Higher Education and Academia

I am not a very good sick person.  I don’t like stuffing my pockets full of Kleenex, dosing up on Sudafed, and trying to make it through my day.  But I don’t like the alternative, either.  Hunkering down in the house with a stack of unread newspapers, that novel I’ve been meaning to finish since last summer, lotion-infused tissues, a remote control and satellite TV isn’t what I’d exactly call my dream day off.   Read more >

I have been reading some very troubling articles lately about the state of affairs for young adults entering the workforce. Because I don't know someone personally affected, it sort of flies past my radar map until a number of things land all at the same time. As a result, I though it was worth pointing out a few recent articles I read and opening the dialogue here on the site about this topic. Does it still pay to invest in a college education, even when diplomas no longer open the doors they once did?  Read more >

I get a little nostalgic in October remembering my late parents whose birthdays were this month. So when Bonnie McEwan, president of the public interest communications firm Make Waves, suggested I write about how people in middle management can be leaders, I chuckled to think of one of my father's favorite sayings: Everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time. That conjures up amusing pictures that equalize people regardless of their stature in the formal organization chart.  Read more >

A quick scan of the star-studded 2011 college commencement key-note speaker line-up discloses an interesting trend. Seems like everybody wants to talk about failure. Usually commencement speeches are all positivity and light. They tend to be about how new graduates have the world in their hands; how anything is possible; how they, the freshly educated and trialed-by-fire scholars, must move on to be the new world leaders. So why, in Heaven's name, would so many of the aged and sage graduation key-noters dwell on things gone wrong? How is it that suddenly failure is a good thing?  Read more >

It’s been a very busy college admissions year in our household. I have a high school senior and a gap year kid, both applying to college, while I have been busily promoting my book about how to use social media to booster college admissions.  Read more >