Author: James A. Bacon
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Virginia Scores No. 5 in Creative Class Ranking
Economic geographer Richard Florida has published a new book, “The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited,” and now that he’s blogging for The Atlantic, he’s publishing a lot of his data on his blog. Good news for fans of his creative-class analysis. I was pleased to see that the Old Dominion ranks fifth in the…
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Planning for Development that Will Never Come
by James A. Bacon Back in October the McDonnell administration announced what seemed to be a positive step forward in thinking about transportation. The Department of Rail and Public Transit (DRPT) launched a “Super NoVa” study of commuting patterns to help determine transit and transportation demand management (TDM) enhancements for Northern Virginia. While generally positive,…
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Sorry, Junior, We’re Not Paying to Send You to a Resort for Four Years
Andrew Rosen, chairman and CEO of Kaplan, Inc., during the Pearson Learning Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, last April: College today is a bundled product. In order to get the education, you have to buy the football team, the gardens and the climbing walls and stuff. You can’t just buy the education. But I think that…
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Warning Signs for Three Virginia Universities
My previous post, “Higher Ed’s Liquidity Crisis,” highlighted the findings of a new report, “The Financially Sustainable University,” that details the rising spending, increasing leverage and deteriorating finances of American colleges and Universities. While 40% of higher-ed institutions remain in reasonably good shape, a third are in trouble, according to the report. The report allows…
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Higher Ed’s Liquidity Crisis
by James A. Bacon The affordability crisis in higher education has seized the public imagination for good reason. Student loan debt now exceeds $1 trillion, millions of college students have mortgaged their personal futures, and Americans are questioning for the first time whether a college education is worth the price. This consumer backlash creates a…
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Bottom-Up Intellectual Ferment in Richmond
by James A. Bacon Is religion a positive force for solving environmental challenges? That was the topic of a friendly debate last night between Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, a former sustainability advisor to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Scott Wayne, a former British diplomat and now founder of the Frontier Project creativity consulting firm. The debate,…
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Gulp. Wal-Marts Increase Nearby Property Values
by James A. Bacon Intellectuals love to hate Wal-Mart. A vast cottage industry exists for the sole purpose of criticizing and thwarting the the opening of new stores. I suppose you could call me a fellow traveler. While I respect the retail giant for pioneering a logistical revolution that has squeezed tremendous costs out the…
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Darden and MOOCs, Not Exactly a Love Affair
Regarding my recent post on UVa partnering with Coursera (“Yes, Hybrid Online Learning Delivers“), I came across this blog post by the dean of the Darden School of Business, Robert F. Bruner. The dean, who was instrumental in forging the technology partnership, sounds less than convinced that MOOCs (massively open online courses) represents the future…
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Everything You Wanted to Know about Asphalt… and More
Amazing facts about asphalt… The petroleum byproduct was used as a preservative in mummy wrappings in ancient Egypt. Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., was the first street in the United States to paved with asphalt; the year was 1876. These days, as the Commonwealth Transportation Board learned Wednesday from Richard Schreck, executive vice president of…
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Yes, Hybrid Online Learning Delivers
The University of Virginia, it seems, is one of more than a dozen prestigious universities to have signed a partnership with Coursera, a company that provides hosting services for massively open online courses (MOOCs). The deal was in the works even as UVa was roiled by controversy over the forced resignation of President Teresa Sullivan,…
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CTB Takes Next Step on 460 Connector
The Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) formally authorized today the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to set up a 63-20 corporation capable of issuing bonds for construction of the U.S. 460 Connector between Suffolk and Petersburg. VDOT chose the quasi-state entity as the vehicle for building the interstate-grade highway, estimated to cost about $1.8 billion, because…
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A Wild and Crazy Idea: Base State Transit Funding on Performance, Not Spending
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s Department of Rail and Public Transit (DRPT) dishes out roughly $190 million a year in financial support to some 24 transit operations around the state, and that doesn’t include $50 million that goes to the Washington Metro system. Mark Aesch, CEO of the TransPro consulting firm, thinks that money can…
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Smart Cars Are Coming…. And They Will Need Smart Roads.
by James A. Bacon Computer-operated vehicles are coming, and they offer the potential to create dramatically safer, less congested roads, asserts Clifford Winston, a Brookings Institution scholar writing in the Wall Street Journal today. “The driverless car represents one of the most amazing breakthroughs in safety and quality of life in recent history.” The greatest…
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Expand Medicaid? Sure… If You Think Uncle Sam Can Keep His Financial Commitments
by James A. Bacon It looks like Virginia will get its first serious debate about Medicaid in decades. In its recent ruling on Obamacare, the Supreme Court made it optional for the states to participate in the law’s massive Medicaid expansion. After an initial phase-in period covered by the federal government, in which coverage will…
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Hey, It’s Worth a Look
The McDonnell administration has discovered $5.4 billion in “surplus” bond proceeds to help pay for Dulles Rail. Unfortunately, that’s all there is to pay for Dulles Toll Road improvements over the next four decades.