On Monday, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) announced that she and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced legislation (S. 969) aimed at encouraging and improving science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. The bill would provide planning and implementation grants on a competitive basis to help states integrate engineering instruction into K-12 education. Sen. Snowe said in a press rel...
On Friday, Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) introduced the first (H.R. 1891) of a series of education reform bills planned by the House Education and Workforce Committee. Congressman Hunter chairs the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, and his bill is aimed at reducing wasteful spending in K-12 education. The legislation would eliminate 43 education programs in o...
The U.S. Education Department is going ahead with its proposed "gainful employment" rules for for-profit colleges, despite industry advocates calling on Congress and the courts to intervene. Originally scheduled to be issued last September, Education Secretary Arne Duncan delayed the regulations after receiving about 90,000 letters on the issue, most of them in opposition. The most recent version ...
In the context of the recent efforts to arrive at a federal budget, articles abound in the popular media and trade publications debating both the value of Pell Grants and their rising cost to the U.S. government.
Both pros and cons of the debate hold value. Pell Grants are what enable many of our low-income families to send their children to college and, when more and more jobs require a minimum ...
Since the start of the global financial crisis a little over two years ago, many concerns have been raised on how it might affect funding to higher education and whether or not it might hasten moves toward greater cost sharing. While, globally, some steps have been taken in this direction, in most countries, hard decisions have yet to be taken on this issue.
Our inaugural annual survey of global ...
To listen as many of us incessantly complain, one would think academe is chronically resistant to change, new ideas and innovative programs. We often hear the smaller the stakes, the greater the petty battles—no opportunity is too minute to stall and impede. Before tenure, junior faculty need to be protected while they build their publications dossier; after tenure, they no longer need to ca...
New England universities performed more than $4 billion worth of research and development in 2009, but the region’s share of total R&D performed by all U.S. universities remained at 7.3%, down from more than 10% in the 1980s.The region's university research labs have been world-famous for ideas that breed companies and whole industries in fields ranging from biotechnology to photonic...
Book Review
MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World; Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams; Portfolio/Penguin 2010; $27.95
Reviewed by Alan R. Earls.
In a recent check of Google search term rankings, the term “wiki” garnered more than 100 million inquires over the prior 30 days. Presumably, some portion of that traffic was generated by those seeking for MacroWikinomics or its...
A new literary genre seems to be booming—book-length critiques on the state of American higher education. While a few celebrate American exceptionalism, most lament the decline of higher learning. Whether exuberant or depressed, their tone is rarely tempered. The authors’ demographics suggest why—they are generally at the twilight of their own academic careers, taking one last shot at the st...
Over the past decade, policymakers and business leaders across New England have been concerned that the region’s slower population growth and loss of residents to other parts of the country will lead to a shortage of skilled labor—particularly when the baby boom generation retires. Prior to the Great Recession, the concern was that an inadequate supply of skilled workers would ham...
On Monday, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) announced that she and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced legislation (S. 969) aimed at encouraging and improving science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. The bill would provide planning and implementation grants on a competitive basis to help states integrate engineering instruction into K-12 education. Sen. Snowe said in a press rel... 
In the context of the recent efforts to arrive at a federal budget, articles abound in the popular media and trade publications debating both the value of Pell Grants and their rising cost to the U.S. government.
Both pros and cons of the debate hold value. Pell Grants are what enable many of our low-income families to send their children to college and, when more and more jobs require a minimum ... 
Since the start of the global financial crisis a little over two years ago, many concerns have been raised on how it might affect funding to higher education and whether or not it might hasten moves toward greater cost sharing. While, globally, some steps have been taken in this direction, in most countries, hard decisions have yet to be taken on this issue.
Our inaugural annual survey of global ... 
To listen as many of us incessantly complain, one would think academe is chronically resistant to change, new ideas and innovative programs. We often hear the smaller the stakes, the greater the petty battles—no opportunity is too minute to stall and impede. Before tenure, junior faculty need to be protected while they build their publications dossier; after tenure, they no longer need to ca... 
Book Review
MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World; Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams; Portfolio/Penguin 2010; $27.95
Reviewed by Alan R. Earls.
In a recent check of Google search term rankings, the term “wiki” garnered more than 100 million inquires over the prior 30 days. Presumably, some portion of that traffic was generated by those seeking for MacroWikinomics or its... 
A new literary genre seems to be booming—book-length critiques on the state of American higher education. While a few celebrate American exceptionalism, most lament the decline of higher learning. Whether exuberant or depressed, their tone is rarely tempered. The authors’ demographics suggest why—they are generally at the twilight of their own academic careers, taking one last shot at the st...