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Summer 2009 NEJHE Examines Obama Goal to Increase College Degree Attainment |
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 BOSTON—The Summer 2009 issue of The New England Journal of Higher Education features
a Forum on President Obama's goal to make the U.S. the world leader in college
degree attainment as well as commentaries exploring policy journalism in the new media
age.
Authors
in this Forum include U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan; Capitol Hill
education expert Terry Hartle; Muriel Howard, the first minority woman to lead
one of the big D.C. higher education associations; and Nellie Mae Education
Foundation President Nicholas C. Donohue.
NEJHE also explores the future shape of education policy-related publishing
in an age of blogging and Twitter with articles by social technology guru Brian
Reich and two NEJHE editorial
advisors: Robert Whitcomb, vice president and editorial pages editor at the Providence
Journal, and Ralph Whitehead, a journalism
professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Among articles in the Summer
2009 NEJHE:
Educators
Without Borders · Since teaching is a highly mobile profession, the New
England states would benefit from a common licensure test and reciprocity
policy. Salem State College education
professor R. Clarke Fowler
explains how.
Learning
to Eat · Many college students reared on
fast food miss out on the benefits of healthy, local food and the intellectual
exposure of a broad palette and good conversation. "For many students, college
offers development of a sometimes-overlooked asset: taste buds," writes Bowdoin College
associate director of dining services and executive chef Kenneth
Cardone. "How can they
not become more adventurous when everyone at their table is enjoying the sweet
and sour tofu and the kimchee, especially if their Korean roommate helped the
chef perfect the recipe?"
Double-Teamed · Amherst College athletic director Suzanne
R. Coffey says college coaches and faculty
share a joint interest: the development of student-athletes. "Faculty colleagues covet the passion plainly exhibited in
the eyes of an athlete attentively taking in every word during a 30-second
time-out. They begrudge the voluntary extra workouts. They envy the
edge-of-the-chair eagerness athletes demonstrate in team meetings," writes
Coffey. "It's up to the athletics community to create the bridges between two
educations, to move faculty friends from dismissive to collaborative."
The Dark Ages of Education and a New Hope · A law requiring Maine schools to teach about Native
American history is leading us out of the "dark ages" of education, according
to Donna Loring, who served in
the Maine Legislature as a tribal representative of the Penobscot Nation
for 12 years. Loring is the author of the 2008 book, In the Shadow of the
Eagle: A Tribal Representative in Maine.
Re-engineering Engineering
Education · Too often, U.S. engineering is
not cost-effective because the majority of today's engineering graduates do not
have the broad background necessary to understand, take charge of and drive
large-scale projects to completion in an economic fashion, write Bernard
M. Gordon, chairman of Neurologica Corp.
and founder of Analogic Corp, and Michael B. Silevitch, director of the Gordon Engineering Leadership
Program at Northeastern University.
Education Policy Communication in a New Media Age
- Prepare for Impact · As media digitizes, information and experiences become more a
reflection of the community than a product delivered to the audience. Brian
Reich, who recently created a new venture called "little m
media" borrowing from his 2007 book, Media Rules! Mastering Today's Technology
to Connect With and Keep Your Audience, explains.
- Policy Publishing in a New Media
Age · Readers in academia are probably the
most "Interneted/World Wide Webbed" group of all, according to Robert
Whitcomb, vice president and
editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal. But warns
Whitcomb, "using an old-fashioned library with books and periodicals on paper
can be a more disciplined and orderly way to research than using the Internet.
And reading and putting things on paper tends to encourage more intellectual
rigor than using the attention-deficit-disordered computer world."
- An Educated Audience · "A typical reader of a hard-copy publication
belongs to a mere audience. A typical reader of a website can belong to a
community," notes University of Massachusetts Amherst journalism professor Ralph Whitehead Jr. The former political writer at the Chicago
Sun-Times explains the distinction.
FORUM: Higher Education Attainment: The
Obama Benchmark
NEJHE
asks the U.S. secretary of education and others to offer a prognosis on
President Obama's pledge to help the U.S. achieve the world's highest
proportion of college graduates by 2020.
- Historic Opportunity for
Action · In a single generation, the U.S.
has fallen from second to 11th place in the percentage of students
completing college. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan outlines President Obama's goal to make the America No. 1 in the world in the percentage of adults with college degrees.
- Driving
American Economic Renewal · Muriel A.
Howard, president of Buffalo State College, State University of New
York since 1996, who begins in August as president of the American Association
of State Colleges and Universities, calls for bold actions to make the U.S.
first in college attainment, including expanding Pell Grants and education tax
credits, streamlining the federal student aid process and facilitating college
access for undocumented students.
- Ambitious Goal · "There's no way to
produce 700,000 more college graduates a year if we keep cutting funding,"
writes Terry W. Hartle, senior
vice president of government and public affairs at the American Council on
Education."We will need to increase higher education's capacity,
and that will require more money."
- Our Most Valuable
Population · Currently, 22% of 25- to 29-year-olds are unemployed
and out of the labor force nationwide. These disconnected young adults are at
high risk of spending the rest of their lives as members of the working poor. Nellie Mae Education Foundation President and CEO Nicholas C. Donohue describes
some of the model programs that are trying to engage New England's disconnected
young adults with postsecondary opportunities.
Strategy to Maintain New England's Education Advantage · NEBHE President and CEO Michael K. Thomas lays out ways to capitalize on the region's
historical leadership in education. Among them: require rigorous statewide
curricula and adopt graduation requirements aligned with entry standards of colleges; use statewide longitudinal data systems; engage low-income students
and their families in making an early commitment to college readiness and
success; and articulate statewide targets to expand postsecondary attainment.
Readiness in Brief ·
With support from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, NEBHE has
published two new briefing papers with its partners in the College Ready New
England initiative spotlighting innovative practices, policies and key steps to
increase educational attainment for underserved students. NEBHE Chair and
Massachusetts state Sen. Joan Menard
explains.
Inspiration · How
are campus dining, college athletics and Native American history related? In
his quarterly Editor's Memo, NEJHE executive editor John O.
Harney discusses how mentor Bob Woodbury
sees them as chapters in the eclectic story of New England higher education and
economic development.
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