I
toyed with writing a quick post about Friday’s release of the federal
Department of Education’s “framework” for college ratings based on access,
affordability, and outcomes, but decided that no one will have time or interest
in reading this close to Christmas. I’ll
work on it for publication next year.
That
leaves one item of business and holiday greetings.
The
business (or, more accurately, shameless self-promotion): the previous post regarding the Wainstein
report about the academic fraud scandal at UNC-Chapel Hill was one of two
selections last Monday in the “Around the Web” section of InsideHigherEd.com, the third time ECA has been mentioned on that
website.
The
greetings: ECA wishes “Happy holidays”
to all of our readers, whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa,
Festivus or just time away from writing college recommendations and reading
college applications.
In
the last school chapel service before Christmas break, our chaplain did a
sermon about the theological lessons found in classic cartoon Christmas
specials like “Frosty the Snowman,” “Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and “A Charley Brown Christmas.” I was hurt that she left out my all-time
favorite, “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.” In the spirit of that show and the
immortal words of Tiny Tim (the Dickens character, not the ukulele-playing
1960s singer), “God bless us, every one.”