Two weeks ago I was at a major higher education conference. I was invited by a partner of the Florida Consortium to attend the conference and sit on a panel on employability and nomenclature. It was a huge success. I enjoyed working with my peers to discuss this important topic and to suggest ways business and universities can work together to create more sensible and transferrable terminology for students moving from the classroom to the workplace. But this is not a blog post about that. It is about what I experienced at the conference that now shade my feelings on higher education forever.
First, it should be noted that the conference is expensive. Participants paid over $3,000 each to attend and it was held in a city known for expensive hotel rates, higher than average airline fares, and the food is plenty expensive. I was lucky in that I did not have to pay for a registration because I was an invited speaker. So one would expect the event to be nice. And it was. Continue reading →