Posts Categorized: Admissions

Multiple Pathways for All Students

Maine has been focusing on the importance of postsecondary training. As the Maine Department of Education’s Pre-K-16 Task Force noted: “To guarantee a more promising future for Maine youth and to ensure economic vitality in our state, we need to dramatically increase the number of citizens with either an associate or a baccalaureate degree.” Maine’s Skowhegan Area High School (SAHS) and...

Trends & Indicators: Enrollment Period

Updated December 2011 ... Since NEBHE began publishing tables and charts exploring “Trends & Indicators” in New England higher education more than a half-century ago, few figures have grabbed as much attention as college enrollment data. These local, state, regional and national data go beyond simple headcounts of students going to college to tell the stories of New England's chang...

Risk Factors: Colleges Look to Manage Threats Ranging From Fraud to Data Breaches

Recently, a former administrator at a Boston law school admitted that he used a school computer to embezzle more than $173,000. As the former controller, he accessed the school’s accounting system, creating false checks, which he deposited into his personal bank account. As part of his scheme, the former controller used the signature stamps of other employees to sign the checks without their app...

LGBTQA: Big Letters on Campus

Editor’s Note: NEJHE has strived to document and improve the experiences of groups historically underserved by higher education, including ethnic and racial minorities. Academia is more tolerant than many sectors, but spending a brief time on any campus reveals that people who are “different” in any way are also underserved and underacknowledged. This article explores the particular situatio...

Gateway to Healthcare Careers for Vulnerable Students: A New Approach to the Teaching of Anatomy and Physiology

At Southern Vermont College (SVC) and at our nation’s other colleges and universities, Anatomy and Physiology I (A&PI) is the gateway course into healthcare careers. Given the country’s growing workforce development needs in this field, it is critical that our first-year students accumulate the requisite body of knowledge in the course to pass it and proceed in their healthcare programs: ...

Holistic Support that Promotes Student Learning

For decades. the cost of serving college students, from community colleges to Ivy League institutions, has been a barrier that has blocked access for many who want an education. With a recent massification effort aimed at producing more college graduates for the workplace, the enrollment numbers have increased and student debt load has become a real concern. Tuition costs are often perceived as th...

Bootstraps: Federal Trio Programs, if Funded, Could Help Close Income Gap

I realized how poor my family was when I was a high school senior. While filling out a financial aid form to go to college, I looked at my mom’s tax return to see how much she made. I asked her if it was a mistake. It wasn’t. She made $11,000 a year to support a family of four. Today I make four times as much as my mom did mainly because of one reason. Not dogged ingenuity or self-determinatio...

Do We Have a Retention Problem … Or Do We Have a Problem About Retention?

This paper, like many being written these days, deals with the “problem” of student retention in higher education. But unlike most, this paper focuses not on the problem of retention per se but rather on how institutional leaders think about student retention, completion, and success–how the way they frame their concerns about retention can give rise to a different sort of problem. Something...

Helicopters, Lawn Mowers or Down-to-Earth Parents? What Works Best for Higher Education

Many faculty and staff working in higher education lament the increasing—some would say unending—involvement of the parents of our college-aged students. We denigrate such individuals as “helicopter” parents, and when the contact occurs in person as opposed to through the phone or email, we call them  “lawn mower” parents. There’s even a Wikipedia ref...

DC Shuttle: College Affordability Lists, DREAM Act … and Other Higher Ed News from Washington

The Education Department released College Affordability and Transparency Lists on Thursday. The 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act requires the Education Department to produce six lists, with three examining tuition and fees and three examining each institution's average price of attendance minus grants and scholarships. The lists are also divided by type of institution (public/private, two-yea...