Posts Categorized: Admissions

Amid Attacks on Critical Race Theory, UMass Boston Launches Educational Leadership and Transformation Institute for Racial Justice

Since the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Tony McDade in 2020, among countless others, UMass Boston leadership has publicly committed to becoming an antiracist and health-promoting university. The university’s stated institutional values and commitments are also intricately tied to an academic freedom that wholly defends the right to teach about race, gender and other ...

Closing the Covid-Induced College and Career Readiness Divide

One day this past winter, as Covid restrictions began to fade, professionals from our educational nonprofit CFES Brilliant Pathways met in person with students and educators in Hawaii, North Carolina, New York and Massachusetts. It was the first time in nearly two years that many of our schools had allowed visitors to enter their buildings. That same morning, two members of our team led a virtual ...

If SCOTUS Bans Affirmative Action, How Will We Achieve Diversity?

Colleges need to prepare diversity strategies now for the day when the Supreme Court outlaws race-conscious admissions ... When President Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson for the U.S. Supreme Court, it seemed like a major civil rights victory. But that victory could feel like a bitter irony this fall, when the high court hears two cases that will likely obliterate affirmative action....

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...

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...

13 New England Colleges and Universities Sign on to NEBHE’s “North Star Collective” to Promote Racial Equity Among Faculty

Thirteen New England colleges and universities have signed on to NEBHE's new North Star Collective (NSC), a multi-institutional collaborative to boost Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) early-career faculty at New England colleges and universities. Meanwhile, NEBHE was awarded a $20,000 grant from the Hildreth Stewart Charitable Foundation to support the development and implementatio...

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...