The earnings advantages to adults with more schooling are well-documented. High school graduates typically have higher earnings than high school dropouts, and those with a bachelor’s degree have higher earnings than both groups. Furthermore, as the job content of the nation’s economy has shifted in a way that generally favors those with more schooling, these earnings gaps between those with mo...
America’s university population peaked in 2010 at about 21 million students. We would be mired in a nationwide enrollment crisis if not for two major decade-long trends that cushioned a fall: students enrolling exclusively online and those relocating here from abroad to study. These, combined, now comprise almost a quarter of the nation’s students. Because these two mitigating factors do not b...
Community colleges offer an important pathway to the middle class. However, many students fall off the path along the way; almost half of students drop out and only 38% complete a degree within eight years, according to an analysis by Preston Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute. These statistics are even worse for at-risk, minority and first-time students. Effective student support service...
New England colleges and universities are often presented as a source of economic advantage in the New England states for providing a strong talent pool for regional employers. Yet, many state officials and others are questioning the efficacy of colleges and universities in serving regional labor market needs, as employers across New England are currently experiencing pronounced shortages of skill...
The students who walk into the office of Jaydeen Santos at the University of Vermont are burdened by a familiar litany of troubles.
They feel isolated. Homesick. Overwhelmed by classes. Unsure where to turn.
Santos, the student services advisor at UVM’s Mosaic Center for Students of Color, knows just how they feel. Because 17 years ago, she was right there with them, among the first stud...
When teaching Political Philosophy to high school juniors in New York City, I would spend evening hours pondering John Stuart Mill’s treatise On Liberty, asking myself how to help students through the difficult syntax and even more difficult ideas. Often, students would say at the outset that they agreed with Mill, but when I pressed them further, I found more differences of thought. Indeed, the...
New Hampshire is known not only for its rugged mountains, rocky 19-mile shoreline, one of the largest legislative bodies in the world and its in-your-face Live Free or Die license plate motto. It is also home to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary, the Free State Movement, more voters who register as “unaffiliated” (independent) than either Republican or Democrat, one of the highe...
In 2018, like in the past 17 years, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education have designated one week in the fall “to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchanges worldwide.” With this year’s International Education Week upon us November 12-18, we must ask which international education benefits we are celebrating. The very policies of this administ...
The future looks very bleak for many small and medium-sized colleges and universities in the U.S. According to a report published in Inside Higher Education, the high school graduation rate is expected to drop over the next seven years, and the numbers are aggravated by up to 4.5 million fewer babies being born since the financial crisis of 2008.
U.S. colleges and universities can no longer mee...
As we see more U.S. higher education institutions dropping their humanities majors, we also read about the need for academia to actively defend the humanities. A number of colleges, including my own, are linking humanities and liberal arts majors with career-preparation programs. Some welcome this trend. Others view it as another reason to defend the traditional teachings of humanities in an era o...
The earnings advantages to adults with more schooling are well-documented. High school graduates typically have higher earnings than high school dropouts, and those with a bachelor’s degree have higher earnings than both groups. Furthermore, as the job content of the nation’s economy has shifted in a way that generally favors those with more schooling, these earnings gaps between those with mo... 
America’s university population peaked in 2010 at about 21 million students. We would be mired in a nationwide enrollment crisis if not for two major decade-long trends that cushioned a fall: students enrolling exclusively online and those relocating here from abroad to study. These, combined, now comprise almost a quarter of the nation’s students. Because these two mitigating factors do not b... 
Community colleges offer an important pathway to the middle class. However, many students fall off the path along the way; almost half of students drop out and only 38% complete a degree within eight years, according to an analysis by Preston Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute. These statistics are even worse for at-risk, minority and first-time students. Effective student support service... 
New England colleges and universities are often presented as a source of economic advantage in the New England states for providing a strong talent pool for regional employers. Yet, many state officials and others are questioning the efficacy of colleges and universities in serving regional labor market needs, as employers across New England are currently experiencing pronounced shortages of skill... 
The students who walk into the office of Jaydeen Santos at the University of Vermont are burdened by a familiar litany of troubles.
They feel isolated. Homesick. Overwhelmed by classes. Unsure where to turn.
Santos, the student services advisor at UVM’s Mosaic Center for Students of Color, knows just how they feel. Because 17 years ago, she was right there with them, among the first stud... 
When teaching Political Philosophy to high school juniors in New York City, I would spend evening hours pondering John Stuart Mill’s treatise On Liberty, asking myself how to help students through the difficult syntax and even more difficult ideas. Often, students would say at the outset that they agreed with Mill, but when I pressed them further, I found more differences of thought. Indeed, the... 
New Hampshire is known not only for its rugged mountains, rocky 19-mile shoreline, one of the largest legislative bodies in the world and its in-your-face Live Free or Die license plate motto. It is also home to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary, the Free State Movement, more voters who register as “unaffiliated” (independent) than either Republican or Democrat, one of the highe... 
In 2018, like in the past 17 years, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education have designated one week in the fall “to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchanges worldwide.” With this year’s International Education Week upon us November 12-18, we must ask which international education benefits we are celebrating. The very policies of this administ... 
The future looks very bleak for many small and medium-sized colleges and universities in the U.S. According to a report published in Inside Higher Education, the high school graduation rate is expected to drop over the next seven years, and the numbers are aggravated by up to 4.5 million fewer babies being born since the financial crisis of 2008.
U.S. colleges and universities can no longer mee... 
As we see more U.S. higher education institutions dropping their humanities majors, we also read about the need for academia to actively defend the humanities. A number of colleges, including my own, are linking humanities and liberal arts majors with career-preparation programs. Some welcome this trend. Others view it as another reason to defend the traditional teachings of humanities in an era o...