What a blockbuster! After years of planning and development, LinkedIn and Kaplan University have recently unveiled their collaborative resource to help professionals of all ages advance in their careers. Utilizing one of the largest API integrations with the LinkedIn platform, the Career Journey microsite provides a highly personalized experience based on each individual’s LinkedIn profile and network. As one of several new services offered by … Continue reading LinkedIn and Kaplan: Redefining the Professional Development Space

Every now and then, something happens in one’s professional life that is simply thrilling. For me, such a moment came when I was asked earlier this year to become the founding president of the Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU). I can’t call this a “once-in a-lifetime opportunity” because I have had the opportunity to do this twice before at the Community College of Vermont … Continue reading The Thrill Is On!

In their timely and perceptive book, “Life Reimagined: Discovering New Possibilities,” Richard Leider and Alan Webber lay the base for one of the most important things most of us do without any support or advice: plan for the future. In thoughtful and clear prose, they outline why planning consciously for and reflecting on what you want from your future will add great value and happiness … Continue reading Respecting Experience as a Qualifier

In the 60’s, along with an outpouring of sentiment around the Civil Rights Movement and the war on poverty, there was a strong current of empowering marginalized people through education. My way of expressing it was through my early work at the Community College of Vermont (CCV). As I proceeded through those first few years, however, I kept thinking that there was more to my … Continue reading The Gift of Self-Confidence

While I was enrolled at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I wrestled, as did most of my fellow students, with the issue of where I would begin my professional life. And the answer throughout that fall was Alaska. After all, I had travelled and worked there twice, my sister Susan lived there with her family (still does, in fact), and it was far away, … Continue reading Pulling and Pushing: Alaska vs. Vermont

Generally, when I read a book or a paper about management or education, I have to make notes and work to remember what I am reading. But in the case of Alan Tough’s book, “The Adult’s Learning Projects,” it explained a part of my experience that I had thought, to that point, was simply an observation and a philosophy that I held. Tough, who recently … Continue reading Important People: Allen Tough

When I attended the Master of Arts in Teaching program (MAT) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, there was a one year internship component. For a variety of reasons that I will discuss in later blog entries, I had already decided that I did not want to teach in a traditional classroom. And as I searched for acceptable alternatives, I found a dandy in … Continue reading Life-Changing Encounters: Harvey Scribner

In the last 4-5 years, there have been three events after which I felt the landscape of post-secondary education move beneath my feet. These noteworthy developments heralded and legitimized new assumptions, new rules, and new players. The first was StraighterLine’s announcement of its initial offering of 40 of the most popular, in demand, lower-division courses in the country at very low prices. Many traditionalists scoffed, … Continue reading I Felt the Earth Move Under My Feet and It wasn’t Carol King Singing

In a deliberate and thoughtful article in The Upshot (a New York Times blog) Kevin Carey has once and for all defined the costs and consequences associated with the way we “rank” colleges in the United States and globally. Using first-time data from new OECD research called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), Carey builds a careful analysis that exposes a … Continue reading A PISA for Higher Education: The OECD Disruption

This Week @Inside Higher Ed is a superb new weekly radio show hosted by Inside Higher Education with IHE founder Doug Lederman and moderator Casey Green as regular participants. On Friday, June 27th, invited guests William Durdan and Ann Kirschner contributed to a very thoughtful discussion about the Corinthian closure. Two new and extremely important implications of the closure came through to me as I … Continue reading The DoE’s Regulatory Double Standard: Who’s Next?