The Buzz Board
Picks from the Inner Circle
Joanne Lipman
Info
RSS
Joanne Lipman founded and was Editor in Chief of Condé Nast Portfolio, the National Magazine Award-winning business magazine and Web site. Previously, Lipman was a Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal, where she created and was Editor in Chief of Weekend Journal and created Personal Journal. She is a frequent television commentator on business issues. Founding Editor in Chief, Conde Nast Portfolio |
|
 This week’s must-read: Daniel Golden’s chilling exposé of how online universities are scamming soldiers (and taxpayers), in the Jan. 11 Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Golden finds that for-profit universities are raking in millions of dollars by signing up soldiers—at taxpayer expense—for courses of questionable value. One of the largest, University of Phoenix, offers active-duty soldiers an associate’s degree, which typically takes two years, in as little as five weeks. Another enrolled a soldier who suffered traumatic brain injury in Iraq and can’t remember what courses he’s taking. The online degrees don’t help much in landing civilian jobs, yet cost way more than a respected degree from the public and private universities that already hold classes on base. As a University of Maryland officer points out, “One has to ask: Is the Department of Defense getting what it is seeking?” |
Joanne Lipman
Info
RSS
Joanne Lipman founded and was Editor in Chief of Condé Nast Portfolio, the National Magazine Award-winning business magazine and Web site. Previously, Lipman was a Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal, where she created and was Editor in Chief of Weekend Journal and created Personal Journal. She is a frequent television commentator on business issues. Founding Editor in Chief, Conde Nast Portfolio |
|
 You’ll feel a lot better about the future of diplomacy when you check out Global21online.org. Created and run by Yale students, Global21 oversees The Globalist, a network of international-affairs magazines that has expanded to universities in eight countries including China, Israel, Turkey and South Africa. The far-flung student journalists (full disclosure: including my daughter) gather online to discuss everything from politics (a forum on Afghanistan) to pop culture (“Where were you when Michael Jackson died?”). The conversation is way more civil than what we hear from grownups—a welcome sign for us all. |
Joanne Lipman
Info
RSS
Joanne Lipman founded and was Editor in Chief of Condé Nast Portfolio, the National Magazine Award-winning business magazine and Web site. Previously, Lipman was a Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal, where she created and was Editor in Chief of Weekend Journal and created Personal Journal. She is a frequent television commentator on business issues. Founding Editor in Chief, Conde Nast Portfolio |
|
How do you fix health care? Scrap the current system and start all over again, argues The Atlantic in a provocative September cover story. It's the freshest take I've seen on the health-care debate. Author David Goldhill, a business executive whose father died unnecessarily from a hospital infection, advocates a radical solution that includes abolishing insurance altogether for routine care, while mandating catastrophic insurance for all. As he puts it, we don't expect auto insurance to pay for gas, nor should health insurance pay for doctor visits. Agree or disagree—and nobody will be lukewarm on this one—it's a powerful addition to the debate. |
Joanne Lipman
Info
RSS
Joanne Lipman founded and was Editor in Chief of Condé Nast Portfolio, the National Magazine Award-winning business magazine and Web site. Previously, Lipman was a Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal, where she created and was Editor in Chief of Weekend Journal and created Personal Journal. She is a frequent television commentator on business issues. Founding Editor in Chief, Conde Nast Portfolio |
|
Quick, name the safest investment. Now think again. Roger Lowenstein's superb New York Times magazine piece, No Safety in Numbers, finds that 'risk-free' U.S. Treasury bonds may be anything but. Ever since the Wall Street meltdown, spooked investors have been fleeing into Treasury bonds. But as Warren Buffett has warned, the "Treasury bond bubble of late 2008" may be on par with the dot-com bubble of the late '90s and the housing bubble of the early 2000s. Roger explains it all--in a way that's equal parts insightful and scary. |
