This week it became known via a federal indictment that rich people used their wealth to break the law in a variety of appalling ways, all with a mind to skip the line and receive guaranteed admission to famous/elite/highly-selective colleges. Nobody knows more about this world than Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Eric Hoover…let’s unpack #AuntBeckyGate emergency-style!

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It’s a company with a loyal following to rival almost any brand, and everyone in college admissions is buying it. Slate is the technology of choice that admissions offices use to read applications and manage every interaction that students make with that office, from mailing list subscription to every click on an email to admission notification.

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Stanley Nelson has been making movies for a long time, and his latest film – airing Monday, February 19th on PBS – called “Tell Them We Are Rising” is the first of its kind fo explore the topic of Historically Black Colleges and Universities or HBCUs.
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Professor Nathan Grawe of Carleton College developed a demographic model which says that ’round about 2030 this country is going to lose a giant share of its population of college-going age. How will this impact colleges and universities and how will it impact each kind of higher education environment? I talked to him about his book “Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education” to learn more.

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Maria MaistoMaria Maisto is the Executive Director of the New Faculty Majority, an organization fighting to improve working conditions for adjunct and contingent faculty at American institutions of higher ed. The name grew out of the reality that only in recent history has higher ed leaned on adjuncts to the degree that they comprise 75% of the teaching workforce.

They’re members of the “faculty,” at 75% of the teaching labor force in higher education they are the “majority,” and it’s “new” because a combination of factors have only recently made them the unstable majority of the teaching workforce.  Continue reading

Jon BurdickJon Burdick is the VP of Enrollment and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at the University of Rochester. He was also my admissions counselor when I went to USC, and now he’s my boss. He’s also one of the more articulate (and relatively fearless) thinkers and speakers on all things college, so I put the money questions to him. It took up almost two hours, so I’ve split it into two parts.

This is part 1! Follow Jon on Twitter @deanburdick

Follow me on Twitter @crushpod — Like the show on Facebook www.facebook.com/crushpodcast — Subscribe and rate the show on on iTunes! Continue reading

Ben CasselmanOn March 30th, Ben Casselman blew up a Facebook group I’m a part of with about 10,000 members in it, all of them college admissions professionals in one way or another, high schcool, college, independent consultants, all of ’em. He blew it up with an article titled: “Shut Up About Harvard.” Continue reading

Students always talk about the “feel” of a college campus being that indescribable and critical deciding factor that influences their decision to apply and eventually to enroll at a college. Are colleges supposed to feel a certain way? Why? Where’d this feeling come from and what are today’s designers thinking about when designing spaces of higher education? Nader Tehrani, former head of the architecture department at MIT and current Dean of the School of Architecture at Cooper Union helps me answer these questions and more.

 

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emily-in-gazaEmily Harris has an incredible job as the Jerusalem correspondent for National Public Radio. How do you get a job like that, and how do you prepare for it in college? (Hint: You kind of don’t.) Being a radio correspondent in Jerusalem requires a pretty diverse skill set. How did college prepare Emily for her job? (Photo credit: Ahmed Abuhamda for NPR) Continue reading

 

BillDeresciewicz

So what’s the point of college? Bill Deresiewicz wrote the book “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life” which I’ve come to regard as one of the most important books about college available today. The nature of going to college has changed dramatically from its early inception, and economic forces have shifted the conversation away from developing people into better human beings and citizens, to one based on “return on investment.” What’s the point of going to college, anyways? Bill Deriesewicz has some compelling ideas. WARNING: The F-word gets said one time. By me. Sorry.  Continue reading