More people than ever are discussing higher education. And they’re doing it in new ways—on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and probably soon on new sites that have yet to be invented.
Twitter is particularly useful for staying informed about the world of higher education. Using it is like having the headlines of all your favorite blogs available—and you can organize those headlines in a way that suits you precisely. Here’s a handy primer to get you started on following some of the most influential tweeters in the higher education community. The links below take you to each organization’s Twitter page.
For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, don’t be discouraged. I include instructions below, and, remember, you don’t have to “tweet” to benefit from Twitter.
News Sources:
- The Chronicle of Higher Education (@chronicle): The leading news source for higher education
- Times Higher Education (@timeshighered): Global higher education news, views and reviews
- USA Today College (@USATODAYcollege): Preparing college students for tomorrow with USA Today
- The Huffington Post—College (@huffpostcollege): College news and more
- Inside Higher Ed (@insidehighered): Inside Higher Ed’s primary Twitter account.
Education Reformers:
- The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (@theFIREorg): A non-profit, non-partisan educational organization defending and sustaining individual rights at America’s colleges and universities
- UnCollege (@uncollege): Changing the notion that college is the only path to success.
- The Institute for Humane Studies (@theIHS): Advancing a freer society by supporting students, recent graduates, and academics interested in the ideas of liberty
- The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (@ISI): To Educate for Liberty…and doing so since 1953
- Minding the Campus (@MindingCampus): Dedicated to the revival of intellectual pluralism and the best traditions of liberal education at America’s universities
- The Pope Center (@PopeCenter): News, commentaries, and research—dedicated to improving higher education in North Carolina and the nation
- The National Association of Scholars (@NASorg): Scholars and citizens working together to re-civilize higher education
- Joanne Jacobs (@ccspotlight): A forum for discussion and debate about America’s community colleges
- Accuracy in Academia (@campusreport): AIA reports on bias and discrimination in education as well as other campus issues.
- The Center for College Affordability and Productivity (@theCCAP): Dedicated to research on the issues of rising costs and stagnant efficiency in higher education
- Phi Beta Cons (@PhiBetaCons): The Right take on higher education
You can follow the whole list of higher education reformers here.
Tweeters can also mark their posts with tags like #highered, #comm_coll, #onlinelearning, #finaid, or #edreform to attract readers who are interested in those subjects.
Readers, can you recommend other influential higher education Tweeters? If so, tell us in the comments!
Need to know how to get on Twitter? Start by going to twitter.com. You’ll be able to sign up with a name of your choosing. You can find sites to follow there, or you can click the Twitter icon on other websites. Pretty soon, you’ll get all kinds of, suggestions about what to follow. To see the results, you can always go to twitter.com and sign in, but you can also get the tweets on your mobile phone or download plug-ins that send the tweets to your browser. Enjoy!