One day this past winter, as Covid restrictions began to fade, professionals from our educational nonprofit CFES Brilliant Pathways met in person with students and educators in Hawaii, North Carolina, New York and Massachusetts. It was the first time in nearly two years that many of our schools had allowed visitors to enter their buildings. That same morning, two members of our team led a virtual ...
When the pandemic shut down the country in March 2020, many college and university administrators predicted that civil rights complaints would plummet. With students learning from home and out of physical and social contact with one another, it seemed unlikely that there would be many claims of discrimination or sexual harassment under Title IX and other civil rights laws. But as it happens, the p...
On May 11, the U.S. Department of Education released guidance for the $36 billion in emergency funding available to higher education institutions (HEIs). This new round of funding—authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act—makes $10 billion available to community colleges, $2.6 billion to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), $190 million to tribal colleges, and $6 billion to o...
Remote learning was a key component of college strategies for addressing the COVID-19 crisis across the country. More than 1,100 colleges went entirely remote by March 2020, according to the education consultancy Entangled Solutions. The College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College indicated that 44% of institutions had developed fully (or primarily) remote instruction by September 2020. This mas...
5 takeaways from NEBHE's Legislative Advisory Committee meeting ...
At its peak, the COVID-19 pandemic forced 55 million American children temporarily out of school. While many education systems have attempted varying degrees of remote learning, many researchers accept that the closures will produce substantial losses in learning, according to recent research by the World Bank Group and by Me...
Colleges and universities were hit hard by the COVID crisis. The American Council on Education (ACE) estimated a total impact of $120 billion in a recent letter to legislators. That number reflects both direct expenses and lost revenues. It is easy to identify the direct expenses associated with testing, cleaning, PPE, remote learning technology and improved ventilation systems. But the lost reven...
As COVID-19 cases continue to surge nationwide, the newly approved COVID-19 vaccines cannot come soon enough. Although higher education institutions (HEIs) are not at the top of the priority list to receive scarce early doses of the vaccine, colleges and universities should prepare for how they will handle vaccination on their campuses.
In general, both public and private HEIs may mandate that ...
In the final days of 2020, Congress gave the country a long-overdue Christmas present with the passage of a new COVID-19 relief bill. Known as the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSAA), the bill is a whopping 5,500 pages long. But for higher education institutions, the real action starts on Page 1872 with the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (known as HEERF...
The number of students nationwide enrolled in distance education programs rose to nearly 3 million in fall 2019, a 7.5% increase over 2018 enrollment data, according to a new report by the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA). And that’s before the COVID-19 pandemic prompted an unprecedented shift to virtual course delivery.
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Faculty diversity. In the early 1990s, NEBHE, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) collaborated to develop the first Compact for Faculty Diversity. Formally launched in 1994, with support from the Ford Foundation and Pew Charitable Trust, the compact focused on five key strategies: motivating states and universities to inc...