40. But it ends someday, in our lifetimes. There’s still time for higher-education institutions to use technology to their advantage, to move to a more-sustainable cost structure, and to win customers with a combination of superior service and reasonable price.

“If they don’t, then someday, sooner than we think, we’re going to be reading about the demise of once-great universities — not in the newspaper, but in whatever comes next.”

Education Sector, an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that “challenges conventional thinking in education policy” offered this intriguing perspective on the impact of the internet on the traditional university yesterday in “What Colleges Can Learn From Newspapers’ Decline”. Originally appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, it’s an excellent stimulant to reflection.

Labor Market Regulation & Unemployment

A new study of the economies of 73 countries by a University of Bath researcher suggests that Strict Labor Market Regulation Increases Global Unemployment, with the deleterious effects concentrated among the more vulnerable elements of the population, in particular affecting the young and women.

Household Technology: Engine of Liberation

An interesting study from the University of Montreal on the impact of technological innovation on the liberation of women is briefly reviewed in Science Daily.

The Presidential Rankings Game

In a rather weak and undistinguished effort, C-SPAN offers an update of a presidential ranking it last performed nine years ago in C-SPAN 2009 Historians Presidential Leadership Survey. It’s a predictably conventional and rather obtuse assessment from this group of “historians” and so-called “professional observers of the presidency.” At least they get Lincoln (first) and Buchanan (last) right. In between, they’ve also dropped Wilson three places and Johnson one, while raising Grant by ten. These are improvements, but not by enough to make this anything more than a pedestrian effort.