Posts Tagged: John O. Harney

The Well-to-Do Are Doing Very Well … and Other News from New England Economists

“The Great Recession and not-so-great recovery applies to all of us.” That was University of Southern Maine professor Charlie Colgan’s quip at last week’s New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) conference noting that Maine was just two-thirds of the way back to pre-recession employment levels. Generally, the New England forecasts at the Fall Economic Outlook conference...

Climate Controlled?

More than 250 higher education leaders from campuses across the U.S. met last week in Boston for the 2014 Presidential Summit on Climate Leadership. The summit was organized by Second Nature, the supporting organization for the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). Almost 700 colleges and universities have signed the ACUPCC and committed to achieve carbon ne...

Laying Down a Higher Education Innovation Challenge

Some notable developments in higher ed ... ... As Southern Maine goes, so goes the nation? College faculty and administrations get along a bit like Congress and the president. In the tradition of shared governance, the administration may offer a sharp change in business policy; the faculty applies the brakes. But at the University of Southern Maine, faculty leaders and President Theo Kalikow ar...

The New Slow

New England will continue to experience a slow jobs recovery through 2017, according to economists speaking last week at the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) Fall 2013 Economic Outlook Conference in Boston.The modest job growth from 2013 through 2017 will be strongest, percentage-wise, in the construction industry, fueled partly by a housing rebound, followed by professional and business se...

Federal Ed Official Briefs NE Higher Ed Audience on Obama College Ratings Plan

More from the NEBHE and Davis Educational Foundation Summit on Cost of Higher Education ... NEBHE and the Davis Educational Foundation convened more than 200 higher education leaders in Boston on Oct. 21 for a Summit on Cost in Higher Education. Jamienne S. Studley, deputy under secretary at the U.S. Department of Education, explained the Obama administration's proposals to rein in college p...

Exploring Higher Education Business Models (If Such a Thing Exists)

The global economic recession has caused students, parents and policymakers to reevaluate personal and societal investments in higher education—and has prompted the realization that traditional higher ed “business models” may be unsustainable. Jay A. Halfond of Boston University and Peter Stokes of Northeastern University recently conducted a non-scientific "pulse" survey of presidents at...

No. 9 … No. 9 … No. 9 (Rebels, Rabbis and Stories on Innovation from BIF-9)

I was at Providence’s Trinity Rep last week covering the Business Innovation Factory's (BIF's) summit of innovators—BIF’s ninth, my fourth. The lineup of speakers—“storytellers” in BIF parlance—included puppeteers, rebels at work, an innovative rabbi, educators and assorted other visionaries. The audience: about 400 self-assessed innovators, some with job titles like Chief Sorceres...

Limping to the Top

New England is aging ... but gracefully? Last week, the Census Bureau reported that three New England states are the oldest in the U.S. in median age: Maine (43.5 years), Vermont (42.3 years) and New Hampshire (42 years). The other states in the region are old too: Connecticut (40.5 years); Rhode Island (39.8 years) and Massachusetts (39.3 years), compared with a national median age of 37.4 yea...

Learning Channels: WGBH Creates a Higher Ed Desk

WGBH Boston is creating a Higher Ed Desk to help enrich its award-winning radio, television and online stories with angles from Boston and New England's famed postsecondary education. America’s largest producer of PBS content for TV and the web, WGBH hired Vermont Public Radio's Kirk Carapezza as managing editor and lead correspondent of the Higher Ed Desk. The desk is supported through m...

Deadly Serious: The Boston Marathon Tragedy and Education

As this year began, NEJHE published the thoughtful concerns of Lasell College admissions official Christopher M. Gray about how colleges would need to address applicants who have experienced a traumatic and life-changing event such as 9/11 or the Sandy Hook mass murders. Now such events have visited Boston and so will traumatized applicants. Two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon on Monday, ...