Final presidential debate is over and done with and the San Francisco Giants quietly came from behind to beat the Cardinals and the World Series is all set. Whether it is the debates or the Yankees losing to the Tigers, there is a lot of spinning going on. In case of politics, the spin rooms are there for this purpose. In sports, it is always the bad calls or the injuries; I guess you can throw money at acquiring all the talented players but you can’t buy their well being and health. I am sure we will all be watching the different polls and other sources such as Intrade during the next few days while also checking the World Series. When I was growing up, the election seasons in Sri Lanka and India were so much fun. There were so many outdoor events where the politicians came and gave fiery speeches, with a lot of warm up acts including music and dance. Finally, when the time came to announce the results, we were up all night listening to the short wave radio, sipping on coffee or chai (which was a predictor of which side you were on!), screaming hard when our parties won a seat and waking up all the neighbors. It was a lot of fun.
I continue to watch Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight (I should say that I loved it much better the way it was before NY Times took over), Real Clear Politics and Intrade. I check these along with Facebook and Twitter before I even check my emails in the morning. Email is for the older people 🙂 I get so much out of my social media connections. As I have said before, those who I follow have already filtered the news for me so that when I get up, the virtual newspaper is waiting for me from all over the world. It is this concept that is also helping drive the online courses. So, I decided to go back to school to check ’em out.
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It was such a gorgeous day on thursday, Oct 11, 2012 & I took a short walk around Lake Waban. It was so refreshing. I counted the time towards Wellesley’s Walktober. Unfortunately we found out that only three of us signed up for our team and a team means 4 to 10 people. So, I can count the walking towards my personal commitment only and not towards a team competition. Since I don’t need this as a personal nudge (I am pretty diligent about my exercise anyways), I am not going to keep the Walktober data up to date.
Enjoyed watching the vice presidential debate last night and may end up watching the Orioles vs Yankees this evening. It was amazing to see Twitter and Facebook filled with instant feedback from so many people during the debate. Whereas it is great to see how these technologies are helping such instant feedback, most data are rather predictable. What is great is how you instantly see how many others independently are posting similar feelings towards what is said or done.
As I was walking around the lake yesterday, I was beginning to think about all the different things that are going on in LTS. Despite the fact that we wanted this year to be a year of stability because we had gone through significant changes during the past year, I am simply amazed at all the things that are going on. I will stick to my practice of not naming individuals in the descriptions below 🙂
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We have been traveling a fair amount during the past couple of weeks – once to Chicago to visit my son and then to Charlotte and Greensboro, NC where my wife is participating in a conference. I have been meeting up with a good friend in Charlotte and playing golf. I drove two hours each way twice to play. Yup, it is crazy. Yesterday, after getting up at 5 AM and driving down for a 7:30 AM tee time, I almost began doubting weather.com. As you can see in the picture on the left, at 7:30 AM, this is how the golf course looked and we could hear a distant thunder or two and see lightening. However, as predicted, the storm passed quickly and we ended up playing in 50 deg weather on a soggy course.
After my friend introduced me to his other friends and they ask me what I do, the discussion predictably turned to why Higher Ed costs so much. A few of them, like us, have one or more children in College and it is hard on everyone who has to pay what we all have to pay. Since I know a thing or two about the financials of the institutions I have worked in, I tried to explain how, as a non-profit organization, the Higher Ed institutions have worked extremely hard to reduce the budgets and it is very hard to look for where to cut more. Of course, they don’t buy it. I also pointed to the fact that we all have choices when it comes to where we want to send our children to school based on costs, but we all value education so much that this is one area where we are probably not going to make hard choices or take chances.
This topic of increasing cost of higher education is a hot topic and technology is predicted to be a savior! There are all sorts of futuristic arguments on how technology can help reduce the costs and increase productivity, but specifics are lacking. Frankly, if technology could actually help curb the cost of Higher Ed, with the advances we have seen in the recent past, why has this not happened?
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