Keeping college affordable
from Change.gov: The Obama-Biden Transition Team | Blog by
Claiborne Pell, a Rhode Island senator whose achievements brought about lasting change both at home and abroad, died on January 1st, 2009, at the age of 90.
In a statement, Vice President-elect Joe Biden honored Sen. Pell’s many accomplishments, noting that, “few Senators have done more to expand opportunity in America.”
Pell’s domestic efforts led to the establishment of the Pell Grant, a federal higher education subsidy that has defrayed the cost of college tuition for thousands of American students since their establishment in 1973.
In 2000, nearly 30% of public university students were Pell Grant recipients.
Still, many students and their families worry that the worsening economy will increase the burden of tuition and other college costs.
Carolyn from California shared some of her concerns:
“With the state of our current economy my parents are worried with how they are going to be able to support me and my younger brother as he goes off to college. We are considered upper-middle class (I think) and if we are having a hard time, I can only imagine what other families are facing. Please continue to support federal funding for higher education including the Pell Grant Program. Your proposed changes to the Financial Aid application would be very helpful, but at the same time increased funding of federal programs is necessary.”
Making higher education more affordable is a priority for the Obama-Biden administration.
Learn more about the new Administration’s plan for education: Keeping college affordable
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from today’s issue of WWJ’s Great Lakes IT Report:
Review: New MacBook puts style over affordability
Plastic used to be the sexy material of the future. Now, it’s the cheap, ugly material of the past. Just look at the effort Apple Inc. put into getting rid of plastic when designing its new $1,300 MacBook laptops, which went on sale last week. Apple now is machining the upper part of the chassis from a single block of aluminum, shaving it down to perhaps one-tenth of its original mass. The result is a laptop with the stark elegance of a Modernist skyscraper, all glass and metal. The only things that are still plastic are the keys, the Apple logo on the lid, the bumpers on the bottom and some cladding on the hinge between the bottom and the display. Unfortunately, with the laptops it released last week, Apple chose to make the hardware slicker and more stylish, rather than push the price down. More.
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This excerpt from CIO.com:
1. Business is competitive. Deal with it.
Edelman interviewed Sam DiPiazza Jr., the CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers, for his book. DiPiazza had this to say about business, according to Edelman: “Business, whether we like it or not, includes competition. It’s challenging, aggressive and very demanding. Despite the perception of many, it can also be performed nicely.”2. Sometimes being nice isn’t very nice at all.
Edelman also spoke with the CEO of the American Cancer Society, John Seffrin, who believes that when mangers are too nice and are incapable of having honest discussions with others (such as during a performance review) for fear of hurting feelings, they’re in fact not being nice at all and they’re doing a disservice to the people they manage.3. Confrontation is not necessarily a bad thing.
Nice people avoid confrontation because it’s uncomfortable, says Edelman. If nice people are to be more assertive, they need to understand the business value of confrontation: it allows them to solve problems. Edelman points to a strategy employed by 1-800-GOT-JUNK CEO Brian Scudamore, which Scudamore calls “race to the conflict.” The idea is, if a conflict or issue comes up, employees should race to it to get it resolved as quickly as possible. If they don’t, they’re wasting time.
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[Courtesy of NonProfit Times]
The most important aspect to evaluating an executive is providing time for thoughtful conversation, according to Donna F. Vickers and Kelly Stevelt Kaser in “Evaluating Your Executive: New Approaches, New Purposes,” published by The Academy of Leadership & Governance in Columbus, Ohio.
Grading an executive’s performance without conversation about what it means is not useful, according to the authors, who compiled 15 different options for nonprofit boards to evaluate their executives.
One of the options presented, “The Making of an Effective Executive,” first appeared in the Harvard Business Review by Peter Drucker, “one of the fathers of American management science.” He believes that leaders who are truly effective follow eight practices.
The first two give them the knowledge they need, the next four help convert this knowledge into effective action, and the last two ensure the whole organization feels responsible and accountable.
Effective leaders:
- Ask, “What needs to be done?”
- Ask, “What is right for the enterprise?”
- Develop action plans.
- Take responsibility for decisions.
- Take responsibility for communicating.
- Focus on opportunities rather than problems.
- Run productive meetings.
- Think and say, “we” rather than “I.”
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U-M Launches New Information Age Major: Informatics
University of Michigan undergraduates have a new major on their list of choices, one highly relevant in this age: Informatics. Informatics is the study of information and the ways people and social systems use it. Experts in this field design information technology tools for scientific, business, and cultural needs, and study how such tools are used.
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A few years back, personal coach Maya Talisman and husband Tom Frost, a jewelry importer and distributor, decided to move their his-and-hers businesses and four daughters from Portland, Ore., to Mazatlan, Mexico.
“We chose Mazatlan because we had been there on vacation and knew it would be a friendly, peaceful place to spend our first year abroad and learn Spanish,” Talisman says. The family rented an apartment in the historic colonial district and enrolled the kids in school.
Talisman’s meditation books and courses are sold online while Frost’s company, Swell Products, distributes his brand of magnetic bracelets to hundreds of retailers across the United States. The bracelets are manufactured in China and shipped to the United States. Frost employs a sales manager and part-time bookkeeper, who work from Oregon.
“That experiment worked so well that 10 months later, when school was out, we moved even farther south, to Buenos Aires, Argentina,” says Talisman.
How do they pick up their businesses and move wherever they want? By relying on technology, Talisman and Frost have created virtual headquarters for their companies and they operate with a roster of web-based applications.
How technology can save time and money
Certainly, today’s always-on-and-available-anywhere technology can lead to addictive work habits. We’ve all seen examples of that among friends and family.
But having a cheap, convenient, 24/7 global reach through technology can also efficiently enable you to live the life you’ve always wanted. The choice is yours.
Here are some affordable tools and ideas that harness technology’s power to save you time and money. Cherry-pick among these solutions to build in breaks, or reconfigure your work-life routines, or, like Talisman and her family, reinvent your life entirely.
1. Use Voice-over-Internet protocol phone service (VoIP) to create a virtual office. To maintain a professional phone line and still travel, take time off or live abroad, VoIP telephone services are a terrific help. You’ve probably heard about such affordable services, which, basically, use the Internet to send and receive calls. Usually, you pay only for Internet access and not for calls, much the way e-mail works.
“We have an Oregon phone number in Argentina,” Talisman says. Frost’s Oregon-based manager has a similar setup. The Buenos Aires and Oregon phones ring at the same time.
There are dozens of VoIP providers to choose among. Try a Web search if you don’t know one.
2. Use online services for office communications and banking. The Frosts host their company computers on external servers, so they can access all e-mail, files, and financial information or transactions from any Internet café. (Of course, you do want to have privacy safeguards in place when working this way.)
“We have no bank account in Argentina,” Talisman says. “We’re paid in dollars and living on pesos—enough said!”
3. Leverage the power of a professional Web site. Setting up a Web site, more than any other technological helpmate, will shave considerable time and effort from your workdays.
With a professional site, you can more efficiently conduct business, fulfill orders, organize contacts, share documents with employees or contractors, and market your wares or services, even when you’re out of the office or on the road.
For more about launching a site, see the Microsoft Office Live Small Business offerings. Once your site is up, you can bolster its effectiveness by keeping customers, stakeholders, or media up-to-date with an online media kit.
4. Use your site features to stay in touch with customers. With so many marketing channels and consumer options these days, increasingly, it’s the business that quickly responds to customer needs that gains a competitive advantage. You can use your Web site to “listen” and react to what your customers request.
For example:
Set up an online forum so customers can register and post comments to you and to each other.
Set up a survey that customers can take online. This can be a focus group type of survey (say, about a new product) or a customer satisfaction survey.
Set up a special e-mail address and ask customers for specific feedback or advice whenever you launch a new product, service, or special promotion.
5. Use e-mail software to track schedules and tasks. Software such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 can improve your performance. Most people are good at creating to-do or task lists, but often become distracted and don’t commit to a scheduled time to accomplish those tasks.
By utilizing the task and reminder functions of an e-mail program, you can set up a calendar that generates alerts, whether annual, weekly, or daily. Some business owners say that such alerts boost their productivity by 50 percent or more.
6. Stop thinking you must do everything yourself. “Doing administrative work is necessary, but it can detract from an owner’s primary purpose of growing and nurturing the business,” says Jennefer Witter, who founded The Boreland Group, a New York City public relations agency, in 2003.
“I’ve known too many entrepreneurs who are penny-wise and pound-foolish,” because they won’t hire help, she says. “One was working until midnight because her admin work took so much time.” The solution, Witter suggests, is to hire virtual assistants. “Be more efficient by getting a qualified, trained person who can handle the chores.”
With instantaneous communications and the ability to seamlessly connect from anywhere, virtual assistants can work remotely and provide quality work. “Many of us are in home offices and don’t have room for another person,” Witter says. “That’s another beauty of VAs.”
There are lots of job boards and industry associations that list virtual assistant services, if you decide to look for one. Also, check listings at the International Virtual Assistants Association.
7. Create a sales contact database for your business. Software such as Contact Manager, included within Office Live Small Business, can transform your electronic address book into a sales, contact management, and marketing tool.
Then, when you send out marketing or sales material, instead of hand-addressing envelopes, you can automate the process with labels or envelopes printed from your database list. Similarly, you can use the database to send e-mail marketing messages. Just make sure that the software you use for your database (usually part of a sales contact program) can be integrated with your e-mail program.
Besides mailings to your entire sales list, you can use the database for specific or premium marketing, such as holiday cards, special discounts, and birthday greetings.
8. Invest in e-mail marketing that yields results. Certainly, consumers now delete e-mail marketing messages faster than you can say “click-through.” However, when it’s done right (which means your consumer really wants your message and knows your brand), e-mail marketing remains relatively cheap and incredibly effective.
You can automate the process of sending and tracking your e-mail campaigns with affordable tools and either off-the-shelf or online software.
Such low-cost services can help you mount campaigns, send out e-mail newsletters or campaign mails, and maintain scrubbed, up-to-date lists much faster and cost-efficiently than you can on your own.
Tip: Secure double opt-in permission before adding a prospect to your e-mail list.
Mobile phones and continual access to e-mail now make us available around the clock. So, in the end, all the technology in the world won’t let you kick back unless you make some rules.
Begin with these, and then move on:
Schedule specific times to check e-mail.
Turn off your phone when you’re home or out with friends.
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By Joanna L. Krotz
About the author Joanna L. Krotz is the founder of Muse2Muse Productions, a custom content company for business and consumer magazines, newsletters, and digital imprints. Krotz has launched marketing Web sites and e-news portals, as well as created magazines and online marketing for a variety of companies. She is co-author of “The Microsoft Small Business Kit,” a 500-page guide to launching and running a business.
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Time Shifting vs Time Management, Stephan Rechtschaffen
“I’ve observed over the years that many people in our culture experience not having enough time in daily life. The feelings: frustration, anxiety, panic, pressure, stress. It’s as if somebody yelled “Fire!”-and although we could get out of the room, we don’t. This is the way we live in relationship to time, all day long responding to the subtle message, “fire, fire, fire, fire …”
Many cultures, however, have a completely different experience of time. What is a moment in New Guinea, for example, where there are no words for hours or minutes? Maybe a moment lasts all morning. But for those of us who live in nanosecond time, a moment becomes very, very short, and in each moment we ask how much we have gotten done. How much did I cram into it? Was I successful in multitasking? As one woman in a class I was working with said to me, “I have finally figured out how to relax. When I go from my job teaching to my consulting job and I’m driving in my car, I listen to a self-help tape, I eat lunch on the way, I talk on my cellular phone, and I relax at the same time.”
This approach to time management simply turns up the speed on the treadmill of our lives. I propose we evolve beyond time management to “timeshifting”-which is different from merely “downshifting.” The practice of timeshifting recognizes that every single moment has a particular rhythm to it, and that we have the capacity to expand or contract an individual moment as appropriate. One way to shift what’s going on in our world is not to try to rush to do more, but to allow ourselves to go deeper into that moment of being present. Our ability to shift gears, to shift our rhythm to meet that moment and be present in it, is what allows us to experience the fullness of life – to create our life in the way we want it to be.”
–Stephan Rechtschaffen (click to read full interview)
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In the latest expansion beyond its main mission of organizing the world’s information, Internet search leader Google Inc. hopes to orchestrate more virtual socializing on the Web. Google debuted a free service Tuesday in which three-dimensional software enables people to congregate in fantasy rooms and other computer-manufactured versions of real life. The service, called “Lively,” represents Google’s answer to an already well-established site, “Second Life,” where people deploy animated alter egos known as avatars to navigate virtual reality. Google thinks “Lively” will encourage even more people to dive into alternate realities because it isn’t tethered to one Web site like Second Life, and it doesn’t cost anything to use. After installing a small packet of software from lively.com, a user can enter Lively from other Web sites, like social networking sites and blogs. More.
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Oakland Community College and the West Bloomfield School District last week announced the opening of Oakland County’s first “early college” high school, Oakland Early College. OEC is a public school open to all Oakland County students, regardless of district of residency. Early colleges blend secondary and post-secondary education, adding a year to high school in a college preparatory curriculum. Students graduate with a high school diploma plus an associate degree in five years instead of the usual six. More. Also, Oakland CC announced a new program to make transferring to Wayne State University easier after two years. More.
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Recent Entries
- Obama on Math, Science and Tech Education
- Keeping college affordable
- The New MacBook/Pro: Not Sure I Like It
- Advice for People Who Are Too Nice [CIO.com]
- Performance evaluation is a two-way street
- U-M Launches New Information Age Major: Informatics
- Technology tips for improving your work-life balance
- Time Shifting vs. Time Management
- Google ventures into virtual reality with ‘Lively’
- Oakland CC adds ‘early college,’ eases transfers to Wayne State
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