Posts Categorized: Economy

Navigating the 5S’s of Open Pedagogy Projects: A Roadmap for Educators

Open pedagogy projects take advantage of the internet to invite educators and students into a new relationship with both knowledge and one another. They are immensely rewarding and they require significant planning. In a time when educators and students have been thrown into a constant state of flux, taking on an open pedagogy project might seem a bit daunting. To help ease this process, we create...

How Do Students Decide Which Courses to Take?

A review of formal and informal processes in course selection ... College students use both formal and informal processes when making decisions related to course selection. They often get course-registration advice through formal on-campus “institutional” resources and off-campus “non-institutional” resources. In April 2016, a student in my Data and Decisions Analysis course at S...

DNF in the Race to Change Higher Education

In racing lingo, "DNF" stands for “Did Not Finish.” Unless getting to the finish line is a simple straight-line drag race, winning a race takes a lot more than horsepower and can be as dependent upon: brakes that allow the highest approach speeds to corners, suspension and downforce that keep the car on the track while navigating corners, and a support crew that can change tires and add gas fa...

From #BLM to the Emergence of @Blackat___

In February 2012, a 17-year-old Black boy was shot dead in the streets of Florida by a neighbor who felt this boy looked suspicious. Carrying a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles, Trayvon Martin became yet another name added to the list of Black lives lost to racism. What surely shattered all hope, was that even after the facts of the case were reviewed, his killer was let free by the criminal ...

One New England College’s “Legacy Alumni of Color” Lay Out a Blueprint to Mend Broken Hearts

In 1966, Jimmy Ruffin sang “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?” This song resonates with us and many of our colleagues whose hearts were broken 55 years ago at our alma mater, Springfield College ... Virtually every Black student at the college in those days felt unwelcomed. Not only was there a dearth of Black faculty, but there were also virtually no administrators of color and no suppor...

Will PWIs Embrace Change in a Nation at Unrest?

Ahmaud Arbery, February 23, 2020. A murder that was concealed and hidden away from this nation at unrest. Breonna Taylor, March 13, 2020. A murder, again hidden from a nation at unrest. George Floyd, May 25, 2020. A murder documented and mourned by all of America, not just those who are Black and American. As the protests began and stories began to change, this divided nation—Haitian, J...

This Recession Calls for New Playbooks

On May 11, the U.S. Department of Education released guidance for the $36 billion in emergency funding available to higher education institutions (HEIs). This new round of funding—authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act—makes $10 billion available to community colleges, $2.6 billion to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), $190 million to tribal colleges, and $6 billion to o...

Data, Decision-Making and Student Success

Which matters more, gauging the health of an institution or the success of its students? Recently, the project director and I submitted the Annual Performance Report for the second year of our university’s Title III grant, for which I serve as part-time consultant. The five-year award from the U.S. Department of Education is a competitive grant intended to strengthen the academic quality and ...

Access to What?

The current shakeout in higher education won’t necessarily leave a gap in terms of accessibility, since workforce demands will ensure some form of credentialing replaces it. But the value of what fills the gap is an open question. ... As the head of public system, advocating for funding to support greater access to higher education was a given. Postindustrial economies depend on a highly educ...

Truth, Education and Democracy in an Era of “Alternative Facts”

There has been a growing consensus among authorities, especially in the Trump era, that the U.S. is in an epistemological crisis that threatens our democracy. President Barack Obama, for example, in a recent Atlantic interview, said: "If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition, ou...