Posts Categorized: Journal Type

Applications to One Business School Skyrocketed Despite Recession

In the past two years, the global financial crisis has wreaked havoc on businesses in America and abroad. But the gloom and doom seems to have had the opposite effect on business schools. The reason is that a recession often signals the perfect time for proactive students to sharpen their skill sets, shift their career goals (whether toward a different industry or role) and place themselves in a p...

Putting Money Where the Mouth Is

Ways to build momentum for college completionAmong policymakers at the federal and state levels, as well as within the philanthropic community, there is an overdue awareness that the U.S. and its constituent states need a more highly educated citizenry and workforce. The country is already well behind several other countries in the proportion of its young adult population that has attained a colle...

Turning Around International Comparative Indicators

We have a habit of taking international comparisons of various aspects of higher education that are produced in—to put it gently—dubious ways, and delighting in our terrible and/or falling position. It’s time to cease and desist this self-flaggelatory habit. Even rhetorically, as a goad to improve, the statements have been uttered so often that they have lost all meaning and effe...

A Very Fragile STEM: Why We Are Stifled in the Sciences

This is my first experience writing about something I understood far better in high school than throughout college and career. Not only do I suspect I am not alone, but I believe this is symptomatic of the very point I plan to make. Unlike so many other fields, the sciences tend to sort us early in our lives between insiders and everyone else. Those excluded early—or who eventually drift awa...

In Texas, a Statewide Commitment to Transfer

The Texas Transfer Success Conference, held at eight sites across Texas in May 2009, drew more than 1,000 attendees from Texas and international colleges and universities. The purpose of the conference was to discuss strategies and principles for increasing the effectiveness of inter-institutional transfer for students. In Texas, some 80% of bachelor degree holders will earn credits from more than...

Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation

The following is excerpted from “Make Way for Millennials! How Today's Students are Shaping Higher Education Space” by Persis C. Rickes, founder of the Massachusetts-based higher education consulting firm Rickes Associates. The full piece first appeared in Planning for Higher Education, the journal of the Society for College and University Planning at www.scup.org/phe.html. The monikers are...

Trends & Indicators 2010: Demography

Since 1990, New England’s population has grown by just 9%, compared with 23% for the nation as a whole and more than 62% for the Mountain states. New England’s slow population growth has scared off potential employers and threatened the region’s clout in the population-based U.S. House of Representatives. Massachusetts is among eight states in the Northeast and Midwest th...

Trends & Indicators 2010: High School Success

More than three-quarters of New England 9th-graders graduate from high school in the normal four years time, compared with 70% nationally. Several foreign countries outperform the U.S. in the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with a high school credential. Fig. 6: Public High School Graduates in New England, 2010 to 2022Click on the chart to view it full size in a new window.Source: New England...

Trends & Indicators 2010: College Readiness

Fewer than half of New England students who finish high school have completed the necessary courses and mastered the skills to be considered “college ready.” But New England states perform above the national norm on most indicators of college readiness. In Massachusetts, a new “Vision Project” has five goals: increase the rate of high school graduates who attend college; ...

Trends & Indicators 2010: Higher Education Enrollment

More than 928,000 students were enrolled at New England’s colleges and universities in 2008, up by more than 100,000 students over the decade. Nearly half of New England college students attend private institutions, compared with just over one-quarter nationally. Women students began to outnumber men on New England college and university campuses in 1978, and the imbalance has grown to a...