Colleges and pay

An interesting statistical exercise appeared in the New York Times and came to me via a tweet from @danschawbel: Do Elite Colleges Produce the Best-Paid Graduates? The article engaged me on several levels. As a marketing/influence consultant who primarily works with colleges in recent years, it was interesting to see the value of liberal arts [...]

Unreason and me(dia)

This video is the latest YouTube example of what Susan Jacoby writes about in her new book, The Age of American Unreason. The question is, are Americans hostile to knowledge? What do you think I am? A clique chic geek? How should I know?!!!

Learning is the Teacher's responsibility

This ought to ruffle some feathers…. Reflecting on the technology and boredom issues in the classroom, raised in Michael Wesch’s “A Vision of Today’s Student” (see previous post), I am not going to blame the student, even though they’re an easy target; nor the university system, where the economics pressure inexperienced teachers into the classroom; [...]

Vision of students – video reply

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Michael Wesch’s video on the state of student learning in Web2.0 America has been augmented by a remix that adds the racial dimension. Michael responds that they considered including racial statistics to the original but felt it was too emotional of an issue and would “draw attention away [...]

Harder and harder to impress

In his book, Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins of MIT writes, “…the American viewing public is becoming harder and harder to impress.” (I always love it when I find authors who state the obvious in such a dead-pan tone). In this context Henry is speaking about the American Idol phenomenon, and my embellishment of his argument [...]

"Exploration of identity"

NPR took on the college admissions imbroglio in an excellent 7-part series last February. (Sorry but I just discovered it!!!) One of the things I enjoyed in reviewing their work relates to a great interview of Beverly Daniel Tatum, the President of Spelman College in Atlanta. When asked if the 10 to 15% of black [...]

dim white kids

Peter Schmidt of the Chronicle of Higher Education bemoans the privilege of wealth which allows full-pay students with alumni or political connections to get into elite colleges without elite credentials. He cites research by the Educational Testing Service which claims 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at US top-tier colleges are “white teens who failed to [...]

Welcome. Let the Ztories begin!

Welcome to the new Ztories branding blog by Ork the Caveman on WordPress.com. My goal is to spark creative thought on the best practices for college communication. And the communication challenges are daunting — distinct audiences who inhabit entirely different worlds: Millennials for admissions, alumni from Silent Generation to Gen X for advancement. In a [...]