Is A Normal School Year Ahead?
Is That a Good Thing?
As my favorite sports show, Mike & Mike (yes, sadly no longer on air), used to say, “We’re back and better than ever.”
That’s my hope for me and Jeff Selingo, as our sixth season of Future U. launched last week. In our first episode, “A Normal Year Ahead? Campus Life, Sports, and Online Ed,” we covered a lot of ground, from the chit chat about our summers—my new book and Jeff’s New York magazine piece that will be coming out soon—to higher ed headlines from the past few months (and our reactions to those headlines), including:
- the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness;
- colleges building dorms, again;
- students having a relatively normal college experience—except that McDonald’s in some cases is paying more than student campus jobs;
- flexible learning options;
- the continued growth of online learning, yet the challenges for online program managers powering university programs;
- the challenges for edtech companies in the public markets;
- higher tuition in an inflationary environment;
- enrollment declines;
- and more.
Yup, like I said, we covered a lot of ground. Plus, we previewed some themes and topics we’ll be covering in the upcoming season. Check it all out here or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
News about ‘From Reopen to Reinvent’
Four great items on my new book, From Reopen to Reinvent.
First, Emily Oster featured me and the book in a Q&A for her Substack newsletter, Parent Data. Check out our conversation here, at “(Re)Creating School for Every Child: Michael Horn on what formal education is for.”
Second, Michael Staton—cofounder and CEO at CoLearn, an incredibly exciting education startup to emerge from the ashes of the pandemic, as well as a venture partner at Learn Capital—reviewed the book in EdSurge.
According to Staton, “the book is in some sense a guidebook for where to go now with education.” It’s “also a call to arms.”
In his review, he does a great job distilling the central advice my book offers—and I was honored that he wrote that, “Horn’s advice is worth a read for anyone interested in the future of education…. [because] in short, this moment could be the opportunity to create something much better. Or we could end up making everything worse.”
Check out his review, “A Guide to Rethinking Education After Pandemic,” here. And of course, you can check out the book here. If you’ve bought it and read it, please leave your own review on Goodreads or Amazon.
Third, as some of you may recall, the Next Big Idea Club selected From Reopen to Reinvent as one of its nominees for top non-fiction books. As part of that, they just released a recording of me narrating five key takeaways from the book. You can check out the audio and read the transcript here.
And finally, Harvard’s Chris Dede, Indiana University’s Curt Bonk, and Arizona State’s Punya Mishra interviewed me for their Silver Lining for Learning podcast. You can check out our rich and animated conversation here at “Some Schools are Not Reopening, They’re Reinventing.”
As always, thanks for reading, writing, and listening.