Posts Categorized: Newslink

Florida Is First State to Standardize

The Florida Department of Education announced the nation's first state assessment to incorporate common core standards.Working with the test developer McCann Associates, Florida will launch the test at 28 colleges in an effort to both place students and assess readiness for college-level work. Florida's Postsecondary Education Readiness Test (PERT) will be given to high school and entering postsec...

Maine Works on its System

Trustees of the University of Maine System got an update this week regarding the financial and programmatic health of the state’s seven university campuses and its online and distance-learning initiative called University College.Last year, projected budget shortfalls to the tune of $42.8 million prompted administrators to reevaluate the management and academic structures of the Maine system...

Conference on Immigrants as “Jet Fuel” for Jobs in Mass.

The Malden, Mass.-based Immigrant Learning Center Inc. (ILC) and Babson College will collaborate on a statewide conference for immigrant entrepreneurship to be hosted at Babson's Executive Conference Center in Wellesley, Mass. on Wednesday, Nov. 17, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.The ILC  says immigrants are "jet fuel" for entrepreneurship in Massachusetts, from neighborhood revitalization to increa...

How New England Fared in the 2010 Midterm Elections

It’s over. Gone are the acrimonious debates, boisterous crowds, vicious campaign attack ads, incessant robo calls and campaign paraphernalia cluttering street corners, highways, lawns and sidewalks. The voters have spoken in New England and across the nation.Nationally, Republicans swept races for governor, the state legislatures and the U.S. Congress. According to the National Conference of...

Men’s Club Redux? Fewer Women Win State Legislative Seats

The percentage of state lawmakers who are women will shrink to 23% in 2011, down slightly from almost 25% in 2010, according to a new report by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).This reverses a trend in which women made up a larger proportion of state legislatures each year back to 2005 when women comprised just over 22%.While New England legislatures have included more women hi...

MassBay CC Gets its Largest-Ever Grant; New Program Aims to Boost Haiti Partnership

MassBay Community College was awarded a five-year, $2 million grant under the U.S. Department of Education's Strengthening Institutions Program, which aims to help campuses serve lower-income students by enhancing academic quality, institutional management and fiscal stability. The Wellesley, Mass. college also won approval of a three-year Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPS...

Post-Election Post-Mortems Begin …

The Boston think tank MassINC will present "What just happened?" First impressions of the 2010 election results" with panelists Alison King of New England Cable News, Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe and Steven Koczela of MassINC Polling Group, on Friday, Nov. 5, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. To register, click here.****The New England Council (NEC) will sponso...

For-Profit Colleges: Futile Degrees or Fruitful Employment?

For-profit colleges such as the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University offer an alternative to traditional two-year and four-year non-profit institutions by focusing, if their rhetoric is to be believed, on learning “relevant material you can apply immediately to your workplace.” With the rise in unemployment and the difficulties college grads are experiencing securing jobs, for-p...

UConn Economics Professor to Speak at Eastern

Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU) will  host a lecture by University of Connecticut economics professor Fred Carstensen, director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, on Wednesday, Nov. 10, at 11 a.m., in the J. Eugene Smith Library.The lecture is part of the David T. Chase Free Enterprise Institute's Distinguished Lecture Series and is open to the public.Carstensen has ...

Rosalynn Carter to Speak at Regis College, Promote Her New Book on Mental Health

Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter will speak at the Regis College Fine Arts Center in Weston, Mass., on Monday, Nov. 8, at 4 p.m. Carter will be promoting her new book, Within Our Reach, which addresses a mental health system that, Carter says, "continues to fail those in need" despite recent scientific breakthroughs in diagnosing and treating mental illnesses. Carter will sign copies of the boo...