Remember the faculty lounge? When I began at my current institution back in 1999, there was one in every building—sometimes two! This public space—complete with industrial furniture, coffee pots smoldering on burners, and a mini-fridge with sticky notes all over it reminding people to clean out their stinky sandwiches—was higher education’s version of the office water coole...
NEBHE’s upcoming annual Leadership Summit scheduled for this coming October poses the question, “How Employable Are New England's College Graduates, and What Can Higher Education Do About It?”
The Summit will address numerous well-chosen, commonly current questions in and around this topic, predicated on the assertion that “New England employers consistently claim that they can't find s...
New England’s unemployment rate stood at 4.4% in April, compared with 5% nationwide, according to the spring 2016 outlook delivered last week by the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) to 50 or so economists and others gathered at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
New Hampshire posted the second lowest unemployment rate in the U.S. at 2.6%. But all New England states are projected to ha...
Amy Lapierre sat on the bleachers at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine, adjusting the tassel on her cap. She was surrounded by graduates who are years older than her getting ready to line up, and she nervously peered through the crowd looking for her classmate, Reid Lanpher.
On May 14, Lapierre and Lanpher, both 18 years old, marched for their associate degrees from Thomas. On June 12, they wil...
Demographic changes, shrinking federal and state support, a lethargic economic recovery, anemic endowment returns and increasing wariness of student loan debt comprise a perfect storm converging on America’s mid-sized colleges and universities, threatening to swamp their finances in seas of red ink.
Faced with an urgent need to address cost structures, these institutions are scrambling to a...
With roots going back to the 13th century, the modern system of academic degrees functions as one of the most important ways to signal mastery of knowledge. The degree serves as a currency for accessing opportunities.
Yet as new areas of knowledge and demand for particular competencies expand, traditional ways of measuring mastery may fall short of fully capturing the learning that happens in t...
More Underrepresented Groups. Even before Americans began retreating from educational equity amid the recent backlash against "political correctness," our empathy was directed at a fairly traditional set of underrepresented populations: African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and students with disabilities (many of whom are being reminded only now that their student loans can...
Free speech is fast becoming a hot-button issue at colleges across the country, with campus protests often mirroring those of the public-at-large on issues such as racism or tackling institution-specific matters such as college governance. On the surface, the issue of campus free speech may seem like a purely legal concern, yet in reality, colleges should also treat it as a public relations proble...
My talk is about Experiential Education and Liberal Learning. This topic has been on my mind ever since I graduated from a liberal arts college many years ago and began my first real job, whereupon I discovered—to my surprise and at some cost to my ego—how much I did not know about putting my ideas to effective use in the world beyond academia. But in addition to my personal interests, the rel...
Poaching. Florida Gov. Rick Scott invited Yale University to bring its $25 billion endowment to his state after Connecticut legislators proposed taxing Yale to address the state's budget shortfall. Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy (who incidentally was just named winner of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his decision to publicly welcome a Syrian refugee family to Connecticut) rej...
Remember the faculty lounge? When I began at my current institution back in 1999, there was one in every building—sometimes two! This public space—complete with industrial furniture, coffee pots smoldering on burners, and a mini-fridge with sticky notes all over it reminding people to clean out their stinky sandwiches—was higher education’s version of the office water coole... 
NEBHE’s upcoming annual Leadership Summit scheduled for this coming October poses the question, “How Employable Are New England's College Graduates, and What Can Higher Education Do About It?”
The Summit will address numerous well-chosen, commonly current questions in and around this topic, predicated on the assertion that “New England employers consistently claim that they can't find s... 
New England’s unemployment rate stood at 4.4% in April, compared with 5% nationwide, according to the spring 2016 outlook delivered last week by the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) to 50 or so economists and others gathered at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
New Hampshire posted the second lowest unemployment rate in the U.S. at 2.6%. But all New England states are projected to ha... 
Amy Lapierre sat on the bleachers at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine, adjusting the tassel on her cap. She was surrounded by graduates who are years older than her getting ready to line up, and she nervously peered through the crowd looking for her classmate, Reid Lanpher.
On May 14, Lapierre and Lanpher, both 18 years old, marched for their associate degrees from Thomas. On June 12, they wil... 
Demographic changes, shrinking federal and state support, a lethargic economic recovery, anemic endowment returns and increasing wariness of student loan debt comprise a perfect storm converging on America’s mid-sized colleges and universities, threatening to swamp their finances in seas of red ink.
Faced with an urgent need to address cost structures, these institutions are scrambling to a... 
With roots going back to the 13th century, the modern system of academic degrees functions as one of the most important ways to signal mastery of knowledge. The degree serves as a currency for accessing opportunities.
Yet as new areas of knowledge and demand for particular competencies expand, traditional ways of measuring mastery may fall short of fully capturing the learning that happens in t... 
More Underrepresented Groups. Even before Americans began retreating from educational equity amid the recent backlash against "political correctness," our empathy was directed at a fairly traditional set of underrepresented populations: African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and students with disabilities (many of whom are being reminded only now that their student loans can... 
Free speech is fast becoming a hot-button issue at colleges across the country, with campus protests often mirroring those of the public-at-large on issues such as racism or tackling institution-specific matters such as college governance. On the surface, the issue of campus free speech may seem like a purely legal concern, yet in reality, colleges should also treat it as a public relations proble... 
My talk is about Experiential Education and Liberal Learning. This topic has been on my mind ever since I graduated from a liberal arts college many years ago and began my first real job, whereupon I discovered—to my surprise and at some cost to my ego—how much I did not know about putting my ideas to effective use in the world beyond academia. But in addition to my personal interests, the rel... 
Poaching. Florida Gov. Rick Scott invited Yale University to bring its $25 billion endowment to his state after Connecticut legislators proposed taxing Yale to address the state's budget shortfall. Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy (who incidentally was just named winner of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his decision to publicly welcome a Syrian refugee family to Connecticut) rej...