Posts Categorized: Analysis

Tuition Fees and Student Financial Assistance: 2010 Global Year

Since the start of the global financial crisis a little over two years ago, many concerns have been raised on how it might affect funding to higher education and whether or not it might hasten moves toward greater cost sharing. While, globally, some steps have been taken in this direction, in most countries, hard decisions have yet to be taken on this issue. Our inaugural annual survey of global ...

Trends & Indicators: NE Universities Still R&D Powerhouses

New England universities performed more than $4 billion worth of research and development in 2009, but the region’s share of total R&D performed by all U.S. universities remained at 7.3%, down from more than 10% in the 1980s.The region's university research labs have been world-famous for ideas that breed companies and whole industries in fields ranging from biotechnology to photonic...

How to Develop Learners Who Are Consistently Curious and Questioning

In the U.S., postsecondary education has long driven individual social mobility and collective economic prosperity. Nonetheless, the nation’s labor force includes 54 million adults who lack a college degree; of those, nearly 34 million have no college experience at all. In the 21st century, these numbers cannot sustain us. Returning to learning: Adults’ success in college is key to America’...

College Labor Shortages in 2018? Part Deux

“About every two years someone comes up with this story. There is absolutely nothing to it—it's simply not true,” Peter Capelli, Professor, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, commenting on the Georgetown's college labor supply shortage forecast. —“Prediction of Worker Shortage Has Critics,” The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.), April 10, 2010. The recent response by Anth...

The Real Education Crisis: Are 35% of all College Degrees in New England Unnecessary?

The notion of the "college labor market" as a fixed set of occupations is remarkably static. In contrast, we assume that job and skill requirements are dynamic. (This lively debate over future demand of college-educated workers will continue in our Forum.) Northeastern University economists Paul E. Harrington and Andrew M. Sum argue that in our recent report Help Wanted, we “radically over...

Making It Real

Incorporating cost management and productivity improvements into financing decisions ... Higher education is being challenged to increase access and degree attainment for all student groups—a tall order under any circumstances, but particularly daunting in the current economy. To do this, institutional and policy leaders will need to find ways to reduce costs and permanently reduce spending dem...