Updated April 2012 ...
New England public schools were expected to award more than 147,000 high school diplomas in 2008-09.
Fully 78% of New England 9th-graders graduate from high school in the "normal" four years time, compared with 70% nationally.
Nearly a dozen foreign countries outperform the U.S. in the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with a high school credential.
Nationally, Latino yo...
On April 3, NEBHE convened hundreds of New England opinion leaders at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston to discuss "Locally and Regionally Engaged: New England Colleges and Universities as Drivers of Innovation, Workforce and Economic Development." NEBHE Program Coordinator (and videographer) Erica Pritchard and NEJHE Executive Editor John O. Harney caught up with keynote speaker Gov. Peter Shum...
2012 is a year of interest and consequence to all of New England higher education. ...This year marks the 150th anniversary of the first Morrill Land Grant Act, named after the great Vermont senator, Justin Morrill, who was instrumental in its creation and passage. Not only is the region’s higher education community reminded of its great tradition and leadership, it is compelled by the...
Why students should play a designer role in the creation of new (and better!) school experiences.
Choosing a school is only the first step in planning an academic career. After making a selection, students must match interests and passions with an academic program and make important decisions about which courses to take and when to take them. Yet many students struggle with these choices and ha...
Anyone who fixates on graduation rates has little understanding not only of the rich mission and value of our community colleges, but also how deeply flawed and inadequate those rates are as a principal assessment tool for the performance of community colleges.Graduation rate calculations apply to a small fraction of our entire student population (about 15%). That is because this national measure ...
Demographics in American higher education are changing dramatically. A recent study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) reveals that 11.3 million people ages 16 to 26 (one in four) are first- and second-generation immigrants. Moreover, the report continues, between 1995 and 2010, immigrant-origin youth accounted for half of all growth in the nation’s population of young people overall. This ...
President Obama's proposed FY 2013 budget would encourage community college partnerships with employers, target student aid for colleges that restrain tuition prices, and increase overall spending on U.S. Education Department programs by 2.5% to nearly $70 billion. That would be the largest percentage increase for any domestic department in the president's proposed federal budget for FY 2013, whi...
In Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s recent 2012 State of the Commonwealth address, he reported that 240,000 people were still looking for work in Massachusetts – and there were nearly 120,000 job openings. Business leaders have told the governor that job applicants don’t have the skills required. One of the actions Patrick called for in response was for better alignment between...
When I first started as interim director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS) based at the University of Massachusetts Boston, I was given three studies that broadly identified specific needs and disparities of Native people in the region. These studies looked at demographic data provided by the U.S. Census, tribes and surveys of regional tribes and Native American non...
Maybe the classroom is where we should seek the transformation we need in higher education ...
For several years now, many of us have been agonizing over the sorry state of American higher education—indeed, of our entire educational system—and for good reason:
Once the U.S. had the highest college completion rates in the world, we now rank 12th among 25-35 year-olds in developed coun...
2012 is a year of interest and consequence to all of New England higher education. ...This year marks the 150th anniversary of the first Morrill Land Grant Act, named after the great Vermont senator, Justin Morrill, who was instrumental in its creation and passage. Not only is the region’s higher education community reminded of its great tradition and leadership, it is compelled by the... 
Why students should play a designer role in the creation of new (and better!) school experiences.
Choosing a school is only the first step in planning an academic career. After making a selection, students must match interests and passions with an academic program and make important decisions about which courses to take and when to take them. Yet many students struggle with these choices and ha... 
Anyone who fixates on graduation rates has little understanding not only of the rich mission and value of our community colleges, but also how deeply flawed and inadequate those rates are as a principal assessment tool for the performance of community colleges.Graduation rate calculations apply to a small fraction of our entire student population (about 15%). That is because this national measure ... 
Demographics in American higher education are changing dramatically. A recent study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) reveals that 11.3 million people ages 16 to 26 (one in four) are first- and second-generation immigrants. Moreover, the report continues, between 1995 and 2010, immigrant-origin youth accounted for half of all growth in the nation’s population of young people overall. This ... 
President Obama's proposed FY 2013 budget would encourage community college partnerships with employers, target student aid for colleges that restrain tuition prices, and increase overall spending on U.S. Education Department programs by 2.5% to nearly $70 billion. That would be the largest percentage increase for any domestic department in the president's proposed federal budget for FY 2013, whi... 
In Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s recent 2012 State of the Commonwealth address, he reported that 240,000 people were still looking for work in Massachusetts – and there were nearly 120,000 job openings. Business leaders have told the governor that job applicants don’t have the skills required. One of the actions Patrick called for in response was for better alignment between... 
When I first started as interim director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS) based at the University of Massachusetts Boston, I was given three studies that broadly identified specific needs and disparities of Native people in the region. These studies looked at demographic data provided by the U.S. Census, tribes and surveys of regional tribes and Native American non... 
Maybe the classroom is where we should seek the transformation we need in higher education ...
For several years now, many of us have been agonizing over the sorry state of American higher education—indeed, of our entire educational system—and for good reason:
Once the U.S. had the highest college completion rates in the world, we now rank 12th among 25-35 year-olds in developed coun...