Posts Categorized: Trends

Will MITx Change How We Think About Higher Education?

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...

Trends & Indicators: Financing Higher Education

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...

Alignment Job: Community Colleges and Workforce Development

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...

Native Tribal Scholars: Building an Academic Community

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...

Just Like Starting Over: Advice for Faculty to Make the New Semester’s Teaching Endure

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...

When the Elephant Is the Room

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...

Multiple Pathways for All Students

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...

Trends & Indicators: Enrollment Period

Updated December 2011 ... Since NEBHE began publishing tables and charts exploring “Trends & Indicators” in New England higher education more than a half-century ago, few figures have grabbed as much attention as college enrollment data. These local, state, regional and national data go beyond simple headcounts of students going to college to tell the stories of New England's chang...

Risk Factors: Colleges Look to Manage Threats Ranging From Fraud to Data Breaches

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...

Letting Off STEAM at Montserrat College of Art

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...