President Obama's proposed FY 2013 budget would encourage community college partnerships with employers, target student aid for colleges that restrain tuition prices, and increase overall spending on U.S. Education Department programs by 2.5% to nearly $70 billion. That would be the largest percentage increase for any domestic department in the president's proposed federal budget for FY 2013, whi...
While many colleges and universities are trying to adapt to the forces affecting higher education today, a recent move by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology is about to cause a seismic shift.The prototype version of MITx is scheduled for launch in spring 2012. MITx is an outgrowth of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), which began in 2002. Building upon the inventory of nearly 2,100 MIT c...
Updated February 2012 ...
New England's public and private two-year and four-year colleges continue to be more expensive than the U.S. averages.
The region continues to hold the dubious distinction of America’s lowest state appropriations for higher education and highest tuitions and fees for public colleges and universities.
Recent data from the annual Grapevine survey by the Illinois St...
In Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s recent 2012 State of the Commonwealth address, he reported that 240,000 people were still looking for work in Massachusetts – and there were nearly 120,000 job openings. Business leaders have told the governor that job applicants don’t have the skills required. One of the actions Patrick called for in response was for better alignment between...
When I first started as interim director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS) based at the University of Massachusetts Boston, I was given three studies that broadly identified specific needs and disparities of Native people in the region. These studies looked at demographic data provided by the U.S. Census, tribes and surveys of regional tribes and Native American non...
Maine has been focusing on the importance of postsecondary training. As the Maine Department of Education’s Pre-K-16 Task Force noted: “To guarantee a more promising future for Maine youth and to ensure economic vitality in our state, we need to dramatically increase the number of citizens with either an associate or a baccalaureate degree.”
Maine’s Skowhegan Area High School (SAHS) and...
Recently, a former administrator at a Boston law school admitted that he used a school computer to embezzle more than $173,000. As the former controller, he accessed the school’s accounting system, creating false checks, which he deposited into his personal bank account. As part of his scheme, the former controller used the signature stamps of other employees to sign the checks without their app...
For over a decade, educators, government representatives, entrepreneurs, social scientists, economists and journalists have espoused a constant drumbeat on the critically important skills and habits of mind that students will need to possess not just to survive, but also thrive in a rapidly changing and highly competitive world. Each commentator, in his or her own way has underscored the need to p...
U.S. universities have had century-long success in absorbing existing professions into their curricula—by making academe their gatekeeper. These professions often started with apprenticeships and short training courses leading to a certification examination—and were then elevated and “academized” into a comprehensive body of knowledge, fueled by evidence-based scholarship, ...
Driven by external pressure for increased accountability and internal pressure for improved learning outcomes, colleges across the country have been developing and refining assessment systems for several decades. In some cases, assessment results have significant positive impact, for example, when used to enhance teaching and learning or as a lever for organizational change. In other cases, the re...
President Obama's proposed FY 2013 budget would encourage community college partnerships with employers, target student aid for colleges that restrain tuition prices, and increase overall spending on U.S. Education Department programs by 2.5% to nearly $70 billion. That would be the largest percentage increase for any domestic department in the president's proposed federal budget for FY 2013, whi... 
While many colleges and universities are trying to adapt to the forces affecting higher education today, a recent move by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology is about to cause a seismic shift.The prototype version of MITx is scheduled for launch in spring 2012. MITx is an outgrowth of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), which began in 2002. Building upon the inventory of nearly 2,100 MIT c... 
In Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s recent 2012 State of the Commonwealth address, he reported that 240,000 people were still looking for work in Massachusetts – and there were nearly 120,000 job openings. Business leaders have told the governor that job applicants don’t have the skills required. One of the actions Patrick called for in response was for better alignment between... 
When I first started as interim director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS) based at the University of Massachusetts Boston, I was given three studies that broadly identified specific needs and disparities of Native people in the region. These studies looked at demographic data provided by the U.S. Census, tribes and surveys of regional tribes and Native American non... 
Maine has been focusing on the importance of postsecondary training. As the Maine Department of Education’s Pre-K-16 Task Force noted: “To guarantee a more promising future for Maine youth and to ensure economic vitality in our state, we need to dramatically increase the number of citizens with either an associate or a baccalaureate degree.”
Maine’s Skowhegan Area High School (SAHS) and... 
Recently, a former administrator at a Boston law school admitted that he used a school computer to embezzle more than $173,000. As the former controller, he accessed the school’s accounting system, creating false checks, which he deposited into his personal bank account. As part of his scheme, the former controller used the signature stamps of other employees to sign the checks without their app... 
For over a decade, educators, government representatives, entrepreneurs, social scientists, economists and journalists have espoused a constant drumbeat on the critically important skills and habits of mind that students will need to possess not just to survive, but also thrive in a rapidly changing and highly competitive world. Each commentator, in his or her own way has underscored the need to p... 
U.S. universities have had century-long success in absorbing existing professions into their curricula—by making academe their gatekeeper. These professions often started with apprenticeships and short training courses leading to a certification examination—and were then elevated and “academized” into a comprehensive body of knowledge, fueled by evidence-based scholarship, ... 
Driven by external pressure for increased accountability and internal pressure for improved learning outcomes, colleges across the country have been developing and refining assessment systems for several decades. In some cases, assessment results have significant positive impact, for example, when used to enhance teaching and learning or as a lever for organizational change. In other cases, the re...