Posts Categorized: Journal Type

Pandemic-Caused Shift to Remote Learning Has Led to Novel Civil Rights Issues

When the pandemic shut down the country in March 2020, many college and university administrators predicted that civil rights complaints would plummet. With students learning from home and out of physical and social contact with one another, it seemed unlikely that there would be many claims of discrimination or sexual harassment under Title IX and other civil rights laws. But as it happens, the p...

Recommencing!

Long before Covid changed everything, NEJHE and NEBHE's Twitter channel kept a close eye on New England college commencements. "The annual spring descent on New England campuses of distinguished speakers, ranging from Nobel laureates to Pulitzer winners to grassroots miracle-workers, offers a precious reminder of what makes New England higher education higher," we bragged. "It is a lecture series ...

The Ghost of Affirmative Action Past: Courage in the Bully Pulpit at Dartmouth

The Supreme Court is taking up affirmative action at colleges and universities for the sixth time in 50 years. In that litany, an early case was the University of California vs. Bakke. Bakke complained about being denied admission to the university’s medical school because seats were guaranteed for minority applicants, thus barring the door to him and other white applicants. When the Bakke ca...

The MLK In You

In 1944, Morehouse College, then known as Augusta Baptist Institute, admitted a promising young man to their academic ranks named Martin Luther King Jr. No one could have imagined that this “ordinary student” would influence, inspire and change the trajectory of our nation and world in his 39 short-lived years. This week marks both the federal holiday celebrating Dr. King and the time w...

Can Academics Help Build a Partnership Between Humans and AI? (Books)

Book Review The Age of AI and our Human Future, by Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher, with Schuyler Schouten, New York, Little, Brown and Co., 2021. Reviewed by George McCully Artificial intelligence (AI) is engaged in overtaking and surpassing our long-traditional world of natural and human intelligence. In higher education, AI apps and their uses are multiply...

Food for Thought: A New Way to Measure “Farm-to-Campus” Operations

In January 2022, Farm to Institution New England (FINE) will launch the New England Farm and Sea to Campus Data Center, a new system for collecting, measuring and reporting farm-to-campus activity ... “Farm to campus” is a growing movement to mobilize the influence and power of colleges and universities to shape the food system. Research done before the Covid-19 pandemic shows that New Engl...

Why We Can’t Measure What Matters Most in Education

What do students learn in school? In the 21st century, this question has become a political dilemma for countries around the globe. It is a deceptively simple question, but there has never been an easy answer. The problem of measuring student learning appears to express an educational problem: What and how much do students learn? And yet, when you investigate the educational accountability move...

OpenCSCU and the Evolution of Open Communications in Connecticut State Colleges & Universities

The 17-institution Connecticut State Colleges & Universities System (CSCU) formed a systemwide open educational resources (OER) Council in 2017 that was primarily focused on the adoption of no-cost or low-cost (NOLO) course materials as a means to provide equitable access to learning materials. Our CSCU consortium of library directors partnered with the OER Council to construct a websit...

Keys to the Survival of Predominantly White Institutions: Recruitment and Retention of Black and Brown Students

In a recent meeting with a young college recruitment officer, I posed the question: When and why did your institution decide that it would not recruit in some of the major urban centers in the U.S.? He was forthright in his response. He matter-of-factly said that, in the early 2000s, his institution decided not to recruit in these centers because of the high levels of violence and the poor quality...

Learning from Everywhere

Millions of Americans are blocked from achieving their economic, social and civic potential by an education system that fails to capture and recognize their knowledge, skills and abilities. At the heart of this systemic obstruction of opportunity lies our failure to understand and value personal learning. Using the life stories of personal learners, Stories from the Educational Underground: The Ne...