Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, a leading charity for breast cancer, announced the termination of its partnership with Planned Parenthood in prevention screenings and education.  Their reasoning, according to a statement from Komen’s spokeswoman Leslie Aun, is that Komen refuses to partner with organizations under investigation by local, state or federal authorities.

Pro-life groups like Americans United for Life praised the decision, which will drain funding for the nation’s largest abortion provider (and draw further attention to the ongoing investigation).

Alan Jacobs, Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College, writes in The Atlantic on the growing phenomenon of online education, calling it “The Great Unbundling of the University.” An excerpt:

For a long time now, universities have flourished by offering a bundled package of knowledge and credentialing. People attended university in order to learn stuff that they couldn’t learn elsewhere — because the experts weren’t elsewhere — and to be certified by those experts as having actually learned said stuff. The bundle has been a culturally powerful one.

But now: unbundling. Clearly, many universities have come, or are coming, to the conclusion that their primary product is the credentialing, and that they can give knowledge away either as a public service or as brand consolidation (choose your interpretation according to your level of cynicism).

Read the rest.

Marcus Buckingham, from First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently:

Our research yielded many discovers, but the most powerful was this: Talented employees need great managers.

The talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world-class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.

When talented employees work for mediocre managers, they either leave or stagnate. Now the latter might include high levels of productivity outside the organization (new initiatives kindled “after hours,” moonlighting opportunities, etc.), but the organization with the mediocre manager is still, ultimately, the loser on such occasions.

HT: Matt Perman