Entries in On Campus by Liz Willen

Should higher education produce happiness?

Liz Willen

March 06, 2014

increasing access and success, hechinger report, higher ed, sxsw

Should higher education produce happiness?

In the midst of a passionate discussion about the future of higher education here on Tuesday, one young man stood up and wanted to know if the goal of higher education is to make people productive – or to make them happy.

It was an unexpected query for a panel entitled: “Can the liberal arts survive in an age of innovation,’’and just one of the many dozens of discussions that have been taking place this week at SXSW.edu, a packed and often frantic festival of ideas, technology, workshops and networking.

About Liz Willen

Liz Willen is editor of The Hechinger Report and director of The Hechinger Institute. She is a former senior writer focused on higher education at Bloomberg Markets magazine. Willen spent the bulk of her career covering the New York City public school system for Newsday. She has won numerous prizes for education coverage and shared the 2005 George Polk Award for health reporting with two Bloomberg colleagues. Willen is a graduate of Tufts University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and an active New York City public school parent.