Posts Categorized: College Readiness

Evidence-Based Research: The Impact of the College Crusade GEAR UP Program in RI

The federal GEAR UP program in Rhode Island led to large advantages for students who participated in the program in terms of persistence through the middle and high school years, high school graduation and college enrollment. The Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Program, more commonly known as GEAR UP, is a product of federal legislation designed to increase high school c...

Rebranding STEM for Millennials

What if schools in the U.S. treated their innovation and emerging technologies with as much glamour as they give to athletics? At the New England Board of Higher Education’s recent Advanced Manufacturing Problem Based Learning (AM PBL) Showcase, industry representatives addressed this question and discussed ways to improve the branding and appeal for STEM (science, technology, engineering and ma...

Scholarship Group Unveils Policy Agenda With Heart

After nearly 60 years of helping students afford college, Scholarship America unveiled its first public policy agenda offering a refreshing focus on “advancing equity in postsecondary education and strengthening support for low-to-moderate income students.” The priorities: Expand public-private partnerships Look to the private sector for experimentation, innovation and best practice...

Cheating, Student Authentication and Proctoring in Online Programs

“Without having to miss out on fun, just outsource your test to us, an expert will take it and you will get the awesome grade that you deserve. All at prices you will not believe. How does that sound?”—Excerpt from one of many results of googling “take my test”   This pitch is more than incredibly crass. It is really just outright pimping of hired poseurs to ...

Dean of Women’s Deans (Book Review)

Deans of Women and the Feminist Movement: Emily Taylor’s Activism; Kelly C. Sartorius; Palgrave MacMillan Press (Historical Studies in Education) St. Martin’s Press; 2014. Remember when every coeducational college or university had a “Dean of Women”? It was a powerful and influential position, at least for the “coeds” under her charge (and it was always “her”). The dean of women...

The Short Life of a Provost: A Q&A on New Challenges for Chief Academic Officers

Whether dean, provost, or vice president for academic affairs, the role of the campus chief academic officer (CAO) has changed steadily from the on many current faculty and administrators remember when they began their careers. Along with traditional pressures related to governance, budgets and faculty professional development, CAOs also face new calls to raise their institutional ranking or to ad...

Reducing Math Obstacles to Higher Education

The last few months have brought changes in the leadership of public education in Massachusetts. The new secretary of education and chair of the Board of Higher Education both have deep expertise in education reform and accountability, and broad experiences in business. This new leadership could bring momentum for a "systems approach" to reduce the achievement gap and increase rates of high school...

Trying Times for “HEIs”

It’s an especially bruising time for New England colleges and universities, which we now call higher education institutions (HEIs)—to cover all the new varieties and hybrids. NEBHE has noted that the HEIs face threats based on shifts in academic content and delivery (increasingly online), student demography (diversifying but shrinking) and institutional finances (challenged). Plus, consid...

To Knock Down Barriers for Returning Adult Learners, RI Tries Something New

In a historic unanimous vote on May 20, 2015, the Rhode Island Council on Postsecondary Education welcomed College Unbound as a degree-granting postsecondary option in the state, designed to serve the more than 110,000 Rhode Island adults who began but did not complete bachelor’s degrees. The college is the adult-learning initiative of Big Picture Learning, a nonprofit organization dedicated ...

Counterbalancing Student Debt with “Asset Empowerment” and Economic Mobility

Education provides one of the best opportunities for American children to build the capacity to climb up the economic ladder. It has even been called the “great equalizer” in American society. In today’s tightened labor market, providing equal access to postsecondary education is more critical than ever. The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce projects that 70% of jobs by 2020 w...