Odyssey Online

…with the new year upon us it seems like a good moment to set aside some part of a Saturday to read critiques, or recommendations, or memoirs of what goes for the life and times of the contemporary university:

• The Globalization of Higher Education Edited by Luc. E. Webber and James Duderstadt
• The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities are Reshaping the World by Ben Wildavsky
• Admissions by Jean Hanff Korelitz
• Fixing College Education: A New Curriculum for the Twenty First Century by Charles Muscatine
• How University Works: Higher Education and a Low Wage Nation by Marc Bousquet
• Financing Higher Education Worldwide: Who Pays? Who Should Pay? by D. Bruce Johnston and Pamela Marcucci
• The Great American University: It’s Rise to Preeminence, it’s Indispensable National Role, and Why it Must be Protected by Jonathan R. Cole
• Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University by Gaye Tuchman
• The Last Professors: Corporate Universities and the Fate of the Humanities by Frank Donoghue
• Save the World on Your Own Time by Stanley Fish

…these are all published 2008, 09, and 2010. Grist for the mill.

Writing on the Huffington Post Ryan Grim comments on Facebook’s decision to refuse advertisements by groups advocating the legalization of marijuana.  Like any for-profit publication medium, Facebook has every right to accept or reject whatever advertising it cares to accept or reject, but  how many Facebook users conceptualize of Facebook as a cafe or commons.  That Facebook is social media works against the notion that it may be playing by publishers rules, and thus raises questions about what, when, and why Facebook censors.  Let the buyer beware, Facebook is Newsweek…

…well rested having spent the summer considering the Creative Commons, we’re back at it here at Odyssey Online.  While we were thinking about the CC (and fishing, canoeing, gardening etc.) Google announced it’s impending entry into the electronic book game, in the form of Google Editions.  On Atlantic Magazine’s blog, Peter Osnos gives a good accounting of what Google wishes to do with this project, which boils down to this business plan: “…is that Google will be adding millions of digital titles for sale on any device with Internet access: smart phones, tablets, netbooks, desktops, and every digital reading device except Kindle…”

Bookseller.com predicts an autumn release date for Google Editions, and eWeek has commentary on where it fits among iPads, Kindles, and Nooks (oh my…)