Sector Insights

Professors at online colleges can be an anonymous, itinerant bunch, moonlighting as adjuncts from far-flung locales and often struggling to cobble together a teaching load that can pay the bills.

Breaking this mold are 98 newly minted online faculty members at Grand Canyon University. The for-profit Christian university hired them as full-time employees, and they get standard benefits packages that are not available to part-timers. The group works weekdays from noon to 8 p.m., reporting for duty at two administrative buildings in Phoenix, near the university's campus.

This spring, wild glasses frames are a popular look for creative executives with a gift for flamboyance. Oh, and granting national television journalists unrestricted access to your business dealings and conference calls taken via beach chairs at your seaside home headquarters is another way to show your dynamism, too.

The climate for career training-oriented schools within certain higher education circles could be changing faster than Al Gore can say "polar ice caps".

Something that feels like respect might be quietly beginning to build in certain segments of the four-year school realm, though it's too early to label it such. (Far be it from me to put a name to it so early on. Someone who needed five years to complete a pretty standard communications degree -- with a minor in political science -- couldn't offer an opinion that wouldn't carry enough weight in the academic community to be taken seriously.)

On Tuesday, the Obama administration introduced Howard A. Schmidt as its selection for the government's Cybersecurity Coordinator position. As government agencies are prone to do, the administration made its new hire's biographical information available to the press, most of whom probably glanced over it with the usual monotony applied to hand outs.

This is a common occurrence on Capitol Hill, with so many government bodies and committees, lobby and special interest groups, and national organizations, someone is always being appointed, dismissed, promoted, or calling it a career -- and their background is essential for reporters to write complete stories and to give the general public an idea about the person's credentials.

Control over what articles get posted to this site was handed over to me last week. Our website manager, Beth Neely, has moved on to another position within our organization and the keys were passed to me and our assistant editor, Jenni Valentino.

Beth did a tremendous job with this site since its launch three years ago. She helped advance it from its original state – nothing more than a stock watch and random news feed, usually not pertaining much to actual career college news – to the glorious, multi-faceted and mutli-dimensional web site that you see today.

We are always creating our own stories- - mostly it's about things that aren't working out. So since we are good at creating the yuck stuff, why not create a really great story. Like - this year I exceeded my enrollment goals by 30% by just putting a really great referral program in place. It cost nothing. Or this year I got my staff to work as a cohesive creative unit and all I had to do was have regular and impactful staff training sessions on the basics - listening and dealing with conflict. Ah - a perfect world.

2008-10-01

Someone uploaded 340 college and high school essays onto Mininova, one
of the more popular peer-to-peer bittorent download sites. I am
bringing this to your attention along with the titles of all the essays
so you and all our educational colleagues might be aware that they are
out there for free download and passing on as a student's work. I have
put the three pages of essays in alpha title order by page to make it a
bit easier to check against.

I just walked by five people in this building and did not know their names. I hate that. There was a time here at PForm where everybody knew everybody ... by name, rank AND serial number. But since PForm continues to grow by leaps and bounds, it's become increasingly difficult to get to know people on a first name basis.

But I'm gonna try - as God as my witness. Why? Because - like Cheers - I want to go where everybody knows my name. And vice versa.

It's becoming more of a reality with each passing day even if politicians are averse to use the proper term.

We are in a recession.