Tag Archives: college

Note that I differentiate between the print newspaper and journalism. Journalism is a practice; newspapers are a delivery mechanism.

Colleges ought to be focusing on teaching journalism and doing so in an appropriate manner which will best prepare students for life in the post-university “real world”. Teaching students how to produce a print newspaper is teaching them to be obsolete. Students should be learning electronic distribution through modern content management systems.

Aaron Hockley — College Newspapers: Still Teaching Obsolescence.

Thoughts on the occupy movement and UC Davis in particular. Great piece on the use of the human mic in the events at UC Davis yesterday. The video is fascinating. It’s just part of some great writing about what happened. Check out another take on the same video as well as an open letter to the UC Davis Chancellor.

Image

Via the Skillshare blog and originally by Gary Varvel.

The frivolous college

Whitman College, my alma mater, sent these out to all graduates the other week. It’s a mini, laminated diploma “to put in your wallet or a very small frame.” This seems about the worst possible way to spend funds. When tuition is increasing along with cutbacks… Continue reading →

But not knowing what plagiarism is isn’t really the problem. It’s unfortunate that right now the university is cracking down so hard on plagiarism. And the reason the university is cracking down so hard on plagiarism is because their product is less and less valuable these days. When students plagiarize, there’s an implicit recognition that “I’m just doing this for the grade.” That’s why they do it. And that’s the way that the majority of students look at the university, and have been for some time now. At my college, the frats had rooms full of file cabinets full of plagiarized papers. Plagiarism is old news. It’s really not just that plagiarism is getting easier to do, with the Internet. The problem is now that the grade doesn’t even get you the job.

The New Inquiry — The History of Dialogue: Other People’s Papers. (via Robin Sloan)

What Can You Do With $20,000?. There’s a lot you can do with $20,000 a year. Instead of a traditional college tuition payment you could travel, cover living expenses for 6 months, seed a couple small businesses, and much more. Bonus is that you can end your 4 years with an investment fund of $40,000, no debt required.

Imagine if Honda, in order to compete in the American market, had been required by federal law to adopt the preestablished labor practices, management structure, dealer network, and vehicle portfolio of General Motors. Imagine further that Honda could only sell cars through GM dealers. Those are essentially the terms that accreditation forces on potential disruptive innovators in higher education today.

College for $99 a Month

A Different Path. Really astute analysis of why a college degree is not the only path to success. Those years should be spent finding, learning, and expanding your passion. Related reading from Daniel.

Disrupting College

It’s taken a while but I got around to reading the Center for American Progress report, Disrupting College. It was a really fascinating read, highly recommend it. One quote particularly stood out. While describing the disruption that occurred in the computer industry the authors characterize the… Continue reading →

Instead of going into debt for a degree take that money and start a company. If that’s too scary, join an awesome team. You might find you learn more working on something than being in school, I have.