When a university, or any organization, and its recruiting firm set out to find a new leader, they usually begin and end in a delusion. They declare their intention to find the best person for the job and, once all the sorting and sifting are done, they announce that they have indeed found the best person for the job. The odds are they have done no such thing—and, more to the point, there is...
Economic vitality and environmental protection have long been linked in New England, and will be again with efforts to address climate change in the region. There is an emerging body of literature to support the potential economic benefits of a so-called “green economy” in the region and the nation. In New Hampshire, economic studies of both the Renewable Portfolio Standards and R...
Of the many, many articles written on Harvard University’s endowment woes, I have yet to read one actually sympathetic with Harvard. Perhaps this reflects our gleeful voyeurism when the high-and-mighty fall, or sense of justice that the reckless should pay for their recklessness, or belief that no university truly needs or deserves such a large nest egg, or perhaps the reality that, even after t...
The Vermont Community Foundation’s 2009 report on postsecondary education asserts that college graduates live longer, healthier, more lucrative lives than their peers who did not graduate college. But the report is harsh in its assessment of the readiness of Vermont high school students for college, revealing that: one in three juniors is not proficient in reading; seven in 10 are not profic...
A lot of national attention was paid over the past few months to a situation in Central Falls, R.I., where the superintendent took the action of firing all the high school’s teachers. What started off as a small story about a labor dispute between the administration and the teachers’ union at the high school catapulted into the national education reform debate and had everyone talking ...
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...
