Posts Categorized: Demography

Recovery at Risk: New England Economic Partnership Releases New Outlook Forecasting Sluggish Bounceback

The New England economy continues to outperform the national economy. That is the good news. But both the region’s and nation’s economies continue to have low and staggered growth. The slow recovery from the 2008-09 recession is largely due to factors outside New England influence, including the European debt crisis, volatile energy markets and continued decline in the national housing...

In Massachusetts, Public Higher Education Is the Engine for Opportunity

NEJHE presents exclusive articles by New England's governors on higher education in their states ... Thanks to our dedicated teachers and committed students, Massachusetts leads the nation in student achievement and classroom innovation. We’ve made education our top priority because it’s the path to a more fulfilling life, a more rewarding career and a richer society. I have personally expe...

Unintended Consequences: An Uncertain Future for Distance Learning

While most in the academic community know about the attempt to rein in the for-profits, few are aware of its collateral damage. In October, the Department of Education issued its Program Integrity Rules, intended to protect federal funds especially from those for-profit institutions with high student loan default rates. Well-intentioned though this was, the DOE dropped an inadvertent bombshell: Al...

In Maine, Postsecondary Success Starts Before College

NEJHE presents exclusive articles by New England's governors on higher education in their states ... Last spring, 83% of Maine public high school students who began high school four years earlier received a diploma. About 65% of those graduates likely enrolled in some form of postsecondary education—at a public university, private institution, community college or elsewhere. A 2008 re...

DC Shuttle: Gainful Employment Rules, Reducing Loan Defaults and Other Higher Ed News from Washington

On Thursday, the Education Department released the final "gainful employment" rules for vocational schools. In order to qualify for federal financial aid, for-profit and certificate programs will be required to prepare students for gainful employment by meeting one of three requirements: the average annual student loan payment is not more than 30% of a graduate's discretionary income; the average ...

DC Shuttle: Congress Working to Reauthorize K-12 Law, Reward Early Learning, Protect Internet Privacy

On Wednesday, the House Education and Workforce Committee advanced the first bill (H.R. 1891) in a planned series of education reform legislation. Under the bill, which was approved along party lines (23-16), $400 million in funding for over 40 education programs created under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) would be repealed. Republican supporters of the bill, sponsored by Congr...

Saving Pell Grants in an Era of Cost-Cutting

In the context of the recent efforts to arrive at a federal budget, articles abound in the popular media and trade publications debating both the value of Pell Grants and their rising cost to the U.S. government. Both pros and cons of the debate hold value. Pell Grants are what enable many of our low-income families to send their children to college and, when more and more jobs require a minimum ...

Review of MacroWikinomics (Books)

Book Review MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World; Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams; Portfolio/Penguin 2010; $27.95 Reviewed by Alan R. Earls. In a recent check of Google search term rankings, the term “wiki” garnered more than 100 million inquires over the prior 30 days. Presumably, some portion of that traffic was generated by those seeking for MacroWikinomics or its...

How to Develop Learners Who Are Consistently Curious and Questioning

In the U.S., postsecondary education has long driven individual social mobility and collective economic prosperity. Nonetheless, the nation’s labor force includes 54 million adults who lack a college degree; of those, nearly 34 million have no college experience at all. In the 21st century, these numbers cannot sustain us. Returning to learning: Adults’ success in college is key to America’...

College Labor Shortages in 2018? Part Deux

“About every two years someone comes up with this story. There is absolutely nothing to it—it's simply not true,” Peter Capelli, Professor, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, commenting on the Georgetown's college labor supply shortage forecast. —“Prediction of Worker Shortage Has Critics,” The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.), April 10, 2010. The recent response by Anth...