Earlier this year, NEBHE President Michael K. Thomas and I sat down with higher education consultant Jack Maguire to talk about the problem of social and economic inequality—an increasingly prominent topic in national discussions of education and other matters.
Educated as a physicist, Maguire had been watching the skies when we visited to see how recent solar storms at the time affected the aurora borealis. He also couldn’t resist showing us a few of the lesser-known historical sites of Concord, Mass.—haunts of of Thoreau, Emerson and Alcott, and now Maguire Associates, his higher education consultancy focusing on “enrollment management.” Indeed, Maguire had coined the term for the holistic approach to recruitment and retention of students when he was dean of admissions at Boston College in the early 1970s. He introduced market research to the field of admissions, and applications to BC tripled during his tenure. He founded Maguire Associates in 1983.
He has recently become intrigued by the challenges of social and economic inequality. Last fall, he arranged a fascinating panel discussion titled To Have and Have Not: The Growing Economic and Social Divide and its Implications for Educational Leaders.
To hear some of Maguire’s remarks from our interview, click on the following audio links …
• Weaker teachers end up in weaker systems
https://www.nebhe.org/info/audio/interview/maguire/02_schools_and_inequality.mp3
• Teaching teachers how to teach
https://www.nebhe.org/info/audio/interview/maguire/03_teachers.mp3
• Teachers as revered citizens
https://www.nebhe.org/info/audio/interview/maguire/04_revered_profession.mp3
• Paying master teachers
https://www.nebhe.org/info/audio/interview/maguire/05_paying_master_teachers.mp3
• We’re more like Mexico than Canada in inequality
https://www.nebhe.org/info/audio/interview/maguire/06_gini_coefficient.mp3
• Ultra-rich have run away with incomes
https://www.nebhe.org/info/audio/interview/maguire/08_inequality_growing.mp3
• One hedge-fund manager worth 100,000 teachers?
https://www.nebhe.org/info/audio/interview/maguire/09_reich_quote.mp3
• Public institutions behaving more like private institutions
https://www.nebhe.org/info/audio/interview/maguire/12_tuition_and_equality.mp3
• Enrollment management is not the only cure for all that ails us today
https://www.nebhe.org/info/audio/interview/maguire/13_enrollment_management.mp3
• The 2020 degree goal cannot be achieved
https://www.nebhe.org/info/audio/interview/maguire/15_futurists.mp3
Special thanks to NEBHE Coordinator of Technology and Programs Daren Follweiler, who edited the audio clips.
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