Posts Categorized: Analysis

Add a Caption and Call It Accessible? Not so Fast!

NEJHE on Models that Will Change Higher Ed Forever MOOCs claim to make education accessible to everyone, but institutions offering MOOCs have yet to define best practices for accessible design. For many, universal design efforts end when course video material has been captioned. Captioning is important, but the idea that you can just caption course video and call a MOOC accessible belongs on the ...

Improving Math Success in Higher Education Institutions

Many students begin higher education unprepared for college-level work in mathematics and must take non-credit developmental courses. Furthermore, many are math-phobic and avoid courses, majors and careers that involve quantitative work. Yet science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields are among the few job-growth areas in the U.S. Many companies are lobbying the federal governme...

Linking Top-Down to Bottom-Up for Sustainability

It is now a commonplace to assert that education institutions have some responsibility to contribute to the effort to remake our world so civilization will be sustainable into the future. A history of this idea would capture the many programs of environmental research and teaching that have taken place at universities and colleges, going back centuries, but would certainly also note the founding i...

Undocumented Immigrants and College: Tear Down the Walls

Immigration reform is gathering steam. In late January, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators announced an agreement on principles for immigration reform, that may include paths for undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship. Based on earlier immigration reform proposals, these pathways to “earning” citizenship will likely include earning a postsecondary degree after a high school diploma or eq...

Single-Source Responsibility: An Innovative Way to Build College Sports, Fitness and Rec Facilities

While schools wrestled with how to build a new athletic facility in the middle of a recession, Tufts University’s Athletics and Operations Departments worked with a Massachusetts-based developer called Stanmar Inc. to devise a creative solution to designing, building and financing a new sports and fitness center in just under 24 months.In an education environment that is experiencing rising ...

Trendsetting: A New Way to Keep Up With Trends & Indicators in New England’s Education and Economy

Introducing NEBHE's new Trends & Indicators ... It should go without saying that data is tricky (or is it are tricky?).Take the issue of student aid as one example. Some states have annual budgets; some have biennial. Some states report all kinds of aid in one place; others leave it to observers to patch together the hodgepodge of merit and need-based programs from the state’s gener...

Coming to Terms with MOOCs: A Community College Angle

When MIT approached Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) to participate in edX, the new Harvard/MIT massive open online course (MOOC) initiative, we reacted with both interest and skepticism. What did MIT have in mind for Bunker Hill Community College? How would edX “transform the way that community college students learn” as edX President Anant Agarwal claimed, when he discussed the l...

Advancing a Fumble?

National report looks at impact of college spending on athletics and academics For some small colleges, just the sight of the school's branded team bus traveling to road games can nail a marketing extra point. And television deals bring big bucks to major football programs. But for the most part, spending on college athletics drains money from campuses still bruised by recession and, as faculty...

Degrees of Durability and the New World of Credentialing

Those that believe a higher education degree is becoming increasingly superfluous make reference to the fact that 19 of the top 100 chief executives in the Fortune 500 lack college degrees. In consideration of that, a recent U.S. News analysis of the Fortune 500 CEOs reports that many of those CEOs who hold academic degrees choose not to mention their degree as among their achievements in their c...

Get Into the Higher Ed Act

Nearly 50 years after the landmark legislation aimed to open higher education to all Americans, colleges and students face a new set of threats ... The Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) was signed into law on Nov. 8, 1965 to strengthen the educational resources of our colleges and universities and to provide financial assistance for students in postsecondary education. During reauthorization...