How Bloomberg Got it Wrong

A recent article in Bloomberg suggests test-optional colleges and universities are talking out of both sides of their mouths because we buy the names of students who take the SAT or ACT. Inflammatory and illogical posts like this are good to drive traffic to your site, but really, doesn’t some editor owe the reading public […]

Admission is Easy; Denial is Hard

We’re at that time of the year again, when Early Decision and [insert name of application type] admissions, denials, and defers start rolling in.  And with the dawn of the new calendar year comes the resultant and predictable questions: How could they turn my kid down, with her GPA and her test scores? What does it […]

Am I an Activist? Gasp!

I’m going to break a rule of mine.  I’m going to feed a troll. There’s this guy out there, Douglas Groene.  He calls himself the Pencil Nerd, as if he’s never really looked up the definition of nerd.  Or perhaps he has, and thinks that wishing can change the definition of words.  Or perhaps more […]

This Week’s Higher Ed Scandals

This has certainly been an interesting week for scandals in higher education.   While not minimizing the horrific things happening in the one you’re probably already thinking of, I’d like to focus instead on two others that may have not yet crossed your radar. Both seem eerily similar: One law school and one undergraduate college have […]

A Response to Esther Cepeda

I’ve been asked to remove this post, as some people think it’s too inflammatory.  While I don’t think so, I’ll allow cooler heads to prevail for now. For now, suffice it to say that Ms. Cepeda’s recent article in the Sun Times was mean-spirited, wholly uninformed, and devoid of rational thinking. Other than that, it was fine. And […]

Fun with Admissions Data

Beckie Supiano at the Chronicle of Higher Education did a nice little blog post about my other blog, where I loaded 2010 IPEDS data into a visualization. You can read it here.  If you want to go right to my other blog post with the data, it’s here.

How to sell to Not-for-Profits

I’ve worked in higher education for almost all of my 30 years after college, but I did spend some time in for-profit companies. As a result, one of my interests is the differences between the two. I’d guess, based on my interactions in the past, that we on the not-for-profit (NFP) side understand sales people […]