Ed Secy Duncan Urges States and Districts to Drive Achievement and Increase Grad Rates as they Trim

Citing the “new normal” and impending budget cuts, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged state leaders to boost student achievement despite dwindling resources."There is a right way and a wrong way to cut spending, and the most important guiding principle I can offer is to minimize the negative impact on students and seize this opportunity to redirect your spending priorities," Du...

The Art of Coming and Going: Sloan to Leave MassArt

Massachusetts College of Art and Design named Dawn Barrett to be its next president, succeeding Kay Sloan, who will retire after 15 years as president. Barrett is currently dean of the Architecture and Design Division at Rhode Island School of Design. MassArt trustees named Sloan president emerita. She created The New Partnership for MassArt, a pioneering financial and governance model that lev...

NEBHE Convo on Excellence Awards via Social Media

NEBHE will host its 9th annual Excellence Awards celebration at the Marriott Long Wharf Hotel in Boston on Friday, March 11. But the conversation has already started thanks to a variety of social media, creating a digital time line that includes information leading up to, during and after the event.To track our social media coverage, check out the links below: NEBHE’s Twitter page. #NEBHEa...

New England 2025: NEBHE Launches College-Completion Dashboards

NEBHE launched the first phase of its college-completion project, New England 2025.Supported with a Lumina Foundation grant and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, NEBHE's Department of Policy and Research built a series of state-level "dashboards" and models that can examine college completion and various metrics with new levels of sophistication.These models allow decisi...

Spring Peepers: NE Campuses Begin Naming Speakers for Commencement

It's happening again: New England colleges and universities are assembling the academics, business gurus, heads of state and, of course, celebs, who make the region's spring college commencements the world's best regional lecture series. Some stars of this year's commencement season so far (in order of appearance) ...****Marc A. Nivet, the chief diversity officer at the Association of American Med...

Right This Way Please … Early Admissions Debate Rages On

In September 2006, Harvard made the decision to end early admissions. Early admissions takes on two forms: early action and early decision. What Harvard had in place was non-binding early action, meaning that a student applies before the regular deadline—in early November—and has until admissions decisions come back from other schools before deciding where to attend.Early decision, on ...

Complete College America Launches State Grants for Innovative Ways to Boost Degrees

Complete College America launched the Completion Innovation Challenge, a $10 million competitive grant program for states to significantly boost college completion and close attainment gaps for traditionally underrepresented populations.A national organization whose mission is to work with states to increase the number of Americans with college degrees or certificates of workplace value, Complete ...

Food for Thought: A Fresh, Local School Reform

The National Farm-to-School Network was awarded a $250,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture Cooperative Agreement Contract to expand farm-to-institution work throughout the six New England states.Demand for fresh local food has been rising not only from schools but also from colleges and hospitals as people seek healthy foods while supporting local farmers and reducing the environmental impacts ...

How College Students Spend Their Time: Sleep First, Class Later

Findings presented in the latest issue of Postsecondary Education Opportunity put a new twist on the adage “the harder you work, the luckier you get.” In fact, it may be true that the older you are, the harder you work.The latest issue of the data-rich newsletter published monthly by higher education analyst Thomas G. Mortenson and his colleagues explores “Time Use of Full-Time...

Comings and Goings: They’d Rather Be in Philadelphia?

Northeastern University Center for Labor Market Studies associate director Paul E. Harrington moved to Philadelphia-based Drexel University. Harrington has been a frequent contributor to NEJHE and to NEBHE events****Joseph M. O’Keefe, S.J., will also leave leave Boston for Philly, departing as dean of Boston College's Lynch School of Education to become the 27th president of Saint Joseph'...