Maine Development Foundation President Laurie Lachance announced she would leave the position to become president of Thomas College in Waterville, Maine, ...]]>

David Coleman, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant and co-founder of Student Achievement Partners, will become president of the College Board in October 2012, succeeding Gaston Caperton, who announced plans to step down.

Maine Development Foundation President Laurie Lachance announced she would leave the position to become president of Thomas College in Waterville, Maine, effective July 1. The foundation named Ed Cervone, currently senior program director, to serve as its interim president.

Former University of Massachusetts Amherst Chancellor John Lombardi was removed from his position as president of the Louisana State University system. Lombardi left UMass Amherst in 2007 after publicly clashing with former UMass President Jack Wilson.

The New England region has the highest average tuition and fee rates for 2011-12 across institutional sectors, according to the College Board's most ...]]>

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, in its recently released fourth quarter 2011 New England Community Survey, cited an emerging concern facing low- and moderate-income communities: the escalating cost of higher education.

The New England region has the highest average tuition and fee rates for 2011-12 across institutional sectors, according to the College Board's most recent report on Trends in College Pricing. Meanwhile, NEBHE's 2011 Tuition and Fee report shows the average share of family income required to pay published tuition and fees at New England public institutions has increased across the region, with few exceptions. This change in family income needed to pay for college has disproportionately impacted New England's lower-income families.

Thankfully, some colleges in the region are attempting to buck the trend by freezing undergraduate tuition.

Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire announced that it would freeze tuition at $28,250 for the 2012-13 year, while citing last year's 2% tuition increase as the lowest hike among all four-year private and public colleges in the state. The university also eliminated course fees and campus parking fees.

Similarly, Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts announced that it would hold tuition as well as room and board charges at 2011-12 levels.

The University of Maine system also froze in-state tuition for the 2012-13 year.

The website FinAid, created by Mark Kantrowitz, the financial aid and college planning author who also publishes FastWeb, lists colleges that have cut or frozen tuition instead of raising it.

Monnica Chan is director of policy & research at NEBHE.

The policy guide cites Connecticut Public Act 04-212 as a low-cost way to coordinate workforce training and professional ...]]>

Policies to foster college completion in three New England states are cited in The College Completion Agenda 2011 Progress Report and State Policy Guide, new national reports published by the College Board and National Conference of State Legislatures.

The policy guide cites Connecticut Public Act 04-212 as a low-cost way to coordinate workforce training and professional advancement ladders for early-childhood providers.

The guide also profiles Rhode Island’s requirement that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education department work with schools districts that have dropout rates higher than 15%. The College Board also cites Rhode Island’s focus on revamping teacher-evaluation metrics to include student academic growth.

And it refers to the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993, which aligns academic standards, curriculum frameworks, assessments, high school accountability measures, and teacher certification requirements, as one way to better coordinate K-12 education systems and college admissions expectations. Massachusetts is also cited for legislation requiring that all public colleges report annually to the governor and Legislature on measures including student college-completion rates.

The College Board outlines strategies for state legislators to adopt in increasing college completion in 10 categories:

1. Provide a program of voluntary preschool education;
2. Improve middle and high school college and career counseling;
3. Implement research-based dropout prevention programs;
4. Align K-12 education systems with international standards and college admissions expectations;
5. Improve teacher quality and focus on recruitment and retention;
6. Clarify and simplify the admission process;
7. Provide more need-based grant aid while simplifying and making financial aid processes more transparent;
8. Keep college affordable;
9. Dramatically increase college-completion rates; and
10. Provide postsecondary opportunities as an essential element of adult education programs.

The College Board's Advanced Placement (AP) exams, often preceded by AP courses, have a reputation for spitting out an overwhelming amount of information, but that is about to change. The nonprofit, which also administers the SATs, says it will revamp the biology and U.S. history tests to give students the opportunity to learn the materials, ...]]>

The College Board's Advanced Placement (AP) exams, often preceded by AP courses, have a reputation for spitting out an overwhelming amount of information, but that is about to change. The nonprofit, which also administers the SATs, says it will revamp the biology and U.S. history tests to give students the opportunity to learn the materials, rather than cram for the exam.

The College Board has AP exams in 30 subjects, with 1.8 million students taking 3.2 million tests. While the program is recognized for giving students the opportunity to get an early start on more challenging, university-level work, some exams require too much study—material that, in turn, deters students from learning "big concepts." The biology and U.S. history exams are two of AP's biggest culprits with their ever-expanding laundry list of "ought-to-knows."

The new focus of the AP exams in these two subject areas will allow more time for the "big picture," the College Board says, and eliminate the need to squeeze in extraneous information that generally isn't absorbed.

High scores on an AP exam can get students college credit. Compared to college courses, whose prices range from the hundreds or even thousands of dollars, the $87 AP exam is a worthwhile investment for any high school student looking save some money and/or get the most out of their college years. For some, entering college with AP credit can leave room for extracurricular courses, an earlier graduation date or a double major.

But as students are burdened by the challenges of advanced coursework earlier and earlier, and colleges come to expect AP scores on transcripts, some educators have had enough. Indeed, AP courses and exams emerge among the key villains in the film "Race to Nowhere."  The documentary argues the "push to achieve has created a generation of high-strung students constrained in a one-size-fits-all’ system."

The new focus of AP tests will change lesson plans and study techniques for hundreds of thousands of educators and students in New England over the next couple of years. In fact, in 2008, nearly 80,000 New England students took more than 135,000 AP exams, with the both biology and U.S. history being among the five most popular exams. And since 2004, the number of exam-takers in New England has increased by 31%. Click here for a PDF of facts and figures about AP exams in New England.

Our printed compendium richly juxtaposed 60-plus figures on state, regional, national and global higher education trends, ...]]>

For more than half a century, NEBHE has been publishing tables and charts exploring "Trends & Indicators" in New England’s demography, high school performance and graduation, college enrollment, college graduation rates and degree production, higher education financing and university research.

Our printed compendium richly juxtaposed 60-plus figures on state, regional, national and global higher education trends, and became a looked-to source of data and analysis. Along the way, Trends & Indicators also created a visual shorthand view of New England’s cultural and economic vitality.

Now, our new online format allows us to bring you these stats on a more timely basis. ...

Click below to view the full charts and figures for each of our research categories:

1. Demography — Updated May 2012
2. High School Success — Updated April 2012
   
3. College Readiness — Updated August 2012
4. Higher Education Enrollment — Updated December 2011
   
5. Higher Education Enrollment: International Enrollment — Updated July 2012
   
6. College Success — Updated November 2012
   
7. Financing Higher Education — Updated February 2012
8. University Research — Updated March 2011
   

The data are drawn from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the College Board, the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems and NEBHE’s own Annual Survey of New England Colleges and Universities.

Check back periodically as we continue to update new trend data.

More than 100 Green Party candidates nationwide called for a “Green New Deal” that includes making  tuition free at public universities.

It's not the first time. California public campuses charged no tuition (but increasing fees) for state residents for decades. in 2003, Preston H. Smith II of Mount Holyoke College and Sharon Szymanski of The Labor ...]]>

More than 100 Green Party candidates nationwide called for a “Green New Deal” that includes making  tuition free at public universities.

It's not the first time. California public campuses charged no tuition (but increasing fees) for state residents for decades. in 2003, Preston H. Smith II of Mount Holyoke College and Sharon Szymanski of The Labor Institute wrote a piece for the  journal of the American Political Science Association calling for free tuition. In New England, the idea of free tuition, at least at community colleges, was bandied about by leaders including former NEBHE President Evan Dobelle. But when the recession hit, the idea fell victim to tough times.

For the record, the College Board reports that public four-year colleges charged on average $7,020 per year in tuition and fees for students who live in their state and $11,528 for full-time out-of-state students. Private four-year colleges charged an average of $26,273 per year in tuition and fees, while public two-year colleges charged $2,544. And as always, New England was above the U.S. average in all categories.

Over their lifetimes, holders of associate degrees earn almost 25% more than their peers who only completed high school. Bachelor’s degree holders earn around 66% more than those same high school-educated peers, according to Education Pays, the College Board’s compilation of data that emphasizes the personal benefits of pursuing higher education.

College graduates have a much ...]]>

Over their lifetimes, holders of associate degrees earn almost 25% more than their peers who only completed high school. Bachelor’s degree holders earn around 66% more than those same high school-educated peers, according to Education Pays, the College Board’s compilation of data that emphasizes the personal benefits of pursuing higher education.

College graduates have a much lower probability of being unemployed, even in a tough economy. In addition to financial considerations, those with postsecondary degrees are less likely to smoke, to struggle with obesity, or to have children who struggle with obesity.

The last time the College Board published a similar report, in 2007, it came under scrutiny for the assumptions its data were built upon. Education Pays at the time claimed that average college graduates each earned, over their lifetimes, $1 million more than peers who had only completed high school. Assumptions about the average costs associated with college attendance, the increasing number of graduates taking more than four years to complete a bachelor’s degree, and the inclusion of earnings data from those with professional and doctoral degrees, all contributed to inflating that “earnings premium,” critics say.

This year’s report avoids lofty dollar-figure pronouncements, but stands by the assertion that education—in fact, each successive year of education—results in financial and lifestyle benefits. The data also suggest that the earnings gap between the high school- and college-educated continues to widen.

As a matter of context, New England states have seen an increase over the past decade in the percentage of students completing high school and the percentage completing college. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics indicate that, using a three-year average, 88% of New Englanders completed high school in 2007, up from 84% in the year 2000.  Bachelor’s degree completion also rose in New England during that period by about three percentage points, from 28% to 31%.