The value of a college degree is well documented. College graduates earn at least 60% more than high school graduates. Beyond the economic value, college graduates show higher rates of civic participation, engage in volunteer work and even have a much higher likelihood of being “happy,” according to a 2005 survey by the Pew Research Center. Students who drop out without attaining a col...
Evidence about the role that “soft factors” like student engagement and school environment play in influencing whether high school students go on to enroll in college is hard to come by. Over the past two years, the Center for Labor Market Studies (CLMS) of Northeastern University, with support from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and the Rhode Island Board of Governors of Hig...
When faced with a challenge, the people of Maine tend to be very pragmatic and straightforward. Those cultural values helped guide our approach to dealing with a rapidly growing structural gap in the finances of the University of Maine System.Even before the international financial crisis, we were looking at a $42.8 million projected annual shortfall between revenues and expenses within four ...
Editor’s Note: The Summer 2000 issue of Connection, NEJHE’s predecessor, included a series of pieces headlined “Charter Colleges: Evolution of a Plan,” exploring whether public colleges could operate more efficiently and produce higher quality educational results if they were freed from the controls imposed by state bureaucracies.
Community colleges are under inc...
The Gates Unbarred: A History of University Extension at Harvard, 1910-2009; Michael Shinagel; Harvard University Extension Monograph, Puritan Press, Hollis, N.H., 2009; $14.95
Reviewed by Alan R. Earls, a Boston-area writer who earned a graduate certificate through Harvard Extension.
The old saying, attributed variously to John F. Kennedy and Count Ciano, that success has many fathers might...
You’d think that being the nation’s only private, urban, two-year technical college might be a source of some notoriety, especially if that institution also traces its history back to a bequest in Benjamin Franklin’s will. But even among New England’s higher education community, Boston’s Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology (BFIT) is a hidden jewel.
The reasons to pay attention t...
Accessibility, affordability and accountability characterize the work of President Barack Obama who, since taking office, has worked with Congress to influence policy that affects both K-12 and higher education. Stimulus funds in the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act provided nearly $50 billion to states to help offset state budget cuts and to spur initial reform efforts. Subsequen...
Today’s fast-paced and Internet-driven society provides a lot of opportunities for innovation in the college financial aid world. As tuition costs continue to rise faster than average incomes, more students are turning to private lenders and other third-party organizations to finance their educations; the Harvard Educational Review estimates that there was a 76% increase in the amount of debt th...
NEBHE’s compendium of higher education trend data has been a widely consulted collection of state, regional and national statistics for more than half a century. The 60-plus tables and charts richly juxtapose figures on college readiness, higher education enrollment, financing and much more, while offering a shorthand of New England’s cultural and economic vitality.The data are drawn f...
In the fall of 2005, the Academic Council of Tufts University proposed a new slogan to characterize its mission in educating students: “New Leaders for a Changing World.” Many colleges, of course, have slogans of various kinds. The challenge is how each translates its words into action in an authentic manner.
This theory of leadership (proposed by Robert Sternberg, co-author of this article)...
In the fall of 2005, the Academic Council of Tufts University proposed a new slogan to characterize its mission in educating students: “New Leaders for a Changing World.” Many colleges, of course, have slogans of various kinds. The challenge is how each translates its words into action in an authentic manner.
This theory of leadership (proposed by Robert Sternberg, co-author of this article)...