Posts Categorized: Student Aid

Academic Disciplines: Synthesis or Demise?

Current anxiety over the values and directions of what we used to call “higher education” has rich and complex roots in the past, as well as problematic branches into the future. A crucial and core aspect of the subject not yet adequately understood is the structure and strategy of scholarship itself, and its future. Forty-five years ago, in the heyday of “multiversities” lauded in bo...

Changing Public Perceptions of Higher Ed

American confidence in higher education began waning at just the time that more people began to see colleges as more concerned about their bottom lines than about education and making sure students have a good education experience, according to Public Agenda President Will Friedman. That was among observations that Friedman made to educators gathered in Boston on Monday at a NEBHE panel dis...

Back in the Shadows? The DACA Saga Continues

From 2012 to 2017, nearly 15,000 New England residents participated in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA students are ineligible for federal financial aid programs, but state and institutional aid can flow to undocumented students. As of March 2017, 20 states, including Connecticut and Rhode Island, offered in-state tuition rates to undocumented students. It’s a mo...

Leadership in Higher Education Is Due for a Change: Co-Presidents (Really)

Harvard University recently appointed a new president, Larry Bacow. He’s a well-known, highly regarded leader, having spent the better part of his adult life in educational administration. He’s been president of Tufts and chancellor of MIT; he also served on the Corporation, Harvard’s governing board, prior to being considered a presidential candidate. And the announcements have been clear: ...

New Models at Lasell: Q&A with President Michael Alexander

NEJHE Executive Editor John O. Harney had the chance to catch up with Lasell College President Michael Alexander about the small Newton, Mass. college’s plans to challenge the higher education business model. Harney: NEJHE recently published a piece on how data on colleges in NEBHE's 2018 Guide to New England Colleges & Universities—namely their acceptance rates, percentage of fres...

Organized Anarchies: 13 Steps to Building a “Learning Organization”

In many ways, higher education has not changed in the nearly 1,000 years since the first university was founded in Bologna, Italy in 1088. Many courses still have professors or “masters” lecturing in front of students, with exams being reproduction of facts learned in lectures. But in other ways, higher education changes daily. A brief perusal of headlines from the Chronicle of Higher Educatio...

Innovation and Accreditation: A Natural Pairing?

Accreditation has been in the hot seat of late. It is both faulted for being asked to do too much—serving a “regulation-by-other-means” function as gatekeeper for federal student financial aid dollars—and for asking too little in terms of student learning and life outcomes. Along with these criticisms have come some interesting proposals for improvement. The following summarizes the more c...

John Hennessey, Barrier Breaker

John Hennessey lived a remarkable, full life as a professor, as a leader in his field of management and business, and moral, ethical leadership, and as dean at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business and provost at the University of Vermont. He was extraordinary on many fronts, a great man who lived in tumultuous times marked by world war as a young man, later as a graduate student and then ...

The Employability Imperative: A Pioneer in Job Guarantees Sweetens Offerings with Cybersecurity, Golf-Readiness

New England has a rich history of innovation and economic prosperity due, in part, to the fact that our region is home to some of the nation’s most prestigious higher education institutions as well as a wide array of other postsecondary offerings. As the nation’s economy has evolved to be knowledge-based and technology-driven, New England is well-positioned to produce the knowledge workers to ...

Learning from a Moonshot: What’s Next for College Summer Reading?

Each year, colleges around the nation select a common reading book for their incoming students or, in the case of our institution, for the entire college community. In 2017, our institution selected Hidden Figures as a reading meant to provide a common intellectual experience, illustrate the vigor and breadth of our college’s curriculum, and lend itself to a convocation discussion at the start o...