Mark Garrett Cooper and John Marx have a lively take on the American research university in their book Media U. They discuss the linkage between academic missions and school brand. Popular Features Of Universities Allow The Intellectual The authors discuss how American research universities have always required an audience to deliver value. A key point…
Category: Teaching
Good Practice In Undergraduate Education
One of the strangest things about being a professor is that outsiders think this means you are primarily a teacher. As a researcher, you feel that you aren’t primarily a teacher. (Some snooty colleagues even find being called a teacher a bit of insult). The particularly strange thing is the outsiders do have a sensible…
Bribery Works With Students
In what might be classed as a stunningly unsurprising result Michael Hessler and his colleagues did an experiment to demonstrate that bribing students with cookies helps with evaluations of teaching. The headline is that bribery works with students. Broadly speaking I have no doubt that they are right. I have seen a few criticisms of…
Thinking Differently About Business School Cases
Bridgman, Cummings, and McLaughlin in their 2016 paper about the case method tell us that the conventional history of the development of business case teaching is missing some vital elements. Cases nowadays come from the perspective of management. There exists a management objective that the students are trying to deliver. This excessively managerial perspective is…
Colleges And Universities
Andrew Delbanco’s discussion of college in the US is at its most interesting discussing the origins of college. He is keen to emphasize that colleges and universities are not the same things. He suggests that college, a place for undergraduate education, developed from early American Puritan ideals. This was a place for moral and intellectual…
Business School Academia And The Craft Guild
Business schools are strange places to work. They are part of universities but it certainly seems like they never totally belong. What then do we know of business school academia and the craft guild? Business School Academia And The Craft Guild Other academics (indeed a fair number of business academics), rightly or wrongly, may see…
The (Perfect?) Mess That is US Higher Education
Want a review of the (perfect?) mess that is US higher education? The State of US Higher Educations David Labaree assesses the state of US higher education in his interesting book — A Perfect Mess. I enjoyed his take on higher ed. It seemed like he had an appreciation for the complexities of it. He…
Not Very Thoughtful Thought Leadership
I love terrible visuals, especially when they are used by consultants. Alex Usher (@http://higheredstrategy.com/) is brutal in criticizing a recent Deloitte report doing “big thinking” about the future of the workforce. (Post written in 2017). The report seems to be a great example of not very thoughtful thought leadership. Not Very Thoughtful Thought Leadership Usher…
Smoothing Data
Excel can be a very useful tool. Though it cannot easily do the most advanced statistical tasks. Excell can tackle most everyday business analytics. Today we see how a business advisor discusses a range of challenges including smoothing data. Balanced Scorecards Ron Person shows how to produce balanced scorecards in a book that is packed…
Field Guide to Lies
Daniel Levitin has an very enjoyable and informative popular science book in his Field Guide to Lies. He surveys how we know what we know, and how we communicate it to others. To be fair not all of it is about lies, for instance, he discusses how data is collected. A lot of the problems he…
