A friend sent me a link to an interesting article about online college education and the unbundling of universities. It reminded me of a blog post that I wrote years ago, and so I dug around to find it. Back in August of 2003, I predicted that we would see more and more of online college education and that it would make it even harder for people like me to find jobs.
It's funny to read this random thought that I had nine years ago. I was such a kid. I had only been blogging for a few weeks. My kids were babies and we were living in a crappy apartment in Manhattan with annoying neighbors. I was skinny. I was writing academic papers and teaching at a university. We were house hunting. Then we moved.
I often think I should stop blogging about my personal life. Those posts invite judgement, and that criticism hurts much more than criticism about my views of politics or pop culture. Any criticism of my kids makes me breath fire. But of all those old posts, it is the personal posts that I treasure the most.
Apt. 11d 
Gee, I hope you won’t stop blogging about personal life. I know I speak for many when I say that, if we didn’t find your thoughts interesting, your character admirable, and your views at least reasonably congenial, we wouldn’t be reading your blog. Occasional disagreements shouldn’t be taken as inconsistent with those fundamental perceptions.
LikeLike
I too love the personal blog posts (and I myself enjoy the ones on my own password-protected personal blog. It’s lovely to see the patterns over the 5 years of our life I’ve been blogging). So, I hope you’re not going to give them up (I wouldn’t mind not being allowed to comment on them or for you to be quicker on the draw in closing comments when we annoy you).
The contemporaneous punditry in your first backward link is very cool. Potentially a followup post talking about how your predictions are playing out? Your 10 year prediction is coming up: “mid level colleges will close and open as on-line institutions.” You mention Farleigh Dickinson, which I think we’ve talked about with respect to student loans and whether they offer any real credentialing value.
That contemporaneous and easily accessible feature is what I love about blogging. I hate that pundits in the olden times would write predictions that would get forgotten and like that now we can look at them and try to do the experiment of whether the prediction played out. Of course, they can be vague, or shifty (Ehrlich comes to mind). But if they actually say things somewhat clearly (Krugman, Friedman, Brooks, potentialy) we can check up on what they said.
LikeLike
Ooh, just read those links and I still love those posts. I hadn’t remembered that you moved to the burbs shortly after I did (though my burbs involved an in city move from a “walkable” neighborhood to an unwalkable one, and not from a iffy area of NYC to NJ, so much less dramatic: think steep basement stairs to an unfinished basement to do laundry v the upstairs laundry room with cabinets, built in ironing board, and hanging racks).
You write better than I did, though. My family posts would be better if you were writing them :-).
LikeLike
“Those posts invite judgement, and that criticism hurts much more than criticism about my views of politics or pop culture.”
Remember your post about buying a handbag that somehow led to the widespread assumption that it was a Coach bag? Good times, good times.
(On reflection, my new rule of thumb is that if the purchase price of all of your shoes and handbags exceeds the purchase price of your car, you have too many bags and shoes.)
LikeLike
“if the purchase price of all of your shoes and handbags exceeds the purchase price of your car, you have too many bags and shoes.”
See, I don’t agree with this. To quote from Mitt’s site (where i downloaded his tax returns — fascinating reading), “We have a moral obligation to not spend more than we take in” (or something like that). If you can afford to buy handbags more expensive than your car, well, that’s your business. And, what’s wrong with having really expensive hand bags, and cheap cars, if that’s where your interests lie?
LikeLike
It’s a rule of thumb, so it doesn’t work at all possible income levels, but it’s probably about right for 99% of the readers of the blog.
Dave Ramsey has a related rule of thumb that says that because they go down in value, the value of all of the vehicles owned by your household should not exceed 50% of yearly household income. Hence, if a household purchases a $40k Chevy Volt, they should be earning at least $80k a year and it should be their only vehicle. (Or we could include the federal incentives and treat the cost of a Volt as being $33k, which yields a $66k minimum household income for a Volt buyer.)
It’s not just an issue of gross over-consumption, it’s also that that money should probably be out doing something other than rusting or gathering dust in a closet.
LikeLike
Now that I think of it, Dave Ramsey would add the following requirements:
1) not buying a new car unless you have $1 million in non-house assets
2) paying cash for cars.
I expect 1) applies more to mid-range vehicles than to the very cheapest new cars.
LikeLike
Thanks, guys. Actually, I get about 1000 positive comments on my personal posts for every negative comment. Why do I remember the negative comments the most? A character flaw for sure.
LikeLike
Dave Ramsey says you should not get a character flaw until your IRA is fully funded. You’ve been blogging longer than I’ve been reading blogs, I think.
LikeLike
“Dave Ramsey says you should not get a character flaw until your IRA is fully funded. ”
Yeah, more or less.
In related news, my husband tells me that we won’t do any major optional renovations (i.e. kitchen) until the kids’ college is funded.
*sniffle*
LikeLike
We got a new bathroom floor because I tried to fix it and made things so much worse that repair was no longer cost effective.
LikeLike
The delightful mix of politics and the personal is what makes your blog so special. Any of us can read all manner of political blogs by talking heads but for me, having the personal helps humanize it. We are more than just opinions. We also live lives and have families and dreams and successes and struggles.
I find it much much more compelling to have a human face on a blog no matter what the topic.
And your writing is lovely too!
LikeLike
Maybe, to counteract the feeling of taking insults on personal posts more personally, I should start insulting Laura’s personal life in her political posts. (“If you could better appreciate the subtle brilliance of Newt Gingrich, your parenting skills would improve greatly!”)
LikeLike
This post really educates me well. It has a complete recipe just like how you cook a delicious buffet. It serves as an appetizer to my brain. Thanks for posting this. Thumbs up!
LikeLike
The Valentine’s Day blizzard shut down schools and air travel and turned highways into skating rinks.
LikeLike