I can't help being reminded of that story when in my daily work as a Chronicle writer I hear the chorus of complaints about the state of higher education. You've heard them, too: Higher education is broken; it needs reinvigoration and reinvention to get students out the door and on their own as soon as possible. Lawmakers say colleges need to make students employable and to create jobs. Some critics say colleges should use technology to scale up; others go so far as to bemoan the physical campus as an unnecessary, expensive burden in an online world. In that cultural and economic climate, liberal-arts colleges have been at pains to articulate their usefulness. They have emphasized that they teach students how to think, how to be engaged, world citizens—not merely how to do a job.

Instead of viewing the physical campus as a burden, why not see it as an asset, even beyond the aesthetic attractions of the quad? With some imagination, couldn't these colleges use their campuses and rural settings to train students in valuable hands-on skills?

The professors there routinely tie the skills taught on the farm to the sustainability lessons in the classroom. "Many educational institutions pride themselves on preparing students to lead a life of inquiry,"

What does this mean for our own data spills? “Honestly, I’m more worried about people finding out stuff about me,” said Jill Soloway, a comedian and TV writer and producer. “A lot of times I’ll post things like, ‘Let’s organize a hipster Jewish Shabbat!’ and then I think, what if businesspeople think I’m this religious Jewish person now? Something that seems fun and silly to me might seem really weird to a co-worker.