Posts Categorized: Schools

How to Beat the First-Year Blues: Advice from Somebody Who Has Been There

The students who walk into the office of Jaydeen Santos at the University of Vermont are burdened by a familiar litany of troubles. They feel isolated. Homesick. Overwhelmed by classes. Unsure where to turn. Santos, the student services advisor at UVM’s Mosaic Center for Students of Color, knows just how they feel. Because 17 years ago, she was right there with them, among the first stud...

Community-Based Deliberative Democracy: The Case of New Hampshire Listens

New Hampshire is known not only for its rugged mountains, rocky 19-mile shoreline, one of the largest legislative bodies in the world and its in-your-face Live Free or Die license plate motto. It is also home to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary, the Free State Movement, more voters who register as “unaffiliated” (independent) than either Republican or Democrat, one of the highe...

Celebrating International Education While Closing Minds and Borders?

In 2018, like in the past 17 years, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education have designated one week in the fall “to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchanges worldwide.” With this year’s International Education Week upon us November 12-18, we must ask which international education benefits we are celebrating. The very policies of this administ...

International Affairs: Survival Kit for Small and Medium-Sized Universities and Colleges

The future looks very bleak for many small and medium-sized colleges and universities in the U.S. According to a report published in Inside Higher Education, the high school graduation rate is expected to drop over the next seven years, and the numbers are aggravated by up to 4.5 million fewer babies being born since the financial crisis of 2008. U.S. colleges and universities can no longer mee...

Why We Must Rethink the Dialogue on the Humanities

As we see more U.S. higher education institutions dropping their humanities majors, we also read about the need for academia to actively defend the humanities. A number of colleges, including my own, are linking humanities and liberal arts majors with career-preparation programs. Some welcome this trend. Others view it as another reason to defend the traditional teachings of humanities in an era o...

What Would Higher Education Look Like If Run By IKEA?

Benchmarking higher education with the values, culture and service design of the world's most successful furniture company ... As a professor of entrepreneurship and management, who received his master’s and doctoral degrees in Northern Europe, I often come to think of IKEA as one of the most mission- and value-driven examples of disrupting an industry and the way people live globally today. ...

Cultivating Self-Advocacy for All Students on College Campuses

Over the past year, an increasing number of students have come forward to speak out against school violence. And there has been increased attention placed on helping students seeking support if an incident occurs and exercising their right to speak out against those who may perpetuate such behaviors. With high-profile cases of sexual assault, such as Brock Turner from Stanford University in 2015 a...

Tuning In: Six Benefits of Music Education for Kids

Today, children of all ages experience rigorous career preparation as part of their education. School systems strive to implement mandated standards to help students excel in standardized testing and gain necessary skills for future job opportunities. In this worthwhile pursuit, many creative school programs such as art and music are deemed unnecessary and cut from the curriculum. What many ...

Limited Characters Spell Austerity

Tweets, despite their limited characters, can offer some pretty telling narratives. In May 2017, we ran a piece titled Real Tweets, Fake News … and More from the NEJHE Beat, and then followed up in November with Chance of Tweetstorms. We noted that every NEJHE item automatically posts to Twitter, but that we also use Twitter to disseminate interesting news or opinion pieces from elsewhere. These...

A New Way to Rank Colleges: What Percentage of Students Vote?

The recent March for Our Lives at hundreds of locations around the globe rattled my cage, particularly as I stood in the middle of hundreds of thousands of protesters in Washington, DC. Had we finally found a way to increase activism, to get more and more people of all ages and stages involved in the well-being of their communities? As I listened to the young speakers both over the loudspea...