Op-Ed Contributor - End the University as We Know It - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html

want to read this, but only just started it

nice op-ed on the future of the university

GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

If higher education is to thrive, colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured.

It has been two months since we hosted a great group of academics, entrepreneurs, educators, and administrators at our Union Square Sessions Event, Hacking Education. Fred posted his initial thoughts immediately after the event and in a great example of peer production, Alex Krupp curated the Twitter stream that captured the thoughts of folks inside and outside of the event. I finally found some quality time to spend with the transcript that is now online, and thought I would try to expand on Fred's initial thoughts and develop a couple of the key themes that came out of the conversation. Before diving in, however, I'd like to make a pitch for the transcript. It is not perfect (imagine trying to record 40 high powered people all talking at once), but it is readable and full of lots of insights. I would encourage anyone who is interested in the impact of technology on education to plow through it. I have tried to pull some of the highlights here, but there is no way that even this over

There was broad consensus that the internet is enabling substantial changes in the way we learn and teach. It has always been possible to learn outside of a school setting. The ubiquitous connectivity and very low cost of content production and distribution seems to enable the unbundling of key components of education.

Summary of a meeting on how technology could "reinvent" education. Topics include open courseware, game curriculum, reducing marginal cost of education to zero if viewed as an information good, etc. Tiny gem is Danah Boyd's comments which explain why the OLPC project has run into problems overseas.

What a Texas town can teach us about health care.

For the birther/townhaller crowd: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/ [from http://twitter.com/foolsby/statuses/3267512826]

WhiteHouse.gov is the official web site for the White House and President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. This site is a source for information about the President, White House news and policies, White House history, and the federal government.

this is homebase, but they are using their social media channels to drive people back to homebase.

I’m a businessman, and in no sense a health-care expert. But the persistence of bad industry practices—from long lines at the doctor’s office to ever-rising prices to astonishing numbers of preventable deaths—seems beyond all normal logic, and must have an underlying cause. There needs to be a business reason why an industry, year in and year out, would be able to get away with poor customer service, unaffordable prices, and uneven results—a reason my father and so many others are unnecessarily killed.

Jim Webb doing something decent.

criminal justice

David Frum

I can only hope both sides can start to find more value in the middle. Both edges scare me.

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves. At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994. Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure. This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

See subsequent followup link...

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