Posts Tagged ‘Jay A. Halfond’
New England Colleges Under Stress: Presidential Voices from the Region’s Smaller Colleges
by Jay A. Halfond and Peter Stokes
September 3, 2013
Shifting demography, rising operating expenses, plummeting state and federal support, intensified competition, broken financial models … these are just a few of the complex challenges facing New England higher education institutions. Given these tensions, who would be surprised if college presidents in the region weren’t occasionally plagued by sleepless nights, hounded by anxious trustees, or ...
Read MoreTags: Jay A. Halfond, new models, Peter Stokes, survey | No Comments
Quants at the Gate: The Unique Education of Actuaries
by Jay A. Halfond and Lois K. Horwitz
August 27, 2012
Universities typically emerge as gatekeepers of the professions, by wresting control over the training and certification that is required. The process generally begins outside academe—with apprenticeships and voluntary associations—and evolves toward a new norm of academic credit and degrees. Faculty then become the experts who determine the body of knowledge budding professionals need to know ...
Read MoreTags: acturies, Boston University, Jay A. Halfond, Lois K. Horwitz, Metropolitan College | 2 Comments
The Vanishing Neighborhood Campus
by Jay A. Halfond
May 14, 2012
Only a generation ago, universities like Northeastern and Boston University had campuses strategically sprinkled throughout eastern Massachusetts. Lesley University offered graduate education programs across the U.S. BU had a contract with the U.S. Army to deliver master’s programs on military bases throughout Europe. Mega-high-tech companies, like Digital Equipment Corp., volunteered their corporate classrooms to ...
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Just Like Starting Over: Advice for Faculty to Make the New Semester’s Teaching Endure
by Jay A. Halfond
January 16, 2012
Sometimes when passing through a classroom building, I glance in at a class in session and try to gauge by students’ faces whether the instructor has them engaged or not. Through their facial expressions, you can see whether they are caught up in the class or struggling not to drift away in their thoughts or ...
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Projecting Project Management’s Future Within the Academic Landscape
by Jay A. Halfond
November 28, 2011
U.S. universities have had century-long success in absorbing existing professions into their curricula—by making academe their gatekeeper. These professions often started with apprenticeships and short training courses leading to a certification examination—and were then elevated and “academized” into a comprehensive body of knowledge, fueled by evidence-based scholarship, led by university faculty, and offered to students ...
Read MoreTags: Jay A. Halfond, project management, Project Management Institute | 2 Comments
From Kitchen to Classroom: The Serious Study of Food
by Jay A. Halfond
October 5, 2011
When Jacques Pépin accepted his honorary doctorate from Boston University this past May, he made note of this truly symbolic moment. While his proposed dissertation focus on food had once been rejected by Columbia University as academically unworthy, a leading university was now granting him a doctorate for his work as a celebrated author, chef and ...
Read MoreTags: Association for the Study of Food in Society, food, gastronomy, Jacques Pépin, Jay A. Halfond, Jula Child | No Comments
Unintended Consequences: An Uncertain Future for Distance Learning
by Jay A. Halfond
June 9, 2011
While most in the academic community know about the attempt to rein in the for-profits, few are aware of its collateral damage. In October, the Department of Education issued its Program Integrity Rules, intended to protect federal funds especially from those for-profit institutions with high student loan default rates. Well-intentioned though this was, the DOE ...
Read MoreTags: distance learning, for-profit colleges, Jay A. Halfond, Title IV, U.S. Department of Education | 1 Comment
Don’t Sweat the Big Stuff: Academic Innovation in all Shapes and Sizes
by Jay A. Halfond
April 5, 2011
To listen as many of us incessantly complain, one would think academe is chronically resistant to change, new ideas and innovative programs. We often hear the smaller the stakes, the greater the petty battles—no opportunity is too minute to stall and impede. Before tenure, junior faculty need to be protected while they build their publications ...
Read MoreTags: Boston University, BU, David Riesman, faculty, faculty veto group, Helmut Schmidt, Jay A. Halfond, Metropolitan College, Richard Florida, tenure, Thomas Edison, Willie Wonka | 1 Comment
Biting the Hand: A Commentary on Academe’s Books About Itself
by Jay A. Halfond
February 15, 2011
A new literary genre seems to be booming—book-length critiques on the state of American higher education. While a few celebrate American exceptionalism, most lament the decline of higher learning. Whether exuberant or depressed, their tone is rarely tempered. The authors’ demographics suggest why—they are generally at the twilight of their own academic careers, taking one ...
Read MoreTags: Abraham Flexner, Andrew Hacker, books, Clark Kerr, Claudia Dreifus, Ellen Schrecker, Harry R. Lewis, higher education, Jay A. Halfond, Jonathan R. Cole, Mark C. Taylor, Peter Smith, Robert Hutchins | No Comments
Exploring Higher Education Business Models (If Such a Thing Exists)
by John O. Harney
October 8, 2013
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 smaller ...
Read MoreTags: Atlantic magazine, business models, Davis Educational Foundation, DIssent, Dissent magazine, Jay A. Halfond, John O. Harney, MOOCs, online, Peter Stokes, tuition | No Comments