Score One for the Reverse Auction Research Center: But we do have "Peace on Our Time!"

Say, kudos to our friend Jason Busch at SpendMatters (http://www.spendmatters.com/). In his latest article, Illinois Reverse Auctions Redux -- When Journalists Selectively Quote to Skew Stories, Jason took to task both Crain's Chicago Business and Dr. Robert Emiliani on the article that the publication recently ran on the Illinois law enabling reverse auctions in the state's procurement.


To his credit,  Dr. Emiliani made a good reply to Jason's post that is well worth reading - and he even reached out to me on the matter and we had a great, long discussion on the matter (the substance of which shall properly remain private). I hope that in the future, we'll see more even-handed coverage of the positive aspects- and yes, some pitfalls of reverse auctions. While understanding the nature of editing, it's important to look at both sides - and to include the short and long-term benefits of using the most progressive procurement techniques in public sector buying - especially when taxpayer dollars - and their confidence - are at stake.

David

From the Reverse Auction Research Center: http://reverseauctionresearch.blogspot.com/

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The Rest of the Country Follows OUR Lead on Textbook Rental

One of the things that makes Southeastern very unique is the fact that we are one of the few colleges in the country that has a textbook rental system. Now with the rising costs of textbooks (up FOURTEEN PERCENT in the last year alone!), there are budding entrepreneurial start-ups like Chegg (http://www.chegg.com/) and Campus Book Rentals (http://www.campusbookrentals.com/) - and a little company called Barnes & Noble - that are starting to enter this market - with the cooperation of universities and their bookstores.

Read about these developments here in an article from today's Boston Herald:

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/07/26/as_college_text_prices_soar_students_get_a_rental_option/



What are your thoughts? How much do you think this has saved you as a student over your college career? What does this mean to you as a professor? Post your thoughts as comments here on the blog...and share this post to show how little old Southeastern Louisiana University has been doing something for decades that other leading colleges and universities are scrambling to put together now to serve their students!

David

P.S. An Important Point: This blog is not endorsed by, funded by, supported by, controlled by, (insert your verb here) by the Administration at Southeastern Louisiana University. All the input you see here is being done by faculty, staff, and students who care about Southeastern, and we are taking our own off-duty time and effort to use this space to publicize the things that are being done, today, on our campus and in our outreach beyond.



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