Shirley Strum Kenny: Don’t Foreclose On Our Future: Invest In Public Higher Education

This blog entry talks about many of the pitfalls of recent US government decisions regarding post-secondary education funding. I fear that Canada is falling into the same trap. Being a college instructor, I know first-hand that funding is down over the last few years. My college has been utilizing deficit financing for three years running. Programs are disappearing and classroom sizes are multiplying (my classes have gone from 32 students in 2001 to 60 students for 2009). Canada needs innovation to move past the natural resources based economy of the present. That innovation will either come from our universities and colleges or be imported from economies that have made Education a priority.

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Shirley Strum Kenny: Don’t Foreclose On Our Future: Invest In Public Higher Education

 

Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow is without a doubt my favorite TV personality. The Rachel Maddow Show airs at 9:00 pm EST on MSNBC. If you don’t have access to MSNBC you can watch clips on her website or subscribe to the video podcast from iTunes for free.

To get a sense of her wit and ability to find fun quirky stuff check out this video. It is a real-time recreation of the splash down in the Hudson river that occurred in February 2009.

 

Rachel is a Rhodes Scholar with a Ph. D. from Oxford. Her interviewing style is hard-hitting but her show tries to see some humour behind the stories. My favorite segment is “Scrub, rinse, repeat” where she discusses the problems that President Barack Obama still has to deal with from the Bush administration.

Another very endearing quality of Rachel is that she is an ardent mixologist with a preference for classic cocktails. The more I find out about her, the more I like her.