Posts Categorized: Demography

Honoring Excellence 2016

The New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) will hold its 14th annual New England Higher Education Excellence Awards celebration and dinner in Boston on Friday, March 4, 2016. Here is a bit about the 2016 recipients ... The David and Rosamond Putnam Family of New Hampshire will receive NEBHE's 2016 Governor Walter R. Peterson Award for Leadership, named for the late New Hampshire...

Making the World a Better Place (Book Review)

Doing Good … Says Who? Stories from Volunteers, Nonprofit, Donors and Those They Want to Help; Connie Newton and Fran Early; Two Harbors Press; Minneapolis; 2015 Community service is on the rise in higher education. Traditional concepts of charity are being challenged in service learning programs, in international development and social work classes as well as divinity schools. Increasing num...

Ten Game-Changing Communications Steps for College and University Presidents

Advice on how to connect and lead ... Whether you are a first-time college or university president, or one with years of experience leading an institution, an essential part of the job is communicating. While it might sound obvious, the importance of reaching out, connecting and building and maintaining relationships cannot be stressed enough. Done well, it can lead you toward great success, and ...

In a “Gateway City,” a Plan to Nurse Degree Attainment

Regis North to offer bachelor's degree completion programs in nursing, public health and other health sciences ... With liberal arts colleges and universities reporting losses in student enrollment and retention, and our nation’s workforce growing older and more diverse, colleges and universities are being forced to rethink their approach to educating and engaging students. Regis is no e...

College Valuations

Using data from NEBHE "Guide" to discern value of New England colleges ... The data published by Boston magazine and the New England Board of Higher Education the 2016 Guide to New England Colleges & Universities provided me with the opportunity to examine the higher education institutions (HEIs) prices, defined as tuition and plus fees, as a function of several independent factors including...

Student Unions: The Implications for Colleges and Universities

Efforts to unionize students at private universities are gaining momentum. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has agreed to reconsider whether graduate students at private nonprofit colleges and universities should be treated as employees under the National Labor Relations Act. The case, New School, Case No. 02- RC-143009, involves a United Auto Workers petition to organize graduate student...

Pushing Back on Idea of Learner-Centered Institutions

It is time to push back at least a little on this very fashionable rubric. While the NEBHE Conference on the subject was generally excellent, especially in the morning, its uncritical acceptance of the whole idea was worrisome. See Center of Attention: Learners. A fundamental problem is its metaphor. There can be only one “center” of anything, so the question is: In institutions of what use...

Center of Attention: Learners

Last week, NEBHE convened 300 or so educators and policy leaders for a gathering in Boston on “Learner-Centered Institutions: The Future of Higher Education.” One key question … what is a “learner-centered institution” anyway? The latest in a torrent of meaningless eduspeak? Or as the conference subtitle suggested, a true paradigm shift in the way we teach and learn? The definition...

Encourage the Entrepreneur (but Don’t Discourage the Young Poet)

Observations of a retired college president ... I am sure you've heard colleagues when they return from sabbatical surprised by how much their institutions changed while they were on leave. The apparent change is even more profound for someone who left the arena seven years ago, as I did. Here are five issues that, in the past few years, have caught my attention either by reading about the...

Trafficking in Economic Forecasts

NEEP delivers latest forecast ... this time with a special focus on infrastructure … Is it because the economy is not in crash mode (we don’t think) that the crowd at the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) fall 2015 outlook conference was decidedly smaller than in NEEP’s heydey? Or is it because it’s hard to get people to pay attention to regional issues? Especially infrastructure...