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REMINDER: UND’s March 11 Eye of the Hawk Lecture will focus on the future of education

The University of North Dakota will hold an Eye of the Hawk Lecture, “An Evening with Tressie McMillan Cottom on the Future of Education” at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 11. Please pre-register for the Zoom link.

Join us for an evening with scholar Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom, an associate professor in the School of Library and Information Science and senior research faculty in the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina. She has been a faculty affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University since 2015.

Tressie McMillan Cottom

From NPR to the Economic Policy Institute to The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, 2020 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, McMillan Cottom brings accessible communication that resonates with audiences far and wide.

In her book, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy (2017), McMillan Cottom explores the rapid growth of these institutions in the context of rising inequality in the United States.

She looks at for-profit education from multiple perspectives, including her experience as an admissions counselor at a for-profit college and the motives and goals of students from a variety of backgrounds who attend these institutions. Her analysis identifies the systemic conditions supporting the predatory marketing behavior in the for-profit college industry, including the limited accessibility of public institutions, discrimination in credit markets, and the increased necessity of academic credentials for securing a prosperous future. The book has reverberated amongst educators and policymakers and has influenced recent policy debates about the racial, gender, and class inequalities of educational institutions.

The book has been described as “a comprehensive look at the forces that shape the potential for a better future—a brighter tomorrow for ourselves, for our families, and for the next generation. It is also a deep analysis of the way we deliver college degrees in America and how post-secondary education is sold to us all as the solution to our nation’s broken social contract,”  said Dr. Stephanie Kelton, leading expert on modern monetary theory and a former chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee.

About Eye of the Hawk Lectures

The goal of the Eye of the Hawk Series, now in its fifth year, is to provide unique educational opportunities through seminars and lectures. The series brings perspectives from visiting scholars or experts to UND, and provides learning activities or content that would be unavailable without endowment support. Lectures engage the UND community as well as the larger regional community, in a shared learning activity that adds value to the UND experience and in alignment with the donor’s intent.

The lecture series is supported by UND academics and the Provost’s office. All events are open to UND faculty, staff, students and community members.

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