Posts Categorized: Commentary

Laying Down a Higher Education Innovation Challenge

Some notable developments in higher ed ... ... As Southern Maine goes, so goes the nation? College faculty and administrations get along a bit like Congress and the president. In the tradition of shared governance, the administration may offer a sharp change in business policy; the faculty applies the brakes. But at the University of Southern Maine, faculty leaders and President Theo Kalikow ar...

Online Leadership at the Vortex of Academic Destiny

This is the first of a two-part essay on the organizational implications of online distance education. As online education becomes more ubiquitous nationally, it becomes even more strategic locally on each college campus. But these efforts are not dispersed comparably across institutions. Some higher education institutions have been more dynamic and decisive, and others paralyzed to act. The very...

Community College Transfers Can Thrive at Best Colleges and Universities

Not surprisingly, low-income students are more likely than their higher-income peers to start postsecondary education at lower-cost community colleges than at four-year institutions. Add this fact to the booming enrollment at community colleges—approximately 7 million students or nearly half of all undergraduate students today—and one can quickly surmise that community colleges are an importan...

New Directions for Higher Education: Q&A with Education Scholar Adrianna Kezar on the Changing Faculty

In April 2013, NEJHE launched its New Directions for Higher Education series to examine emerging issues, trends and ideas that have an impact on higher education policies, programs and practices. Past installments of the series featured Philip DiSalvio, dean of the College of Advancing & Professional Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, interviewing: Carnegie Foundation Pr...

Is the Northwestern Decision a Wake-Up Call for Higher Ed Institutions?

The recent decision by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that Northwestern University football players on scholarship are “employees” entitled to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) should serve as a wake-up call for higher education administrators. Part of a trend in which both the NLRB and unions are trying to expand the reach of collectiv...

Remember to Just Think

"I was just thinking" was columnist Mike Barnicle's lazy motif in the Boston Globe. Still, it's hard not to copy a lazy motif. So … I was just thinking ... Business leaders confirmed for the record this spring what they’ve been grousing about for years: Too few recent graduates have the skills to be good workers. That was the key finding in Northeastern University’s third annual survey on t...

Recasting History: The Public Option

If you ask Americans what is studied in history classrooms, many will answer “facts and dates.” If you ask them what people can do with a history degree, they answer “teach.” Yet those same Americans acknowledge the power and practical relevance of history as they flock to national parks, historic sites, museums and cultural heritage sites; buy nationally best-selling biographies; see hist...

MIA: Accuplacer Prep

Reports of the redesign of the SAT resonate with many parents and their school-age children who have had personal experience with the controversial college gatekeeper. But another test in the College Board portfolio, though not in the news, is arguably even more important to the future—or lack of a future—of high-school age students. It’s the Accuplacer. Accuplacer is, like the SAT, a ...

A Better SAT Starts With a Better College Board

It’s so easy to criticize the SAT that most observers overlook the weaknesses of its architect, the College Board. Until we replace the latter, however, we will never fix the former. The College Board has every incentive to create a complex, stressful, expensive college admissions system. And because it is accountable to no one, it has done just that. The College Board and ACT add over $500...

A University Looks at the College Board’s Redesigned SAT

As an institution that receives close to 50,000 applications for the 2,800 spaces for the first-year entering class, Northeastern University took special interest in the College Board’s March 5 announcement on the SAT redesign. In fact, our undergraduate admissions team took a break from finalizing our decisions to follow David Coleman’s announcement. After months of carefully reading and cons...