{"version":"https://jsonfeed.org/version/1","title":"Nancy Pratt Blogs","home_page_url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com","description":"Nancy Pratt Blogs","author":{"name":"Nancy Pratt Blogs"},"items":[{"id":"you-say-online-education-i-say-structurally-immobile-learners","html_content":"

Since my thirties, nearly every day has been tied, in part, to achieving a degree. Over time, that has taken me through a traditional bachelor’s program, an adult-focused master’s degree program, and an asynchronous onli...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/you-say-online-education-i-say-structurally-immobile-learners","title":"You Say Online Education. I Say Structurally Immobile Learners.","date_modified":"2026-04-19T21:31:00Z"},{"id":"what-the-search-privileges-tenure-and-other-fallacies","html_content":"

Too many colleges and universities still write leadership searches as though faculty experience were the single measure of leadership.

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/what-the-search-privileges-tenure-and-other-fallacies","title":"What the Search Privileges: Tenure and Other Fallacies","date_modified":"2026-04-12T17:55:35Z"},{"id":"when-international-education-becomes-a-moral-contradiction","html_content":"

There is a point at which international education can no longer be discussed as a matter of recruitment strategy without sounding ethically evasive and increasingly disconnected from the realities reflected in the daily ...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/when-international-education-becomes-a-moral-contradiction","title":"What Does It Mean to Recruit International Students Now?","date_modified":"2026-04-06T22:49:00Z"},{"id":"do-universities-know-what-they-mean-by-workforce-development","html_content":"

Certain phrases in higher education are treated as settled long before anyone has done the work of defining them. A term begins to circulate, institutions repeat one another, and before long the phrase acquires the autho...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/do-universities-know-what-they-mean-by-workforce-development","title":"Do Universities Know What They Mean by, \"Workforce Development\"?","date_modified":"2026-04-05T22:10:47Z"},{"id":"education-at-its-furthest-point","html_content":"

Industry has too often mistaken the Ph.D. for a credential bounded by academic life, when it is more accurately understood as one of the most demanding forms of intellectual, analytical, and professional formation availa...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/education-at-its-furthest-point","title":"Education at Its Furthest Point ","date_modified":"2026-04-02T19:54:25Z"},{"id":"metrics-of-misrecognition-when-policy-determines-education-value","html_content":"

Higher education policy has a habit of mistaking rapid measurement for serious understanding. That habit shapes much of the public conversation about educational value, particularly when the question becomes whether grad...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/metrics-of-misrecognition-when-policy-determines-education-value","title":"Metrics of Misrecognition: When Policy Determines Value","date_modified":"2026-03-26T01:30:00Z"},{"id":"the-theology-of-being-chosen","html_content":"

Every durable organizational hierarchy develops, sooner or later, a theology of its own righteousness. It must. Without such a theology, rank would appear as what it often is, a contingent arrangement of access, sanction...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-theology-of-being-chosen","title":"The Theology of Being Chosen","date_modified":"2026-03-22T21:54:00Z"},{"id":"the-chronicle-was-right-too-soft-but-right","html_content":"

A recent article in The Chronicle argues that higher education continues to resist change even as the prospect of college closure has become almost routine. The argument is fair. Higher education is facing widespread ins...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-chronicle-was-right-too-soft-but-right","title":"The Chronicle Was Right. Too Soft. But Right.","date_modified":"2026-03-14T23:06:33Z"},{"id":"the-myth-of-intellectual-meritocracy","html_content":"

The Administrative Underclass in the Modern University

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-myth-of-intellectual-meritocracy","title":"The Myth of Intellectual Meritocracy","date_modified":"2026-03-06T00:16:47Z"},{"id":"accountability-after-access-workforce-pell-and-the-future-of-lea","html_content":"

Higher education is entering a moment when access alone can no longer define institutional success, and accountability is reshaping how educational value is understood. Workforce Pell is often framed as a funding mechani...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/accountability-after-access-workforce-pell-and-the-future-of-lea","title":"Accountability After Access: Rethinking Learning and Work","date_modified":"2026-02-22T22:02:12Z"},{"id":"ai-and-the-future-of-qualitative-research-beyond-the-panic","html_content":"

Before artificial intelligence can be framed as a rupture in scholarly life, we must first ask what kind of knowledge we believe is at risk. Quantitative inquiry has long pursued measurement, prediction, and generalizati...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/ai-and-the-future-of-qualitative-research-beyond-the-panic","title":"AI and the Future of Qualitative Research: Beyond the Panic","date_modified":"2026-02-19T11:00:00Z"},{"id":"the-shadow-side-of-the-adult-phd-credentialed-no-clear-future","html_content":"

Career opportunities within The Academy remain structured around early-career academic pathways, even as a growing number of doctoral graduates complete the PhD later in their professional lives. Over the past decade, un...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-shadow-side-of-the-adult-phd-credentialed-no-clear-future","title":"The Shadow Side of the Adult PhD: Credentialed. No Clear Future.","date_modified":"2026-02-16T16:58:23Z"},{"id":"first-a-philosophy-of-life-what-we-get-wrong-in-adult-education","html_content":"

Adult education suffers from a peculiar reputational problem. It is widely understood, confidently misdescribed, and routinely diminished. For many, the phrase still conjures images of GED preparation, night classes, rem...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/first-a-philosophy-of-life-what-we-get-wrong-in-adult-education","title":"First, a Philosophy of Life: What We Get Wrong in Adult Education","date_modified":"2026-02-04T10:26:55Z"},{"id":"from-positional-intelligence-bias-to-leadership-in-place","html_content":"

Why Inner-Circle Leadership Will Never Transform

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/from-positional-intelligence-bias-to-leadership-in-place","title":"From Positional Intelligence Bias to Leadership in Place","date_modified":"2026-02-01T18:27:08Z"},{"id":"is-job-placement-the-right-measure-of-credential-quality","html_content":"

Much of contemporary workforce policy and practice rests on a simplified human capital logic. Skills are treated as the primary constraint on employment. If individuals acquire the “right” competencies, employment is exp...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/is-job-placement-the-right-measure-of-credential-quality","title":"Is Job Placement the Right Measure of Credential Quality?","date_modified":"2026-01-30T03:00:00Z"},{"id":"fragility-and-framework-talking-quality-microcredentials-again","html_content":"

The expansion of microcredentials across the United States has forced higher education to confront a question we tend to dance around rather than answer. What, precisely, constitutes quality when learning is delivered in...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/fragility-and-framework-talking-quality-microcredentials-again","title":"Fragility and Framework: Talking Quality Microcredentials, Again.","date_modified":"2026-01-29T01:09:37Z"},{"id":"competing-for-the-working-class-two-year-vs-four-year-rivalry","html_content":"

In the American imagination, two-year community colleges and four-year public universities are often treated as parallel tracks. One is framed as pragmatic. The other is framed as aspirational. The distinction endures be...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/competing-for-the-working-class-two-year-vs-four-year-rivalry","title":"Competing for the Working Class: Two-Year vs. Four-Year Rivalry","date_modified":"2026-01-25T18:42:47Z"},{"id":"optional-collaboration-mandatory-delivery","html_content":"

The CE Operator’s Field Guide

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/optional-collaboration-mandatory-delivery","title":"Optional Collaboration, Mandatory Delivery","date_modified":"2026-01-21T00:51:37Z"},{"id":"who-trains-teachers-to-teach-students-how-work-works","html_content":"

As a workforce education researcher and continuing education professional, I spend my time in the space where education meets economic reality. I look at credentials, pathways, labor market signals, and the stories insti...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/who-trains-teachers-to-teach-students-how-work-works","title":"Who Trains Teachers to Teach Students How Work Works?","date_modified":"2026-01-15T19:52:16Z"},{"id":"the-pedagogy-of-civic-endurance-homegrown-grassroots-peacemaking","html_content":"

For several decades of my adult life, I was involved in either the study of or participation in nonviolent peacemaking at the international, grassroots level. That work shaped my capstone for my master’s degree and later...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-pedagogy-of-civic-endurance-homegrown-grassroots-peacemaking","title":"The Pedagogy of Civic Endurance: Homegrown Grassroots Peacemaking","date_modified":"2026-01-14T12:17:25Z"},{"id":"when-the-burden-of-proof-exceeds-the-scope-of-control","html_content":"

Recently, the U.S. Department of Labor announced a major pay-for-performance apprenticeship initiative, signaling a significant federal commitment to outcome-based workforce funding. Embedded within that announcement is ...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/when-the-burden-of-proof-exceeds-the-scope-of-control","title":"When the Burden of Proof Exceeds the Scope of Control","date_modified":"2026-01-07T20:19:16Z"},{"id":"ai-and-the-question-of-knowing","html_content":"

Higher education has long relied on artifacts to stand in for knowing. What it most often evaluates is not understanding itself, but its residue. What can be submitted, stored, graded, and returned is assumed to reveal w...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/ai-and-the-question-of-knowing","title":"AI and the Question of Knowing","date_modified":"2026-01-05T20:39:07Z"},{"id":"enrollment-decline-and-the-global-unraveling-of-higher-education","html_content":"

In late November, at the 17th Asian Conference on Education in Tokyo, Japan, my presentation panel examined the impact of U.S. policy on higher education understood not as a national asset, but as a global public good. W...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/enrollment-decline-and-the-global-unraveling-of-higher-education","title":"Not Broken. Designed. The Unraveling of Global Higher Education","date_modified":"2025-12-09T23:06:22Z"},{"id":"higher-learning%E2%80%99s-new-center-of-gravity-non-credit-education","html_content":"

Learning today finds its sharpest form in the non-credit space. This is where people turn when their lives demand motion, clarity, or transformation. These programs operate without pretense. They do not borrow their auth...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/higher-learning%E2%80%99s-new-center-of-gravity-non-credit-education","title":"Higher Learning’s New Center of Gravity: Non-Credit Education","date_modified":"2025-11-20T13:06:22Z"},{"id":"microcredentials-and-the-question-of-epistemic-authority","html_content":"

I have been thinking about power in higher education. Not only the formal authority written into governance, but the deeper assumptions about who defines knowledge, whose expertise is recognized, and whose work is treate...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/microcredentials-and-the-question-of-epistemic-authority","title":"Microcredentials and the Question of Epistemic Authority","date_modified":"2025-11-11T18:20:31Z"},{"id":"a-reflection-on-higher-eds-most-persistent-enrollment-myth","html_content":"

I work in higher education, but not in enrollment.\n

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/a-reflection-on-higher-eds-most-persistent-enrollment-myth","title":"A Reflection on Higher Ed's Most Persistent Enrollment Myth","date_modified":"2025-11-01T21:20:40Z"},{"id":"what-it-means-to-be-human-as-the-scaffolding-of-work-collapses","html_content":"

We are living through a period when work feels increasingly precarious. Layoffs ripple through major industries with unsettling regularity. Amazon, Google, and other tech giants continue to reduce their workforce under t...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/what-it-means-to-be-human-as-the-scaffolding-of-work-collapses","title":"What It Means to Be Human as the Scaffolding of Work Collapses","date_modified":"2025-10-31T11:23:18Z"},{"id":"after-the-bonfire-when-the-dust-settles","html_content":"

The Trump administration has treated education policy as a demolition project, much like the East Wing of the White House. Demolish first. Engage an architect later. Expertise removed. Institutions belittled. Learning di...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/after-the-bonfire-when-the-dust-settles","title":"After the Bonfire: When the Dust Settles","date_modified":"2025-10-25T01:06:59Z"},{"id":"the-fractured-purpose-of-workforce%E2%80%93education-partnerships","html_content":"

The phrase “workforce–education partnership” circulates through policy circles like a sacred mantra. It anchors every governor’s plan, every university strategy, every funding proposal. Yet few who invoke it can explain ...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-fractured-purpose-of-workforce%E2%80%93education-partnerships","title":"The Fractured Purpose of Workforce–Education Partnerships","date_modified":"2025-10-18T19:08:29Z"},{"id":"the-threads-running-through-learning-work-and-purpose","html_content":"

Proposing a Framework Aligning Industry, Workforce, Career, and Learning

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-threads-running-through-learning-work-and-purpose","title":"The Threads Running Through Learning, Work, and Purpose ","date_modified":"2025-10-13T09:00:00Z"},{"id":"by-any-other-name-the-absurdity-of-the-%E2%80%9Cnon-student%E2%80%9D","html_content":"

The university proclaims itself the guardian of knowledge, the steward of learning across a lifetime. Yet within its walls a fracture persists. Some learners are welcomed as full members, granted status, services, and in...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/by-any-other-name-the-absurdity-of-the-%E2%80%9Cnon-student%E2%80%9D","title":"By Any Other Name: The Absurdity of the “Non-Student”","date_modified":"2025-10-02T16:38:15Z"},{"id":"beyond-the-pipeline-the-e%C2%B2-education-to-employment-ecosystem","html_content":"

For decades, education leaders relied upon the metaphor of the P–20 pipeline to describe the alignment of early childhood education, K–12 schooling, postsecondary study, and career preparation. This construct suggested a...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/beyond-the-pipeline-the-e%C2%B2-education-to-employment-ecosystem","title":"Beyond the Pipeline: The E² Education-to-Employment Ecosystem","date_modified":"2025-09-21T14:05:21Z"},{"id":"the-microcredential-integrity-gap-who-gets-to-define-quality","html_content":"

Higher education has been seduced by a false choice.

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-microcredential-integrity-gap-who-gets-to-define-quality","title":"The Microcredential Integrity Gap: Who Gets to Define Quality","date_modified":"2025-09-17T10:00:00Z"},{"id":"the-bridge-we-need-mid-career-adults-and-the-future-of-work","html_content":"

In the public conversation about workforce development, career transitions are often treated as marginal, as if they were side stories rather than central narratives of economic and human renewal. Higher education, workf...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-bridge-we-need-mid-career-adults-and-the-future-of-work","title":"The Bridge We Need: Mid-Career Adults and the Future of Work","date_modified":"2025-09-14T00:24:12Z"},{"id":"leadership-rising-iii-the-future-of-higher-education-and-work","html_content":"

The struggle over the future of higher education has entered a decisive phase. For much of the past half-century, the U.S. Department of Education provided a stabilizing national framework for access, equity, and academi...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/leadership-rising-iii-the-future-of-higher-education-and-work","title":"Leadership Rising III: The Future of Higher Education and Work","date_modified":"2025-09-10T23:58:38Z"},{"id":"once-there-was-berkeley-the-price-of-capitulation-in-the-academy","html_content":"

The following essay may seem, at first glance, like an “ivory tower” dispute, confined to faculty meetings and administrative memos. But the stakes reach far beyond academic politics. Across the United States, higher edu...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/once-there-was-berkeley-the-price-of-capitulation-in-the-academy","title":"Once There Was Berkeley: The Price of Capitulation in the Academy","date_modified":"2025-09-04T10:48:04Z"},{"id":"the-curriculum-of-resistance-we-must-not-stand-down","html_content":"

In 1970, the National Guard opened fire at Kent State. Four unarmed students were killed. The protest was against Vietnam and federal overreach, yet not all of the dead were even part of it. Some were simply walking acro...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-curriculum-of-resistance-we-must-not-stand-down","title":"The Curriculum of Resistance: We Must Not Stand Down","date_modified":"2025-08-16T09:53:24Z"},{"id":"the-microcredential-arms-race-counting-not-proving","html_content":"

The ascendance of microcredentials in recent years has transformed them from a peripheral experiment to a central force within higher education, bringing both possibility and profound uncertainty. Control over this domai...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-microcredential-arms-race-counting-not-proving","title":"The Microcredential Arms Race: Counting, Not Proving","date_modified":"2025-08-13T17:35:45Z"},{"id":"the-truth-tellers-why-power-fears-qualitative-researchers","html_content":"

When universities are attacked for their supposed ideological excesses, the outrage tends to focus on book bans, DEI offices, or the occasional gender studies course that sends state legislators into conniptions. What ra...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-truth-tellers-why-power-fears-qualitative-researchers","title":"The Truth-Tellers: Why Power Fears Qualitative Researchers","date_modified":"2025-08-02T14:07:14Z"},{"id":"the-workforce-pell-a-neoliberal-dream-come-true","html_content":"

The expansion of Pell Grant eligibility to short-term workforce programs has been celebrated as a triumph of access and responsiveness, a long-overdue democratization of financial aid for those who cannot afford the time...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-workforce-pell-a-neoliberal-dream-come-true","title":"The Workforce Pell: A Neoliberal Dream Come True?","date_modified":"2025-07-25T10:00:00Z"},{"id":"the-power-of-collective-expertise","html_content":"

Last week, I had the privilege of joining a team of Cleveland State University colleagues at the AAC&U Institute on Experiential Learning and Dialogue. The Institute convened higher education leaders to consider a pragma...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-power-of-collective-expertise","title":"The Power of Collective Expertise","date_modified":"2025-07-23T16:40:39Z"},{"id":"state-leadership-rising-part-2-state-agencies-as-architects","html_content":"

In a June blog post titled State Leadership Rising: Higher Education’s New Front Line, I argued that state boards and departments of higher education can no longer operate as passive conduits of federal and institutional...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/state-leadership-rising-part-2-state-agencies-as-architects","title":"State Leadership Rising, Part 2: State Agencies as Architects","date_modified":"2025-07-19T16:00:00Z"},{"id":"certified-and-empty-when-microcredentials-undermine-learning","html_content":"

In the current climate of educational utilitarianism, credentials have evolved into instruments of market signaling rather than authentic evidence of learning. Across higher education institutions, workforce development ...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/certified-and-empty-when-microcredentials-undermine-learning","title":"Certified and Empty: How Microcredentials Can Undermine Learning","date_modified":"2025-07-16T20:46:14Z"},{"id":"the-pedagogy-of-inclusion-rethinking-adult-education-in-schools","html_content":"

The times are undeniably changing, and American education must change with them. For K–12 school districts, the pressing question is no longer whether to serve adult learners, but how. While public schools have long prov...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/the-pedagogy-of-inclusion-rethinking-adult-education-in-schools","title":"Pedagogy of Change: Meeting the Adult Education Moment in K–12","date_modified":"2025-07-08T02:00:00Z"},{"id":"if-we%E2%80%99re-going-to-credential-everything","html_content":"

Let’s Start with Better Design Principles: A university framework for building microcredentials grounded in academic rigor, labor market alignment, and learner mobility.

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/if-we%E2%80%99re-going-to-credential-everything","title":"If We’re Going to Credential Everything","date_modified":"2025-07-01T18:47:02Z"},{"id":"state-leadership-rising-higher-education%E2%80%99s-new-front-line","html_content":"

With the reinstallation of the Trump administration, the destabilization of public education has ceased to be a residual concern and has reemerged as a present and intensifying threat. The administration’s initial term i...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/state-leadership-rising-higher-education%E2%80%99s-new-front-line","title":"State Leadership Rising: Higher Education’s New Front Line","date_modified":"2025-06-24T02:00:36Z"},{"id":"can-auxiliary-logic-save-at-risk-academic-programs","html_content":"

A newly appointed dean at a public university recently shared that an academic program within their college, although mission-consistent and pedagogically robust, was being evaluated for discontinuation. The decision was...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/can-auxiliary-logic-save-at-risk-academic-programs","title":"Can Auxiliary Logic Save At-Risk Academic Programs? ","date_modified":"2025-06-20T12:00:00Z"},{"id":"patchwork-to-pedagogy-workforce-education-as-anchor","html_content":"

Universities have been quick to insert “workforce” into their mission statements without first defining its scope or strategic intent. Workforce development, as a policy and labor market function, operates within the uni...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/patchwork-to-pedagogy-workforce-education-as-anchor","title":"Patchwork to Pedagogy: Workforce Education as Anchor","date_modified":"2025-06-19T16:00:00Z"},{"id":"not-the-dean-not-the-provost-leadership-outside-the-margins","html_content":"

In the mosaic of twenty-first-century higher education, the divisions that house continuing, professional, and workforce development programs remain structurally peripheral, yet functionally indispensable. While universi...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/not-the-dean-not-the-provost-leadership-outside-the-margins","title":"Not the Dean, Not the Provost: Leadership Outside the Margins","date_modified":"2025-06-15T18:00:00Z"},{"id":"how-radical-reclaiming-educational-purpose-in-workforce-policy","html_content":"

Recently, I posted a brief reflection on LinkedIn about a meeting I attended with workforce development professionals. The discussion focused heavily on short-term credentialing and job pipelines. I raised a concern abou...

","url":"https://nancyprattblogs.com/f/how-radical-reclaiming-educational-purpose-in-workforce-policy","title":"How Radical! Reclaiming Educational Purpose in Workforce Policy","date_modified":"2025-06-09T13:29:31Z"}]}