The wildfires burning across northern and western Spokane are a sober reminder of both human resilience and systemic failure. What we are seeing tonight is not a challenge that local first responders, city hall, or individual homeowners can solve on their own.

"So how's the economy?" Me: "Well, Fartcoin lost 96% of its value, which is still better than Trumpcoin, which lost 99%. Inflation is still high, and we're paying $1.6 billion for insurrectionists to kill police officers. Consumer sentiment has never been worse. But unemployment is low. So, okay?

The SAT is such a meaningless metric that not a single College Board executive publishes their SAT on their corporate profile.

The good news is the Canvas hack debacle is distracting everyone from the OB3 financial aid implementation debacle.

Can't wait for colleges to apply this to priority registration status.

Joshua Goodman@joshua-goodman.com · 8mo ago

Amazing example of how to infer people's valuation of their time. Ryanair has determined customers are willing to pay $1.17 per extra two rows forward they can sit on an airplane, allowing them to disembark a bit sooner. If that saves 1 minute, customers value their time at about $70/hour.

A local community college was included in the ED list of schools that will be tagged with "lower earnings" in the FAFSA, and wow, did some people not like that I pointed it out. As @jamessmurphy.bsky.social noted, not many schools on the list are publics. fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-ce...

Potential alternative hypothesis: it's about the rise of YouTube, sorority recruitment videos, sports betting, and the selling of sex, gender and race. I don't know that it's always intentional, but colleges sell sex and beauty like any other industry.

Robert Kelchen@robertkelchen.com · 8mo ago

This is a thoughtful and well-researched piece (featuring quite a few higher ed faculty members, including me) on the growth of most SEC universities. The reasons behind this growth are complex. www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

Whenever someone says "students don't read their emails or do what we ask" and then I look at last-source attribution data:

a blonde woman is sitting in a kitchen with the words `` sure , jan. '' written on the screen .

Alt: a blonde woman is sitting in a kitchen with the words `` sure , jan. '' written on the screen .

media.tenor.com

I'm so tired of explaining to people how bad things are and constantly thinking, "But it will probably get worse."

Does anyone know how many institutions missed the FVT/GE deadlines? I feel like this is a big deal, but it's also nowhere in higher ed right now because higher ed is falling apart. (Just the policy part, btw. Courses are doing great.)

I like talking to vendors right now because you can tell most of them are as "WTF is going on" as everyone working in enrollment. I mean, they know what's happening, but they can't believe it either.

Me in public meetings: "Work emails should only be a few sentences long." Also me: "I added chapter breaks and a table of contents to make it easier for you to navigate my email."

I'm not savvy enough to know if any other college has ever used just a poem for its marketing video, but I couldn't think of any. You should probably read the related blog, too: nsa.edu/blog/Bring-M...

Bring Me Men | New Saint Andrews College

YouTube video by New Saint Andrews College

m.youtube.com

In a normal year, I'd be complaining about whatever chicanery is going on at college board (AP scores are wild y,all), but no, this year the country is taking fascism to the prom, so obviously, were focused on prom.

The reckoning in the graduate space after the OBBBA is going to be something else. With the scale and shape of cuts to graduate student loans, people will lose jobs. I hope colleges are planning for changes, but if it's like the response to demographic changes, the answer is "probably not."

Barbara Streisand could do the funniest thing and open a taco truck in DC.

Me when reading any college's enrollment plan that requires international student growth in order to hit revenue targets:

two men are sitting at a table in front of a crowd and one of them is saying that 's a bold strategy cotton

ALT: two men are sitting at a table in front of a crowd and one of them is saying that 's a bold strategy cotton

media.tenor.com

People seem not to understand or aren't aware of the magnitude of proposed cuts to higher ed in the proposed reconciliation bill. Kind of shocked by the lack of concern.

Hard pressed to see any English-speaking university system that's thriving. America, England, Australia, Canada, South Africa and more: all are facing serious financial challenges and enrollment shifts. Many of their institutions are just trying to survive. A globally bad time to be in higher ed.

I'm not abandoning em dashes—the best punctuation mark, let's be honest—just because half the population can't distinguish humans and AI. It is a line I will not cross.

Well, that's something that happened.

Jessie Seiler@jessieish.bsky.social · last yr.

The president of my university, who makes more than 10x what I do every year and whose choices were part of how we all got here and who's about to oversee massive staff layoffs, was caught on hot mic before a budget town hall meeting saying "I guess I shouldn't tell them we're fucked."

The New Pope: "I assure you and most solemnly say to you that the tax collectors and the couches will get into the kingdom of God before you." JD Vance: "I killed the wrong Pope."

The Harvard letter is a tickle. "This incomprehensible failure becomes more understandable after reviewing Harvard’s management." Wel, which is it, Linda? Incomprehensible or understandable?

This is giving "let them eat cake" vibes. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/o...

Everyone who went to college and writes for Forbes, apparently: "You know, I went to college once 15+ years ago so I'm something of a higher education expert myself."

A lot of institutions are going to lose a lot of students or revenue (or both) if the reconciliation bill moves forward. It's kind of shocking how sweeping the changes are and how little public outcry there is so far.

Is this the most on-the-nose Texas think tank ever? Of the 97 staff, only one presents as visibly Black, and he's the Director, of the Booker T. Washington Initiative. www.texaspolicy.com/about/staff/

If you tell someone "you should plan for this bad thing" and then the bad thing happens and they ask what the plan is, you should be allowed to slap them with a dead fish, like, five times at least.

Curious how many colleges have recently reviewed their MMR policies as the illness spreads and the risk of a campus outbreak grows. The 1980s provide good examples of the dangers, and folks probably forget that many current state and institutional policies came from those hard learned lessons.

Bet folks at Columbia feel pretty stupid after all the kudos for Harvard: "I caved to the autocracy and all I got was this bad PR and the generational disdain of my entire industry."