As a recovering politician and the founder of both an innovative community college and state university, I am no stranger to argumentation, criticism, or controversy.  I have also, however, found that reasonable people can disagree on specifics within a larger issue, while simultaneously agreeing with each other on its other aspects. Such is the case with my views on the New York Times opinion post, “College, … Continue reading Barbarians at the Gate?

For an institution to survive, it has to provide a service that people cannot get better or at a lower cost some other way. And that is the role that traditional campus-based colleges have played. They organized scarce resources – books, labs, faculty – in a place – the campus – where students came to learn. And by extension, campuses had to limit the number … Continue reading Learning in the Post-traditional Education World: An Emerging Alternative to Traditional Classroom Education

For the last year, I have been deeply engaged in creating a series of services that help adult learners “make sense” out of the digital, socially networked world we (they) increasingly live in. For me, it has been thrilling to gain an initial understanding of what the next five years might hold for online, socially networked learning in all its combinations and permutations.  Put another way, … Continue reading I’m Back!