Matt Reed

An Article I’d Love to Read Cutting the budget—painlessly.

Crowdsourcing a quest for budget cuts that don't hurt (such as energy efficiency or early retirement incentives). www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

At a previous institution, the workload calculation included a set number of hours per week for committee work. The catch was that people could sign up for committees and then not go, or barely go, while others did heroic work. We had to choose between micromanagement and getting fleeced.

The United States sacrificed $35 billion in clean energy projects last year Trump's policies led to canceled investments and tens of thousands fewer jobs, a new report indicates.

You know what isn't affected when you start an all-out war in the Middle East?

The sun. The wind.

Talk about backing the wrong horse.

Perkins, Pell and Chevron Deference Applying standards developed for degree programs to short-term certificates pretty much requires revisiting those standards. I foresee confusion.

"if challenged, I’d be hard-pressed to explain why state agencies should receive judicial deference that federal agencies do not." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Laura Linney is a national treasure.

I will not be taking questions at this time.

Steve Martin had a bit in the 70's about speaking English with a French accent when he visited France.

The difference is that he made the absurdity the point.

Robot Overlords and Red Herrings The key issue is power. Get that right and the bots may serve a useful purpose. Get that wrong and the viral memo may prove prophetic.

Suggesting that "If [bots] can do the things that we used to pay smart people to do, what's the economic value of smart people?" isn't quite the right question... www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

It's early, but I'm calling it. This is officially the Best Reply of the Day.

There are bugs, and then there are bugs.

Listen...these dudes changed the locks on her mailbox

They marked her mail undeliverable and returned it to the sender

They blocked her & her tenants from receiving doctor’s bills, medications, credit card statements, car titles, property tax statements, & more

ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/posta...

Controversy Can Be Created The clear intent of the Texas law is to encode in law that certain groups are right, by virtue of being who they are, and others are wrong.

"Of course, anything can become controversial simply by virtue of someone objecting." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Why attack Iran now?

What’s the US goal? Regime change? Damage? Coerced agreement?

How will the US achieve it by force?

With what follow through? How will any achievement last? What will others in the region do?

I’ve never seen so few answers to those ahead of potentially launching major combat.

‘You’re older than our coach:’ 32-year-old stars on Westmoreland County Community College court Julian Thompson calls himself “Unc,” as in uncle. As in, ahem, the elder statesman of the locker room. “I figured I’d get that out of the way and beat them all to it,” th...

We're all about second chances...

triblive.com/sports/youre...

So true. Teaching The Girl to parallel park was an adventure in itself.

Tonight at 9: "When Actuaries Attack!"

It’s easy to think writing is mainly the transcription of ideas you already have—that is, until you try to write something worthwhile, and you find what you thought were saying transform into something far more interesting in the process. This skips that last step, and that is *not* an improvement.

Don't utilize "utilize". Use "use".

alt: “Thinking about how lucky some of us were to have so much education woven into our childhoods. Like I remember watching THE Itzhak Perlman play the violin on Mr. Rogers. I know a non-zero amount of classical music from Looney Tunes. Reading Rainbow, Mr. Wizard, Wishbone, Carmen Sandiego,…”

Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.

Don’t Record What You Don’t Want to Have to Watch Playing Big Brother would get tiring quickly. Any provost with enough time to review the videos of hundreds of classes isn’t doing their job.

@deandad.bsky.social's latest @insidehighered.com column is delightful and should be read. It makes me think about a game I regularly played with World Politics students that, if the name of it were shared in isolation, could get me fired today. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

All true, but I don’t think they’ve considered that they’ve opened the floodgates. A lot of complaints that wouldn’t have come forward before will come forward now because “the administration knew or should have known” based on recordings. No, thanks.

Don’t Record What You Don’t Want to Have to Watch Playing Big Brother would get tiring quickly. Any provost with enough time to review the videos of hundreds of classes isn’t doing their job.

Some admin-to-admin advice for my counterparts at UNC:

"Lacking the capacity—whether technical or legal—to monitor everything gets you off the hook for monitoring everything. This is not to be taken lightly." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Compensation and Its Discontents Some absurdities are less obvious.

Picking up on @drkevinrmcclure.com 's thoughts on compensation absurdities in higher Ed www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Idea for Winter Olympics event: drive a front-wheel-drive sedan up a steep and twisty residential street with a fresh coat of wet snow.

“All season” tires are a dirty, dirty lie.

Tom Waits. He and Rowlf should duet on “Better Off Without a Wife.” Waits:”Sleeping until the crack of noon, midnight howling at the moon…”
Rowlf: “Awooo”

I mean, it’s right there.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

Westmoreland County Community College to launch 2-year engineering program shortly after opening makerspace Matthew Reed, vice president for academic affairs at Westmoreland County Community College, didn’t plan for the launch of the school’s new engineering program to coincide with the opening ...

A bit of good news... triblive.com/local/westmo...

Thoughts on Bryan Alexander’s new book ‘Peak Higher Ed’ The tome brings up a lot of questions, but is superficial in its assessment of what’s driving change in our institutions.

"It's a fine line between degrowth and death spiral." Thoughts on @edufuturist.bsky.social 's latest. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

It was rather startling as an adult to learn that P.G. Wodehouse had in fact only slightly exaggerated the characters he saw around him.

My weather app says it’s negative zero degrees (Fahrenheit) outside. Math folks — is negative zero a thing?