The Education news from my old state (perhaps my new state too) is not good. The Texas Board of Education has apparently approved a Taliban style social studies curriculum, designed to reflect a narrow Christian ideology rather than a consensus of historical opinion (“Texas Board Approves New Social Studies Curriculum“). I don’t think calling this Taliban-like is inappropriate, either. Religious fundamentalism hates change and debate, above all else, in Texas as much as in Afghanistan. This is a form of religious belief that’s dependent on enforced ignorance. You can’t believe, apparently, in the face of knowledge.

I think this sort of fundamentalism represents a particularly despicable form of cowardice. It’s one thing to want to disagree with…

There’s a kind of race going on in Higher Education, between that swift proprietary rabbit and the slow public turtles. So far the race has been to the swift, but no one should write off the slower public universities. In the first stage of the race the public institutions stumbled badly, in part becuase they are big bumbling animals and in part over feats about the effectiveness of online education. It’s the economy, stupid.

Depending on your point of view online education has either proven itself or simply proven that it won’t go away. Either way, the old ‘under-served markets’ and ‘economies of scale’ arguments really starts to make sense in a time of shrinking budgets. The potential for…