Reflection

As most of my classmates know by now that I am a town manager for a municipality. So, I reviewed my posts to see any commonalities or recurring themes in blog posts. After reviewing the posts I noticed that my posts and many other posts are related to political actions taken or proposed by politicians. Many posts included President Obama, Governor Scott Walker and presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio. In the posts, I also discuss graduate options for people looking to go back to school for a career change or promotion. These discussions generally focus on effect on revenue or expense shifts in higher education. These challenges are of great importance to everyone, thus, it is a topic that requires the attention of leaders at all levels.

The many topics covered in most of my posts are different options or proposals by the different representatives at the state and federal level. Governor Scott Walker wanted to cut the Wisconsin University System by $300M. Bernie Sanders wants to provide free public education at 4-year institutions by placing new taxes on Wall Street. Hillary Clinton wants to provide states the ability to opt-in to a tuition-free system that requires them to submit themselves to federal rules, laws and oversight. However, this option allows states to opt out too. Marco Rubio chooses to address the problems in higher education by attacking it in individual pieces of legislation. All of them have different solutions to the problem, but I can see a common theme in my posts looking to solve the many problems facing colleges in the US.

The other issue I addressed concerned graduate certificate programs now offered by universities to meet the different educational needs by people looking to change careers or advance in their career. This post investigated and explained what graduate certificates are because many are unfamiliar with them and their purpose. I also discovered the ability for universities to use existing infrastructure and faculty to make additional revenue by offering these programs. Both Lenoir-Rhyne and Appalachian State University offer certificates in different areas for people in this region to change or advance in careers. All in all, my posts followed a pattern and had connectable dots linking them throughout the semester.