Frankly, we're envious of Anya Kamenetz, author of DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. Not because her book is selling so well, but because she is having what seems to be a delightful time, traveling and meeting with many of the movers and shakers in higher education. Her blog, DIY U, is where she posts about some of those experiences.

In Education and the Laying on of Hands (which refers to that mysterious something a professor can only do in a face to face, physical classroom) she shares observations and communications she's recently had about a panel discussion she participated in at UC San Diego recently.

What we find most interesting is her observation in response to the hundreds of professors who signed a petition against the findings of Washington State's "2020 Commission on the Future of Higher Education." They wrote: "One of the problems with the newest crop of distance-learning institutions is that they are motivated entirely by profit" She replies: This is true. The gauntlet has been thrown down. Public institutions need to get involved in defining online learning education or it will be defined for them by a set of institutions with very different agendas. (Our emphasis.)