Anyone who fixates on graduation rates has little understanding not only of the rich mission and value of our community colleges, but also how deeply flawed and inadequate those rates are as a principal assessment tool for the performance of community colleges.Graduation rate calculations apply to a small fraction of our entire student population (about 15%). That is because this national measure ...
Demographics in American higher education are changing dramatically. A recent study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) reveals that 11.3 million people ages 16 to 26 (one in four) are first- and second-generation immigrants. Moreover, the report continues, between 1995 and 2010, immigrant-origin youth accounted for half of all growth in the nation’s population of young people overall. This ...
Our longstanding interest in the ways colleges and universities enrich their communities and the region will be on full display at NEBHE's April 3 conference on "Locally and Regionally Engaged: New England Colleges and Universities as Drivers of Innovation, Workforce and Economic Development." It promises to be a fascinating gathering focused not only on economic impacts such as building a competi...
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...
Sometimes when passing through a classroom building, I glance in at a class in session and try to gauge by students’ faces whether the instructor has them engaged or not. Through their facial expressions, you can see whether they are caught up in the class or struggling not to drift away in their thoughts or electronic devices. Faculty often think of their job as transmitting knowledge, from...
Maybe the classroom is where we should seek the transformation we need in higher education ...
For several years now, many of us have been agonizing over the sorry state of American higher education—indeed, of our entire educational system—and for good reason:
Once the U.S. had the highest college completion rates in the world, we now rank 12th among 25-35 year-olds in developed coun...
Anyone who fixates on graduation rates has little understanding not only of the rich mission and value of our community colleges, but also how deeply flawed and inadequate those rates are as a principal assessment tool for the performance of community colleges.Graduation rate calculations apply to a small fraction of our entire student population (about 15%). That is because this national measure ... 
Demographics in American higher education are changing dramatically. A recent study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) reveals that 11.3 million people ages 16 to 26 (one in four) are first- and second-generation immigrants. Moreover, the report continues, between 1995 and 2010, immigrant-origin youth accounted for half of all growth in the nation’s population of young people overall. This ... 
Our longstanding interest in the ways colleges and universities enrich their communities and the region will be on full display at NEBHE's April 3 conference on "Locally and Regionally Engaged: New England Colleges and Universities as Drivers of Innovation, Workforce and Economic Development." It promises to be a fascinating gathering focused not only on economic impacts such as building a competi... 
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... 
Sometimes when passing through a classroom building, I glance in at a class in session and try to gauge by students’ faces whether the instructor has them engaged or not. Through their facial expressions, you can see whether they are caught up in the class or struggling not to drift away in their thoughts or electronic devices. Faculty often think of their job as transmitting knowledge, from... 
Maybe the classroom is where we should seek the transformation we need in higher education ...
For several years now, many of us have been agonizing over the sorry state of American higher education—indeed, of our entire educational system—and for good reason:
Once the U.S. had the highest college completion rates in the world, we now rank 12th among 25-35 year-olds in developed coun...