Review of "The Reason for God"

Keller's the man. Sometimes I felt like I was reading a repackaged C.S. Lewis, but hey, you can't go wrong with that approach. Keller's particularly effective ju-jitsuing the usual "rationalist" arguments against Christianity (if you attack religion for being based on "presuppositions," for example, you need to come clean about your own presuppositions as well). It's easy to see what Keller has had such success, particularly with young, urban intellectuals.

Review of "The Big Short"

As part of a reading group that I'm in, we discussed "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis. Lewis is always enjoyable to read, though, as with many such efforts, I'm always left wondering whether the story is too "neat" and "coherent." Maybe this is just my historian's bias to believe that reality is always a lot messier than a journalist, businessman, or political scientist might make it out to be.

The narrative force of the book sometimes resulted in me rooting for the coming economic meltdown just so that all of those bad guys would get what's coming to them. That ain't good. But it's also not what happened. The guys (and they're all guys) at the top on both sides of these big bets still came out fine. So for me the bigger conclusion is that having big business and big government working closely together and being staffed by the same ivy league crowd isn't good for the our country no matter who's in charge. I guess I find myself siding with those on the left and the right who want to see the big banks broken up, which doesn't seem to be what's going to happen with the current financial reform package. The "establishment" wins again!

The End of Men?

Here's an article that's been getting a lot of attention, in particular in regards to gender and higher education. There's no doubt that there's a major and world-wide cultural shift taking place. The causes and consequences of this shift are much more difficult to ascertain.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135

Another take on "genius"?

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/the-science-of-genius-a-qa-with-author-david-shenk/

Frank and I have been discussing these “genius” questions for awhile, though from his side at a much more sophisticated level (I read Gladwell’s “Outliers” while he read “The Cambridge Manual on Expertise”). This short Q&A gets at the basic ideas rather well.

Of course, Frank and I then take these ideas in different directions. I tend to think that these concepts supported the whole “engaged learning” paradigm (one element of which is Strengthsquest) because “anyone” can be a “genius” if you find the right ways to engage people’s interests and help direct their efforts. My understanding of Frank’s argument is that the engaged learning paradigm (especially the Strengthsquest version of it) can pigeon hole people too much in terms of which expression of “genius” should be fostered and how instead of focusing on the malleability of the possible paths people might take and the “directed feedback” process that seems to be at the heart of effective learning. I think Frank’s arguments are a misreading of what engaged learning in general and Strengthsquest in particular are about, but I can understand why people view these efforts this way.

How to become a more trustworthy leader?

Grow a beard?

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/The-Trustworthiness-of-Beards/22581/

Department of Higher Education data

No surprises. Enrollments are up overall, especially at for-profits. But revenues held steady despite the increase in student numbers because more students are receiving financial aid. Everyone’s margins are down, therefore, especially because of the stock market declines. Oh, and retention rates were flat, but because of the way the data is reported, that one's hard to track because it doesn't take account of the increasing numbers of transfer students. All of the above applies pretty much to JBU as well.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/07/enroll

More on the great "unbundling" of higher education

Here’s another story along these lines. If “Statistics.com” offers some of the best stats material at low cost (via a combination of content from “all stars” and outsourced support from India), then why not take these classes from this company instead of from JBU, especially if this is one of those fields where “integration” at the course level is much less explicit? And if that’s the future of technical education in particular (Engineering, Science, Math, etc.), what happens to our “all in one” education model at a place like JBU? These are the kinds of questions that are the focus nowadays of our CAO conferences and that keep me awake at night.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/05/statistics