Study explores student views on the future of business — from Education-Portal.com
Jun 18, 2010
IBM just released the results of their first Global Student Study. The company surveyed college students from around the world, asking them many of the same questions that they asked current executives in their biannual Global CEO Study. The report paints a picture of the attitudes and experiences that are shaping the business leaders of tomorrow.
Report: Tough times ahead for children of the Great Recession — from edweek.com by Sarah Garland | The Hechinger Report
More children will live in poverty this year. More will have two parents who are unemployed. Fewer children will enroll in prekindergarten programs, and fewer teenagers will find jobs. More children are likely to commit suicide, be overweight, and be victimized by crime.
This is all according to a report
released Tuesday by the Foundation for Child Development that measures the impact of the recession on the current generation.
These are the children of the Great Recession, a cohort that will experience a decline in fortunes that erases 30 years of social progress, the report contends. Known as the Child and Youth Well-Being Index, the report predicts that in the next few years, the economy may recover and the unemployment rate may drop, but the generation growing up now could feel the harsh impact of the recession for years to come.
“These are the lasting impacts of extreme recessions,” said Kenneth Land, a professor of sociology and demography at Duke University and the author of the report.
The Odd Couple: “University” and “Business” — from UniversityBusiness.com by S. Georgia Nugent
Moving toward better communication between higher ed leaders and the public
As a reader of this magazine, you were probably not surprised—much less chagrined—by the 2009 publication of a three-volume set of books entitled, The Business of Higher Education (Praeger Publishers, 2009). Nor, I would wager, do you find University Business an unusual magazine title. As the CEO of a college, neither do I.
But we need to recognize that, for many constituencies of the academy not among University Business readers, the phrase “university business” may sound odd, if not oxymoronic. And that is true for at least two reasons.
World Bank opens up datasets — from Bryan Alexander
A large amount of data about the developing world has just been made freely available by the World Bank.
From DSC:
A trusted and wise colleague and I agreed many years ago (~2003 or so) that we had seen the peak of Microsoft. This morning, I was reminded of those reflections and conversations when I saw today’s article by Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO salesforce.com:
The end of Microsoft. A door opens to a new cloud.
As apps migrate to the Net, the software giant’s old model looks older every day.
Though I doubt we’ll see Microsoft going away entirely any time soon:
If you are in computer science:
You need to be paying attention to cloud-based computing and begin moving in that direction in terms of your investments in time/efforts.
If you are in business/economics:
Learn the lesson from what happens when you do business like Microsoft did (i.e. dealing ruthlessly and often times unfairly with competitors, while not listening to your customers and those within the standards-setting-bodies of the world). When you make your bed like that, you will lie in a bed like that. Microsoft will have a hard time adjusting to a world based upon creativity, innovation, collaboration, standards, respect for others, working in a platform that they can’t control, and will struggle to keep up with those organizations who are able to move at the speed of trust (Covey). Maybe this same writing was on the wall when Bill Gates made his decision to leave Microsoft years ago.
What sorts of cross-disciplinary assignments come to mind when you view these items?
For these and other reasons, I’m trying to get a multi-touch wall built into our future smart classrooms.
Talk about keeping students engaged! Talk about working together in teams — very real-world!
Start-ups, not bailouts — Thomas Friedman, NY Times
What is worrisome about America today is the combination of cutbacks in higher education, restrictions on immigration and a toxic public space that dissuades talented people from going into government. Together, all of these trends are slowly eating away at our differentiated edge in attracting and enabling the world’s biggest mass of smart, creative risk-takers.
It isn’t drastic, but it is a decline — at a time when technology is allowing other countries to leverage and empower more of their own high-I.Q. risk-takers. If we don’t reverse this trend, over time, “we could lose our most important competitive edge — the only edge from which sustainable advantage accrues” — having the world’s biggest and most diverse pool of high-I.Q. risk-takers, said Mundie.
…
We need health care, financial reform and education reform. But we also need to be thinking just as seriously and urgently about what are the ingredients that foster entrepreneurship (emphasis DSC) — how new businesses are catalyzed, inspired and enabled and how we enlist more people to do that — so no one ever says about America what that officer says to Tom Cruise in “Top Gun”: “Son, your ego’s writing checks your body can’t cash.”
From DSC:
Curriculum-wise, assignment-wise, project-wise…what are those things that we can integrate into our courses that can help students be more creative in their thinking, better problem-solvers, and the type of students who don’t need to be spoon fed with every last detail of the assignment?
From:
http://www.slideshare.net/glenn.platt/universities-in-the-free-era-sxsw-2010-presentation
Also see:
Links for SXSW 2010 Presentatation: Universities in the “Free” Era
Glenn Platt, Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies
Peg Faimon, Miami Design Collaborative — Miami University
Other food for thought:
Higher education plays growing role in economic development — from Education-Portal.com
The Rockefeller Institute released a report today showing that colleges and universities are taking an increasingly active role in states’ economic development. The study shows that universities are going beyond their traditional research function with efforts as varied as business consulting, job training and housing rehabilitation.
