Posts Categorized: Analysis

Affirmative Action and the Search for Alternatives

The Supreme Court may ban race-based affirmative action for college admissions this year. But that does not mean schools will abandon their diversity goals. As administrators wait for the high court to issue its final decision in two key affirmative action cases, they are figuring out how they can continue to create the heterogenous campuses they want. It is not an easy task. In an effort to...

COVID-19 Shutdowns Are Hitting Low-Income Workers Especially Hard

Our recent NEJHE piece revealed  that labor market impacts of COVID-19 shutdowns have been very unequal across industries, occupations and levels of educational attainment. Job losses in the month since the beginning of the shutdowns (between mid-March and mid-April) were concentrated in industries that primarily employ individuals with lower levels of education—industries such as leisure and h...

Disastrous Job Loss Must Prompt Creative Measures to Protect Workers and Consumers

Friday May 8 saw the release of the most disastrous monthly jobs report in American economic history. In its monthly Employment Situation released last Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported: Payroll employment levels declined by 20.5 million between mid-March when the COVID-19 lockdowns began in earnest and mid-April—a decline that is more than two orders of magnitude greater...

Do the Gains from GEAR UP Participation in School Fade Out in College? A Follow-Up

The federally financed GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Program) was organized two decades ago with the purpose of increasing high school completion and college enrollment among low-income students. The College Crusade of Rhode Island’s GEAR UP program was designed as a long-term effort to buttress student success by providing various kinds of educational and soci...

New England Legislative Sessions: Emerging Trends in Higher Education and Workforce Development That We’re Watching

Across New England, the days are starting to get longer, everyone is hoping spring weather is just around the corner, and each state’s legislative session is firmly underway. While it’s still relatively early in the current sessions, at NEBHE we’re taking a first look at the major issues and trends we see emerging in the region’s legislatures related to higher education and workforce de...

The Votes Are In … Now, the Hard Work

Editor's Note: New England and the nation have long suffered from an underrepresentation of women and people of color in higher elected offices. In the 2018 midterms, that began to change. Below, Carolyn Morwick, director of government and community relations at NEBHE and former director of the Caucus of New England State Legislatures, takes a state-by-state look at New England elections and s...

From the Corner Office: New England Governors’ Budget Proposals

Connecticut Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont delivered a two-year budget plan of $43.1 billion to lawmakers, emphasizing that the state’s crushing fixed costs relative to its pension funds must be addressed. To accomplish this, he proposed restructuring, refinancing the systems’ payments and slowing the rate of increase in the teachers’ pension fund and the state employee pension fund, both of ...

Besides Enriching New England Life, International Students Help Bolster College Enrollments and Local Economies

New England faces a concerning dip in its higher education enrollment, due in significant part to declines in the region’s birth and high school graduation rates that are both projected to continue through 2029. Despite these trends, New England’s postsecondary institutions continue to attract a large number of international students to the region, according to the 2018 Open Doors report relea...

Educational Attainment, Foundational Skills and Worker Earnings

The earnings advantages to adults with more schooling are well-documented. High school graduates typically have higher earnings than high school dropouts, and those with a bachelor’s degree have higher earnings than both groups. Furthermore, as the job content of the nation’s economy has shifted in a way that generally favors those with more schooling, these earnings gaps between those with mo...

Support Responsibilities in an Age of Campus Suicide

In 2004, then-University of New England President Sandra Featherman authored a piece for NEJHE (then called Connection) headlined “Emotional Rescue” and focusing on how a new generation of troubled college students was putting a strain on campus resources. Featherman, who died in April, wrote of colleges and universities scrambling to provide additional and better support services for students...