Northeastern CPS Blog A blog about the present and future of higher education

Flying in the face of a separate college performance ranking system announced earlier this year by the Obama administration, Gallup and Purdue university announced their own plans to measure colleges’ effectiveness. The new ranking system seeks to go beyond these traditional measures like how many graduates are employed and making big salaries. It attempts to figure out which colleges provide their students the best chance ... Read More »

We are defined digitally by attributes such as our names, addresses, birth dates, genders and telephone numbers. These data points, along with our general interests, which are logged and tracked by browsers and third-party sites every time we use the Internet, are monetizable commodities to businesses and criminals alike. We readily (if passively) offer our valuable personal information to businesses ... Read More »

Last week, we published a post that covered some current activity regarding the channels of food production. On one end of the spectrum, there were large, industry-wide changes (new, national FDA laws); on the other end were smaller, more personal goings-on (local grassroots initiatives by Maine farmers). Now, somewhere in the middle of it all, lands a new report from ... Read More »

…or, Why joining the Shelby dissent and the Windsor majority doesn’t make you a hypocrite. What a week for the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices handed down a pair of much debated and long-awaited decisions, whose controversial ramifications will be felt for years to come. In my professional role (as well as from a personal interest), I tend to perk ... Read More »

According to Merriam-Webster, a compromise is “something intermediate between or blending qualities of two different things.” In politics, it’s often defined as a result in which both sides are unhappy. By either of these standards, the U.S. Supreme Court compromised in its surprisingly narrow ruling in Fisher v. Texas. Most observers, myself included, expected a bitterly divided ruling, 5-3 or ... Read More »

In some tenuous but bold steps, Vermont and Hawaii have been working legislation through their state houses that would require the labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Long a source of controversy, GMOs are animals and plants (mainly fruits and vegetables) grown using bio-technological gene splicing. GMO strains of popular produce items are often developed to bolster crop ... Read More »

There are moments that shape us. Indelible in their mark, perhaps mostly because they juxtapose all the greatness and fallibility inherent in the human condition. We are a work in progress, a collective community, driven by division, in a journey better served by the celebration of inclusion. There are heroes among us that engage us in a conversation to be ... Read More »