As the debate over the future of higher education continues to gain momentum, an increasing number of journalists, analysts, and critics are identifying academia as the next major bubble. Education has emerged as a core concern on both the left and the right, thanks to its unique impact on economic productivity.
But too often, this debate is conducted in a manner and style that mirrors that of wonkish academicians.
Important aspects of the debate get lost when conversation becomes mired in public-policy-speak, within the same esoteric, self-referential, insular, and inaccessible language that frustrates us when it comes from the professorial elite.
And so, in the spirit of directness and accessibility, I’m pleased to introduce “Inside Academia,” a new project aimed at slicing through the jargon. Inside Academia, hosted by Andy Nash, is a weekly video interview program distributed at InsideAcademia.tv. In split-screen format, Andy Nash will speak with a new guest each week in these short, direct, 10-15-minute-long episodes.
The aim is to engage the uninitiated by distilling complex debates into accessible, coherent narratives that will themselves form, over time, a catalog of knowledge on a wide range of issues impacting academia and our nation.
What Bloggingheads.tv is to politics, InsideAcademia.tv aims to be, in its own simple way, to education.
In our first journey behind the ivory curtain, we speak with Dr. Marty Nemko, adviser, career counselor, talk-radio-show host, about his controversial article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “America’s Most Overrated Product: The Bachelor’s Degree.”
Click here to watch the episode directly on YouTube, here for more about the program, or here for more about its host, Andy Nash.