A view from Mount Holyoke on why practical, flexible new models are needed for liberal arts colleges ...
Students choose small liberal arts colleges for the learning that unfolds when they are deeply immersed in intellectual collaboration with faculty and with one another. The photos that festoon our promotional materials aren’t mere marketing—we spend a lot of time with one another in clos...
I want to discuss the human dimensions of what I have too often treated (thinking with my instincts as a theoretical physicist) as a scientific methods problem. Experience has taught me that the human forces of a problem are often more important in determining how we meet challenges in an educational institution than the technical aspects. Indeed, management of offices that relate to such function...
Pre-pandemic, a good number of us lamented the demise of small colleges. Let’s define these here as non-elite colleges with enrollment of fewer than 1,500 full-time undergraduate students. For the most part, these institutions have few graduate programs, a handful at most.
Some of these colleges have closed; some have merged; some have partnered. Whatever the structure, it feels to me still l...
Higher education is a body that intends to be greater than the sum of its parts. The guiding principle is that college is a primary route to becoming an enlightened person capable of thriving in a society of opportunities and challenges. Over time, colleges have gone from providing only academic content to facilitating more opportunities for learning through personal engagement, systems to apply k...
Discussions of the problematic future of higher education were already an exploding industry before COVID-19, producing more to be read than anyone could possibly keep up with. Their main audience was academic administrators and a few faculty, worrying where their institutions and careers were headed, and wanting guidance in strategic decision-making—helping to identify not only where they actua...
This is a uniquely defining moment in American history. In our collective lifetime, few of us have seen or could possibly imagine anything approaching the events we are witnessing on the streets of Boston, across New England, and in states and countries across the globe. What began as low-simmering protests in Minnesota has metastasized and sparked massive demonstrations, public unrest, civil diso...
The rising cost of college textbooks has been well-documented over the past few years. Reports indicate that textbook prices have risen by over 800%—three times the inflation rate over the past 50 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A study from the Florida Virtual Campus documented the academic impact that textbook costs had on student success. The study detailed that 47...
Whether and how campuses will reopen in fall 2020 has emerged as the key story in higher education. On Wednesday, Trump administration officials spoke via teleconference with higher education leaders on how to get students back to campus this fall.
During a pandemic, we need to recognize that the risk assessment and risk tolerance among individuals and organizations varies dramatically. Those d...
Friday May 8 saw the release of the most disastrous monthly jobs report in American economic history. In its monthly Employment Situation released last Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported:
Payroll employment levels declined by 20.5 million between mid-March when the COVID-19 lockdowns began in earnest and mid-April—a decline that is more than two orders of magnitude greater...
In the following Q&A, NEBHE’s Fellow for Open Education Lindsey Gumb asks Heather Miceli, an adjunct professor at Roger Williams University (RWU) and Johnson & Wales University (JWU), about her integration of OER-enabled pedagogy in her general education science course, which has helped push the narrative of Open Educational Resources (OER) beyond cost savings to include more engaged and...
A view from Mount Holyoke on why practical, flexible new models are needed for liberal arts colleges ...
Students choose small liberal arts colleges for the learning that unfolds when they are deeply immersed in intellectual collaboration with faculty and with one another. The photos that festoon our promotional materials aren’t mere marketing—we spend a lot of time with one another in clos... 
I want to discuss the human dimensions of what I have too often treated (thinking with my instincts as a theoretical physicist) as a scientific methods problem. Experience has taught me that the human forces of a problem are often more important in determining how we meet challenges in an educational institution than the technical aspects. Indeed, management of offices that relate to such function... 
Pre-pandemic, a good number of us lamented the demise of small colleges. Let’s define these here as non-elite colleges with enrollment of fewer than 1,500 full-time undergraduate students. For the most part, these institutions have few graduate programs, a handful at most.
Some of these colleges have closed; some have merged; some have partnered. Whatever the structure, it feels to me still l... 
Higher education is a body that intends to be greater than the sum of its parts. The guiding principle is that college is a primary route to becoming an enlightened person capable of thriving in a society of opportunities and challenges. Over time, colleges have gone from providing only academic content to facilitating more opportunities for learning through personal engagement, systems to apply k... 
Discussions of the problematic future of higher education were already an exploding industry before COVID-19, producing more to be read than anyone could possibly keep up with. Their main audience was academic administrators and a few faculty, worrying where their institutions and careers were headed, and wanting guidance in strategic decision-making—helping to identify not only where they actua... 
This is a uniquely defining moment in American history. In our collective lifetime, few of us have seen or could possibly imagine anything approaching the events we are witnessing on the streets of Boston, across New England, and in states and countries across the globe. What began as low-simmering protests in Minnesota has metastasized and sparked massive demonstrations, public unrest, civil diso... 
The rising cost of college textbooks has been well-documented over the past few years. Reports indicate that textbook prices have risen by over 800%—three times the inflation rate over the past 50 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A study from the Florida Virtual Campus documented the academic impact that textbook costs had on student success. The study detailed that 47... 
Whether and how campuses will reopen in fall 2020 has emerged as the key story in higher education. On Wednesday, Trump administration officials spoke via teleconference with higher education leaders on how to get students back to campus this fall.
During a pandemic, we need to recognize that the risk assessment and risk tolerance among individuals and organizations varies dramatically. Those d... 
Friday May 8 saw the release of the most disastrous monthly jobs report in American economic history. In its monthly Employment Situation released last Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported:
Payroll employment levels declined by 20.5 million between mid-March when the COVID-19 lockdowns began in earnest and mid-April—a decline that is more than two orders of magnitude greater... 
In the following Q&A, NEBHE’s Fellow for Open Education Lindsey Gumb asks Heather Miceli, an adjunct professor at Roger Williams University (RWU) and Johnson & Wales University (JWU), about her integration of OER-enabled pedagogy in her general education science course, which has helped push the narrative of Open Educational Resources (OER) beyond cost savings to include more engaged and...