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The Quiet Throat-Cutting of the American University

Syracuse University announced the other day that it will phase out 93 of its approximately 460 academic programs. The administration framed the decision as strategic alignment, calling it a portfolio review driven by student demand and institutional focus. Provost Lois Agnew insisted the move was “not a cost-cutting exercise.” Taken at face value, some of these cuts are routine catalog maintenance. Fifty-five of the ninety-three programs had zero students enrolled. Twenty-eight were advanced certificate supplements to graduate degrees. The provost herself noted that Syracuse offered more than double the roughly 200 programs typical of peer institutions, and a university trimming a bloated catalog to concentrate faculty resources is doing ordinary academic management. Reasonable people can call that housekeeping.

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The Inking and Garbage Hunger Games: Teaching Debtor Children an Immoral Lesson

There is nothing more raw in America — land of amber waves of grain — than when someone goes hungry.  When that someone is a child, there is no greater human shame than refusing to feed hungry kids or, even worse, feeding them, and then pulling the food out of their gaping mouths to teach the sin of the parents a lesson.

We’re creating a whole new Debtor Nation in the USA and, as usual, the first victims are the young and the elderly — the very people this nation should be protecting and preserving.

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Where is Education on the Campaign Trail?

The United States is not doing so well when it comes to the state of education — in terms of world ranking, it is absolutely abysmal — barely scoring 500 out of 1000 points in such crucial subjects as math, reading, and science. You would therefore think that in this election year, candidates and the current President up for re-election would have at least some focus on education, stressing what they are planning on doing to fix our badly ailing school systems and to bring the students in the United States to a higher level of educational accomplishment.

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Suing for Google Apps for Education Access

I am a massive fan of Google Apps.  I wrote the first Google Apps Administrator book to market and, to this day, I still use Google Apps via Boles University to run my empire of polymathic projects.

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Death of the Public Schools

Are we at the end of our tether with public schooling as private schools, religious schools and school vouchers try to replace our traditional education system?

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