Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Washington D.C. and The Web Chat!

This past weekend was fabulous!

The trip to D.C. and the interviews with Diane Jones and Barmack Nassirian were extremely informative. Both conversations reinvigorated the proprietary education debate I have with myself all the time. Barmack (who is against the practices I have discussed before) suggested that for-profit education is not bad because it is for-profit, but because the profit motive is so strong and accreditation the way it stands does little to mitigate the effects of profit seeking, which has led to massive fraud in the industry. He thinks there should be separate paths to accreditation for technically oriented institutions than for traditional higher education - though that could be politically difficult and play out in any number of different ways -and that accreditation should have more robust quality accountability mechanisms. I agree with that view point generally, but I need to do some research on accreditation. -- I don't have time right now, but I will look into it over the Winter break. Barmack also had an interesting take on the value of completion, which I can talk about more next week!

The American Association of Collegiate Registrars is holding their annual conference in Philadelphia next April and I have volunteered to be a session facilitator! It should be fun!

As far as school work overall, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. All of the final papers, presentations and exams will be held in the next week or so and I have had some trouble balancing it all. In undergrad, I only had three classes at a time (thought I did have two jobs), and it was a bit easier to mange my time.For the last week and for the next week, I am putting in 14 hour days to make it all happen! It has to get done somehow, right?

Also ---We are having the last web chat of the semester tomorrow, 12/8  from 8-9 pm. Please join us to chat with current students!

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