As we continue celebrating our first year, it’s time to look back at the best Higher Ed Professor posts.  I found it interesting to look back and see which posts seemed to connect most with people.  For those of you who are new, I hope these will be helpful.  If you’ve been here since the beginning, did your favorite make the list?

Here are the top Higher Ed Professor posts from our first year.

Today marks a special day here at Higher Ed Professor.  It was one year ago that the site went live.  Every Monday and Thursday, I’ve tried to deliver content that people in higher education would find interesting and useful.  The response has been tremendous and I have learned so much along the way.  In today’s post, I want to share a few insights and things I’ve learned during the year.  I also have two special requests for everyone at the end of the post.

When I first started Higher Ed Professor, my hope was the site would be a resource for faculty and administrators in colleges across the country.

I had no idea how great the response would be and have been thrilled at how the information has been shared.

The blog has been viewed in over 100 countries and 49 states.

(Hey Wyoming, what did I ever do to you?  Way to mess up the statistics)

The number of page views continues to grow with more than 12,000 total during our first year.

Clearly, there is room for an ongoing conversation about higher education issues.

One of the most fun aspects of this journey has been hearing from people with interesting perspectives on some of the issues that have come up over the year.  I hope we get to do more of this during our second year.

Recently, I have had several people ask me about the blog and what I’ve learned from the process.  Three things immediately come to mind.

First, writing posts twice a week has forced me to keep writing.  We all know how important it is to maintain the writing muscle.  Even when things are crazy, I have managed to crank out a post.  My best guess is that I’ve written about 250 pages of text this year just in blog posts.  Forcing myself to do this has helped me be productive in all of my writing efforts.

Second, blogging as helped my voice as a writer and researcher.  I always aim to make posts that are a quick read and even easy to skim.  My strategy has been to share an interesting idea or two that might spark something in a reader.  This has encouraged me to lose all of the academic jargon that often obscures ideas in scholarly publications.  My scholarly writing is better for having to explain ideas in 600-700 word blog posts.

Third, I have become a more thoughtful observer of what is happening both in higher education nationally and around me personally.  When you have to produce two posts a week, you are constantly searching for inspiration.  From class conversations to reading the Chronicle and InsideHigherEd, I believe I’ve become a more thoughtful observer of higher education.  My hope is this translates to better posts.

As many benefits as I’ve gotten from Higher Ed Professor, I hope many of you have found a few nuggets that were thought-provoking or helpful in some way.

In that spirit, I have two requests that I would like to make:

1.  If you have found the site helpful or enjoyed reading Higher Ed Professor, please share with a colleague or post to your social networking sites.  I truly hope this content is helpful and if so want to share it with as many people in higher education as possible.  If you’ve been thinking about a birthday present to celebrate our first birthday, sharing the site would be perfect!

2.  In order to be more responsive, I would love to hear from you about ideas or areas that you’d like to see me discuss over the next year.  I’ve found some of the best posts over this year were suggestions by readers, colleagues, and friends.  What would you like to see discussed in a post?  What are you struggling with right now?  Have you always wondered why colleges do something in a certain way?  I would really appreciate a quick email or tweet with a couple of ideas for posts.

When you publish a research article, it often seems to just go into space with few responses or feedback from readers.  Fortunately, this format provides plenty of opportunities to engage and have a conversation.

Finally, I want to thank all of you who have read the blog and especially those who have signed up to receive our new posts via email (if you haven’t done this, sign up in the box in the upper right corner).

Your response has been more than I expected and I’m looking forward to our continuing conversation!

A recent report from Educational Testing Service argues that millennials are falling behind students in other nations.  Specifically, the study argues that demonstrate lower literacy and arithmetic skills than in other countries.  Even accounting for other factors such as income, the ETS researchers found Americans scoring poorly.  This begs the question:  Are millennials the dumbest generation?

Nearly every generation thinks the one following them is performing poorly.  However, millennials get dumped on at an alarming rate.  We all know the critiques.

Entitled.

Self-centered.

Uninterested in politics and government.

Are millennials the most narcissistic generation?

The Greatest Generation saved the world in World War II.  Millennials can’t be bothered to look up from their phones.

In many ways, the ETS report picks up on these arguments, but also calls out colleges for not educating students on the skills necessary for the workplace.

However, I would argue the problem isn’t with millennials or colleges, but rather the expectations and pressures put on students and colleges.

It may seem counterintuitive, but I would argue that the emphasis on vocationalism and going to college to get a job has made students less prepared for work.  Students are so focused on learning the knowledge and skills to succeed in the workplace that they often don’t want to take or ignore courses that lead to their broad intellectual development.

This is most obvious in general education courses that should help students learn to think, write, and speak.  Instead of using these courses to learn these valuable skills that benefit them in work and life, students try to find courses that will check multiple boxes.

And colleges are almost as bad with departments wanting to use the courses to recruit more majors knowing that is where they get rewarded.

The reality is that college should teach you how to learn, think, and process information.  As a professor, I am worried far less about preparing students for their first jobs.  The first job is important, but it will not ultimately determine a student’s success.

I want to make sure that we are preparing students for careers that we don’t even know exist yet.  Jobs that will be created over the next 20, 30 or 40 years.  I have no idea what those jobs will look like, but I know if a students can speak, write, and think that they will be prepared.

Debates about vocationalism and the liberal arts are as old as higher education in this country.  Whether fighting over teaching in Latin or English or preparing students with job skills for the 21^st century, students, families, and colleges will continue to struggle with the balance between learning for learning and learning for job.

We are in a period of hyper-vocationalism that in many ways parallels what higher education looked like immediately following World War II.  Eventually that period of vocationalism gave way to the curricular expansion that took place in the 1960s.  As they say, this too shall pass.  Yet, I worry what the rhetoric around the millennial generation will do to their long term success.  Already, this generation has had to grow up in the shadow of September 11^th and the war on terror while at the same time facing a long term economic decline.  Stagnating wages, lower home ownership, and the challenge of the global economy is all this generation as known.

Are Millennials the dumbest generation?  I think the question is an insult, yet this generation has faced insult after insult.  From a K-12 education system that has focused on teaching them to fill out bubbles to college that has become increasingly expensive thanks to a decline of public financial support, this generation has proven to be resilient.

Sure, they might benefit from taking a break from their phones once in a while or sharing a little less on social media.  Yet, I have great faith in this generation that shows success in spite of the challenges and in spite of the way they are talked about by older generations.  Given the state of our world politically, socially, and economically, I think we ought to give them a shot.  Can they do any worse?

The Texas Standard, a news program sponsored by Texas public radio stations, interviewed me for a story about the ETS report.  You can hear the story here.