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February 21, 2012
A new $5 billion Education Department program aims to improve teacher training and career paths. The Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence and Collaborative Teaching (RESPECT) project encourages states and districts to work with teachers and education colleges to reform teacher training, compensation and professional development. Education Secretary Arne Duncan introduced the program, part of President Obama's FY2013 budget proposal, on...
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February 17, 2012
Our longstanding interest in the ways colleges and universities enrich their communities and the region will be on full display at NEBHE's April 3 conference on "Locally and Regionally Engaged: New England Colleges and Universities as Drivers of Innovation, Workforce and Economic Development." It promises to be a fascinating gathering focused not only on economic impacts such as building a competi...
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February 16, 2012
MIT President Susan Hockfield announced she would leave the position she has held for more than seven years once a new president takes office.As the first woman president of MIT, Hockfield presided over significant strides in hiring and promotion of women scientists and engineers after a faculty report brought national attention to inequity in campus. Among students, the MIT Class...
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February 16, 2012
The University of Maine System Board of Trustees named James H. Page as the system's next chancellor.Page, a 59-year-old Maine native. is principal and CEO of the James W. Sewall Co., in Old Town, Maine, and an adjunct professor in UMaine's Department of Philosophy. Sewall Co. provides consulting in the areas of energy, infrastructure and natural resources.Page holds a bachelor's...
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February 15, 2012
President Obama's proposed FY 2013 budget would encourage community college partnerships with employers, target student aid for colleges that restrain tuition prices, and increase overall spending on U.S. Education Department programs by 2.5% to nearly $70 billion. That would be the largest percentage increase for any domestic department in the president's proposed federal budget for FY 2013, whi...
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February 13, 2012
On Thursday, the White House granted the waiver requests of 10 states, including Massachusetts, to opt out from the requirements of the "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) law. As passed, NCLB requires school districts to demonstrate through testing proficiency in reading and math skills for all grades by 2014. Many have called the NCLB law too unrealistic to implement, and...
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February 7, 2012
The term "Access" has acquired a bit of a Rodney Dangerfield complex since back in the day when I suggested: "If one word captures the range of compelling issues that the New England Board of Higher Education should focus its energy on at the start of the new century, the word is access." The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC)...
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February 6, 2012
Members on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) took advantage of a hearing Thursday on containing the cost of higher education to voice their thoughts on President Obama's plan to reward colleges who keep costs down with increased federal support. Several Republican members were concerned that the administration was effectively "picking winners and losers" by determining...
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February 6, 2012
The Maine Compact for Higher Education merged with the Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education to form "Educate Maine," a new organization whose mission is to champion college and career readiness and increased education attainment for Maine people. Educate Maine's executive director will be Tanna Clews, former director of the Coalition. Mike Dubyak, president of Wright Express, will chair Educate...
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February 6, 2012
While many colleges and universities are trying to adapt to the forces affecting higher education today, a recent move by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology is about to cause a seismic shift.The prototype version of MITx is scheduled for launch in spring 2012. MITx is an outgrowth of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), which began in 2002. Building upon the inventory of nearly 2,100 MIT c...
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February 1, 2012
Updated February 2012 ... New England's public and private two-year and four-year colleges continue to be more expensive than the U.S. averages. The region continues to hold the dubious distinction of America’s lowest state appropriations for higher education and highest tuitions and fees for public colleges and universities. Recent data from the annual Grapevine survey by the Illinois St...
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January 31, 2012
More than one in four U.S. households are asset poor, meaning they lack savings or other assets to cover basic expenses for three months if a layoff or other emergency leads to loss of income, according to the 2012 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard published by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED).The Scorecard also shows 43% of households are "liquid asset...
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January 30, 2012
During a Friday morning speech at the University of Michigan, President Obama announced a set of initiatives to improve the quality and affordability of higher education. His proposals include tying federal financial aid to colleges' efforts to contain costs; new competitive grant programs for states, colleges, and organizations to improve college outcomes; and making colleges' financial and work placement information...
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January 30, 2012
New England's public and private two- and four years colleges continue to charge higher prices than the U.S. average, according to new data posted to the Financing Higher Education section of NEBHE's Trends & Indicators. To view the latest updates to our Higher Education Financing section, visit Trends & Indicators: Continually Updated Stats on New England's Education and Economy. For...
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January 27, 2012
This academic year marks the third consecutive year of record-high enrollments in the New England Regional Student Program (RSP), Tuition Break.The New England Board of Higher Education's program provided 9,293 New England residents with an estimated total savings of $53 million on their 2011-12 out-of-state tuition bills. The average savings for a full-time RSP student was $6,900. Meanwhile, the region's...
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January 27, 2012
In Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s recent 2012 State of the Commonwealth address, he reported that 240,000 people were still looking for work in Massachusetts – and there were nearly 120,000 job openings. Business leaders have told the governor that job applicants don’t have the skills required. One of the actions Patrick called for in response was for better alignment between...
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January 23, 2012
Massachusetts state Rep. Vincent Pedone announced he'd leave the Legislature to become executive director of the Council of Presidents of the Massachusetts State University System. Pedone represented Worcester for nearly 20 years. He will succeed Frederick Clark, who left the council in November to become executive vice president of Bridgewater State University.****James McCarthy, provost and senior vice president for academic...
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January 23, 2012
The Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy hired Chad d'Entremont as its new executive director. A former research and policy leader at Teachers College of Columbia University and Strategies for Children, d'Entremont managed Massachusetts' successful application for a $50 million Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge award. At Rennie, he succeeds Jill Norton, who oversaw the center's research...
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January 23, 2012
When I first started as interim director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS) based at the University of Massachusetts Boston, I was given three studies that broadly identified specific needs and disparities of Native people in the region. These studies looked at demographic data provided by the U.S. Census, tribes and surveys of regional tribes and Native American non...
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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 electronic devices. Faculty often think of their job as transmitting knowledge, from...
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January 11, 2012
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded approximately $372,000 in grants to support 13 New England community projects that address environmental and public health issues.Among examples:• Bridgeport Neighborhood Trust in Connecticut was awarded $25,000 for its 'Bridgeport East Side Healthy Homes Initiative' to address environmentally related illnesses including allergens that contribute to asthma and lead contamination that poisons young children.• ...
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January 10, 2012
House Education and the Workforce Committee Chair John Kline (R-MN) released two new drafts of legislation to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) on Friday afternoon. Legislators and stakeholders from both parties have agreed that the accountability measures put in place by the law's current authorization—No Child Left Behind—are not working. Under the current law, 100% of students...
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January 9, 2012
Maybe the classroom is where we should seek the transformation we need in higher education ... For several years now, many of us have been agonizing over the sorry state of American higher education—indeed, of our entire educational system—and for good reason: Once the U.S. had the highest college completion rates in the world, we now rank 12th among 25-35 year-olds in developed coun...
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January 6, 2012
Southern Vermont College President Karen Gross was named a senior policy advisor to the U.S. Department of Education for one year, starting Jan. 17.SVC trustees granted Gross a one-year leave of absence from the college, during which time chief operating officer James Beckwith will be acting president.A NEBHE delegate since 2010, Gross has authored several articles for NEJHE, including: Helicopters,...
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January 5, 2012
It may be known as the "Land of Steady Habits," but Connecticut's new habit in education in this new year looks like steady change.Recently, Connecticut school superintendents advanced a package of 134 recommendations to replace the state's current school system with a 'learner-centered' education program. The program would begin at age 3; offer parents a menu of options, including charter...
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January 4, 2012
The academic who contributed the most to public debates about schooling in 2011 was Stanford University education prof Linda Darling-Hammond, according to the RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings.The rankings were compiled by Frederick M. Hess, director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and published in Education Week, where Hess writes a blog.Darling-Hammond is one of six Stanford...
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January 3, 2012
Maine has been focusing on the importance of postsecondary training. As the Maine Department of Education’s Pre-K-16 Task Force noted: “To guarantee a more promising future for Maine youth and to ensure economic vitality in our state, we need to dramatically increase the number of citizens with either an associate or a baccalaureate degree.” Maine’s Skowhegan Area High School (SAHS) and...
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December 22, 2011
The New Hampshire Forum on the Future will feature a talk on "Renewing America's Political Culture" by Harvard Kennedy School professor and CNN political analyst David Gergen on Monday, Jan. 9, 2012, from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., at the NH Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.New Hampshire's U.S. senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Kelly Ayotte, are also scheduled to...
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December 21, 2011
Updated December 2011 ... Since NEBHE began publishing tables and charts exploring “Trends & Indicators” in New England higher education more than a half-century ago, few figures have grabbed as much attention as college enrollment data. These local, state, regional and national data go beyond simple headcounts of students going to college to tell the stories of New England's chang...
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December 20, 2011
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...
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December 19, 2011
On Thursday, the White House National Science and Technology Council released a report detailing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education spending across all federal programs. According to the report, 13 federal agencies spent about $3.4 billion on STEM programs in 2010, 80% of which was split between the National Science Foundation ($1.2 billion), the Education Department ($1 billion), and...
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December 19, 2011
New England's public and private nonprofit colleges and universities enrolled nearly a million full- and part-time students in 2010. But the region's historically disproportionate share of total U.S. enrollment continued to decline to 4.7%, down from 5.4% early in the decade.For more than a half-century, NEBHE has been publishing tables and charts exploring "Trends & Indicators" in New England's demography,...
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December 16, 2011
It's not even officially winter, and New England colleges are starting to announce their spring commencement speakers.Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will deliver Northeastern University's 110th commencement address on May 4, 2012. Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun made the announcement via Twitter!Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's international affairs program 'GPS," editor-at-large of Time magazine, Washington Post columnist and...
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December 12, 2011
Trustees of the Community College System of New Hampshire (CCSNH) appointed University of New Hampshire economist Ross Gittell to be the system's new chancellor.Gittell will assume the post in February, succeeding J. Bonnie Newman, who has served as interim chancellor since August, while the national search for a permanent chancellor was underway.A distinguished professor at the University of New Hampshire's...
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December 12, 2011
On Dec. 5, President Obama held a meeting with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, university presidents and higher education policy experts which focused largely on the issue of college affordability and productivity. Participants discussed how new strategies for increasing affordability and producing more graduates at individual institutions could be scaled up to the state or national level. Jamie Merisotis, president and...
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December 12, 2011
Recently, a former administrator at a Boston law school admitted that he used a school computer to embezzle more than $173,000. As the former controller, he accessed the school’s accounting system, creating false checks, which he deposited into his personal bank account. As part of his scheme, the former controller used the signature stamps of other employees to sign the checks without their app...
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December 8, 2011
Bates College trustees elected A. Clayton Spencer to be the eighth president in the school's 156-year history. Currently vice president for policy at Harvard, Spencer assumes the Bates post on July 1, 2012. She succeeds Nancy Cable, who has been interim president since July 1, 2011, when Elaine Hansen stepped down after nine years to lead the Center for Talented...
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December 6, 2011
After decades of debate, the Massachusetts Legislature passed and Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation providing for casino gambling in the Bay State. The law creates the Massachusetts Gaming Commission to regulate casino gambling and authorizes three licenses for a resort casino in three regions of the state: Eastern Massachusetts between Boston and Worcester, Western Massachusetts which encompasses Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin...
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December 5, 2011
For over a decade, educators, government representatives, entrepreneurs, social scientists, economists and journalists have espoused a constant drumbeat on the critically important skills and habits of mind that students will need to possess not just to survive, but also thrive in a rapidly changing and highly competitive world. Each commentator, in his or her own way has underscored the need to p...
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December 2, 2011
Early this year, we revived the collection of facts and figures called "Data Connection" that we had published quarterly for nearly 20 years in the print editions of The New England Journal of Higher Education.The latest ...Ranks of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont among most peaceful U.S. states in terms of absence of violence: 1,2,3 Institute for Economics and PeaceNumber...
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November 29, 2011
A look at recent developments in New England higher education shows a region struggling to hold onto its historical research prowess and adding new health programs, but also facing rising costs and declining funds.Holding onto research power University of Connecticut Vice President for Research Suman Singha reported to university trustees that research dollars are drying up. Research funding has declined...
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November 29, 2011
After five years bringing attention to how colleges spend money, the Delta Cost Project will dissolve in 2012. On Jan. 1, the database portion of its work will become part of the U.S. Department of Education's IPEDS data-collection and communication work. The project's analysis and communication about revenue and spending trends will shift to the American Institutes for Research (AIR),...
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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, ...
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November 21, 2011
As part of the Campaign to Cut Waste, the Obama administration cut erroneous Pell Grant payments to 2.7% in 2011, the lowest it has been since 2005. White House officials estimate that reform measures saved $300 million in overpayment through the Pell Grant student aid program. The 2011 payment errors totaled $1 billion, approximately the same as the payment errors...
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November 21, 2011
Driven by external pressure for increased accountability and internal pressure for improved learning outcomes, colleges across the country have been developing and refining assessment systems for several decades. In some cases, assessment results have significant positive impact, for example, when used to enhance teaching and learning or as a lever for organizational change. In other cases, the re...
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November 15, 2011
NEBHE convened approximately 400 New England higher education, government and business leaders on Monday, Nov. 7, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston to discuss the role of higher education in preparing the highly skilled workers that will drive innovation in the region. Featured speakers included: U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) Gov. Dannel P. Malloy (D-Conn.) Jane Oates, Assistant Secretary,...
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November 14, 2011
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) held a hearing Tuesday to discuss legislation to reauthorize the 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law, which has approved by the committee on Oct. 20. Committee Chair Tom Harkin (D-IA) acknowledged that "everyone has something they would like to change" about the draft, but encouraged his fellow lawmakers...
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November 14, 2011
Editor’s Note: NEJHE has strived to document and improve the experiences of groups historically underserved by higher education, including ethnic and racial minorities. Academia is more tolerant than many sectors, but spending a brief time on any campus reveals that people who are “different” in any way are also underserved and underacknowledged. This article explores the particular situatio...
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November 10, 2011
The New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) named recipients of its 10th annual New England Higher Education Excellence Awards. Each year, NEBHE presents Regional Excellence Awards to individuals and organizations that have shown exceptional leadership on behalf of higher education and the advancement of educational opportunity, and State Merit Awards to honor the innovative work of organizations, institutions or...
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November 9, 2011
NEBHE convened approximately 400 leaders of business, education and government at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on Nov. 7, 2011 for a conference titled “New England Works” Summit on Bridging Higher Education and the Workforce. Following are keynote remarks from Boston Fed President and CEO Eric Rosengren. To download the figures, click here. Other speakers included: Connecticut Gov...
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November 8, 2011
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) scheduled a final hearing on legislative language to reauthorize the 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law for Tuesday, Nov. 8. Educators and administrators are expected to testify to the burdensome requirements of the NCLB law, which the new legislation is intended to ameliorate. Although the HELP Committee voted...
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November 1, 2011
In the sea of criticism of profit-obsessed business school graduates, Jim Poss appears to be an anomaly. In 2003, Poss was watching a trash vehicle on a Boston street. The truck was idling, blocking traffic, and smoke was pouring out of the exhaust. There has to be a better way, Poss thought to himself. He took the problem back to his team at Seahorse Power Co., a company that was identifying inno...
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October 31, 2011
On Wednesday, President Obama announced a new proposal to ease the burden of student loan debt. The "Know Before You Owe" initiative will allow students with multiple government-backed loans to consolidate them into one loan under the federal Direct Loan program with an interest rate reduction of 0.25% to 0.5%. The administration estimated that about 5.8 million students could be...
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October 28, 2011
Demography is destiny, especially if you are in higher education. Consider: There are 200,000 fewer children in New England today, compared with 10 years ago—a 6% decline. The number of married couples with children has declined by 10% since 2000—and they now account for fewer than one in five New England households. The number of single parents has grown by...
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October 25, 2011
At Southern Vermont College (SVC) and at our nation’s other colleges and universities, Anatomy and Physiology I (A&PI) is the gateway course into healthcare careers. Given the country’s growing workforce development needs in this field, it is critical that our first-year students accumulate the requisite body of knowledge in the course to pass it and proceed in their healthcare programs: ...
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October 24, 2011
On Thursday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted 15-7 to advance legislation to replace the 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal education law, with three Republicans joining Democrats in support of the bill. The legislation would replace NCLB's requirement that all students achieve proficiency in math and reading by 2014 with a mandate that states...
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October 18, 2011
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Tom Harkin (D-IA) released his draft of legislation to update the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law on Tuesday. The legislation frees states from NCLB's strict requirement that all children be proficient in reading and math by 2014, a standard which the Department of Education has estimated that 80%...
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October 11, 2011
The House Education and Workforce Committee's Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training held a hearing Wednesday on the benefit of encouraging foreign graduates of U.S. universities to remain in the U.S. Employment visas are currently restricted to 140,000 annually, with no more than 7% going to any single country. Supporters discussed various possible strategies for preventing the brain drain...
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October 7, 2011
What would it be like if work and play were more alike? That was the dangerous question raised by Stanford University behavioral scientist Byron Reeves at the BIF-7 conference in downtown Providence on Sept. 20 and 21. Reeves had met J. Leighton Read at a soccer game in Silicon Valley, and they began talking about work. Their conversation led to ways to marry the primitive engagement of inte...
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October 6, 2011
NEBHE released its 2011 report on tuition and mandatory fees at public postsecondary institutions available online. In an effort to inform the decision-making of state policymakers as well as public higher education leaders and trustees, this report provides details of public postsecondary tuition and mandatory fee rates for the past five years, collected during the summer of 2011.Questions about the...
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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 teacher. Much has changed over the past generat...
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October 1, 2011
Michael Walzer, professor emeritus in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and co-editor of Dissent magazine, will deliver a Maine Center for Economic Policy (MECEP) lecture on "Why Do We Fight for Social Justice?" on Tuesday, Oct. 11, at the University of Southern Maine's Wishcamper Center. The event will begin with a...
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September 30, 2011
The federal No Child Left Behind law of 2002 left it to states to establish their own academic standards and assessment systems. Those standards vary across the country in rigor and quality. Yet as former Maine Commissioner of Education Susan A. Gendron noted in March 2010: "What is different about mathematics in Maine from California? ... I don't believe there is a difference."The National Govern...
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September 27, 2011
Three distinguished leaders announced their decisions to leave New England college presidencies ...Most recently, Jane Sanders announced she will step down as president of Burlington College, effective in mid-October, after seven years at the helm. In mid-September, Ruth J. Simmons announced she will step down as president of Brown University at the end of this academic year. She became the...
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September 26, 2011
The Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill's $158 billion in discretionary funding provides a 0.12% funding increase from FY 2011 Education Department funding levels, and includes a provision to maintain Pell Grants at their current $5,550 maximum level. FY 2012 funding for the Education Department's Race to the Top competitive grant program would match current funding at $698.6 million. The Promise Neighborhoods program...
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September 26, 2011
Liberal Education for a Land of Colleges: Yale’s Reports of 1828; David B. Potts; Palgrave MacMillan; 2010. Liberal Education for a Land of Colleges: Yale’s Reports of 1828, is, in a sense, three small books under one cover. David Potts, an academic residing in the Pacific Northwest, was originally introduced to the documents more than 40 years ago as part of a graduate-level study of the h...
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September 23, 2011
Bunker Hill Community College and partners were awarded a five-year grant of $230,000 per year by the U.S. Department of Education Talent Search program to prepare high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds for entry and success in college.The project's other partners include the Chelsea (Mass.) Public Schools, Families United in Educational Leadership (FUEL) and Choice Thru Education.Through BHCC's program, 500...
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September 19, 2011
On Tuesday, the House voted 365-54 to pass the latest in a series of bills to update the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law. This latest legislation (H.R. 2218) aims to establish more charter schools in order to increase student achievement around the country. Currently, the national charter school program provides funding for states to establish new charter schools....
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September 19, 2011
Moral Problems in Higher Education, Steven Cahn, editor, Temple University Press, 2011. “Few philosophers have shown much interest in examining the moral problems …” in academe, their own bailiwick, complains Steven Cahn, a philosopher and former president of The Graduate School and University Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). Cahn initiated a course in academic ethics ...
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September 16, 2011
NEBHE is working with Boston magazine to publish a 2012 Guide to New England Colleges & Universities.The 2012 Guide will be distributed as a standalone publication, accompanying the winter issues of Boston magazine and Philadelphia magazine.NEBHE will also distribute copies of the Guide throughout the region, and NEBHE and Boston will post much of the data on their websites.Since the...
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September 15, 2011
Keene State College appointed former executive director of the New Hampshire Postsecondary Education Commission Kathryn Dodge as special assistant to the president.Dodge was admissions director at Keene State from 1990 to 2001.At the commission, Dodge oversaw regulation of all public and private, for-profit and nonprofit higher education institutions and career schools in the state and those that wished to enter...
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September 12, 2011
In his speech before a joint session of Congress Thursday evening, President Obama put forward several proposals aimed at bolstering the economy and creating jobs. Among these proposals was $30 billion to repair and revamp school facilities, including $5 billion specifically for community college infrastructure.Education advocates in the administration and Congress have attempted to advance funding for school improvement and...
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September 12, 2011
For decades. the cost of serving college students, from community colleges to Ivy League institutions, has been a barrier that has blocked access for many who want an education. With a recent massification effort aimed at producing more college graduates for the workplace, the enrollment numbers have increased and student debt load has become a real concern. Tuition costs are often perceived as th...
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September 8, 2011
More people are going to college than ever before. But in the U.S., about half of the people who start don't finish, leaving about 37 million Americans with some college credit but no degrees, according to "Some College, No Degree," a new documentary from American Radioworks.The first in a three-part series exploring how higher education is changing, "Some College, No...
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September 7, 2011
Hilary Pennington, who has led the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Postsecondary Success efforts for the past five years, emailed her colleagues that she was leaving the foundation. Before joining Gates, she was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and CEO of Jobs for the Future, which she co-founded. Inside Higher Ed reports that Tom Dawson, a...
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September 6, 2011
NEBHE will bring together hundreds of New England higher education, government and business leaders on Monday, Nov. 7, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston to discuss the role of higher education in preparing the highly skilled workers that will drive innovation in the region.Presenters and panelists at the New England Works conference will explore: What projections say about the...
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September 5, 2011
I realized how poor my family was when I was a high school senior. While filling out a financial aid form to go to college, I looked at my mom’s tax return to see how much she made. I asked her if it was a mistake. It wasn’t. She made $11,000 a year to support a family of four. Today I make four times as much as my mom did mainly because of one reason. Not dogged ingenuity or self-determinatio...
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September 2, 2011
The University of Rhode Island's honors colloquium will address technological advances expected over the next 20 to 30 years and their impact on humankind.Talks will take place Tuesday evenings, at 7:30 p.m. from September through December 2011, at Edwards Auditorium on URI's Kingston campus. The complete season line-up follows:Tuesday, Sept. 13Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil on exponential growth and its...
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August 30, 2011
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore will speak at Bunker Hill Community College's Health & Wellness Center Gymnasium on Thursday, Sept. 15, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Moore's latest book, Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life, is scheduled to be released in mid-September. The event is free but seating is limited....
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August 29, 2011
This paper, like many being written these days, deals with the “problem” of student retention in higher education. But unlike most, this paper focuses not on the problem of retention per se but rather on how institutional leaders think about student retention, completion, and success–how the way they frame their concerns about retention can give rise to a different sort of problem. Something...
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August 25, 2011
Award-winning author Salman Rushdie will open Eastern Connecticut State University's 11th Annual Arts and Lecture Series on Tuesday, Oct. 4, at 7 p.m., in the university's student center. Rushdie is the author of 10 fictional novels inspired by his homeland of India, including The Satanic Verses, which led the spiritual leader of Iran to issue a fatwa calling for Rushdie's...
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August 25, 2011
Many faculty and staff working in higher education lament the increasing—some would say unending—involvement of the parents of our college-aged students. We denigrate such individuals as “helicopter” parents, and when the contact occurs in person as opposed to through the phone or email, we call them “lawn mower” parents. There’s even a Wikipedia ref...
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August 23, 2011
J. Bonnie Newman, the former interim president of the University of New Hampshire, was named interim chancellor of the New Hampshire Community College System, succeeding Richard Gustafson, who is retiring as chancellor of the seven-campus system. Newman was executive dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, an assistant to President George H.W. Bush, president of the Business and Industry...
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August 17, 2011
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy will be among speakers at 'To Have and Have Not: The Growing Economic and Social Divide and its Implications for Educational Leaders,' a conference scheduled for Monday, Oct. 3, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., at Boston University's Metcalf Trustee Center.The conference sponsored by Concord, Mass.-based Maguire Associates will also feature Barry Bluestone, dean of the...
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August 15, 2011
As part of its mission to tie higher education to the economic well-being of New England, NEBHE has partnered with the New England Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (NE HERC) to provide access to recruitment and employment resources to address faculty and staff hiring needs.The mission of the NE HERC, which was founded in 2006, is to advance the efforts of...
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August 11, 2011
Connecticut's Fairfield University announced the roster for its 2011-12 Open VISIONS Forum at the university's Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.The complete season line-up is as follows:Monday, Sept. 19, 2011, at 8 p.m.Chuck Todd: 'State of the Nation: Polling the Mood'Monday, Oct. 3, 2011, at 8 p.m.Lara Logan: 'Apartheid to Afghanistan, Reporting from the Front Lines'Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011,...
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August 8, 2011
The debt-ceiling deal signed by President Obama last week will cut over $900 billion in federal funding over the next 10 years. Yet even in an extremely budget-conscious atmosphere, members of Congress singled out the Pell Grant program for an increase in funding to guarantee college access for low-income students. Under the terms of the new law, the Pell program...
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August 5, 2011
All six New England states have completed the initial step in their budget processes in this very difficult fiscal year.In mid-June, we reported that Connecticut and Vermont had completed budgets in record time, followed by completions in Maine and New Hampshire. Now, Massachusetts and Rhode Island ...Massachusetts BudgetTo the consternation of labor leaders, Democratic lawmakers in Massachusetts, who have had...
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August 1, 2011
Editor's Note: A reminder that our DC Shuttle column has changed gates. Our news from Washington will now appear in Newslink, rather than the Journal section, of http://www.nebhe.org.On Wednesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan defended the department's budget request for FY 2012, including a 10.7% increase over 2011 funding levels, to the Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, and Education....
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July 29, 2011
University of Vermont trustees named former Provost A. John Bramley to serve as interim president, beginning Aug. 1. He will succeed Daniel Fogel, who is resigning the presidency after nine years in charge and will join the UVM faculty. Bramley, himself a longstanding member of the UVM faculty, served as acting president in 2006 when Fogel suffered from acute pancreatitis....
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July 27, 2011
Clark University of Worcester, Mass., is the latest New England campus to join NEBHE's Master Property Program (MPP). Clark joins the University of Maine System in New England and 49 institutions nationwide that cover more than 100 campuses with total insured values exceeding $78.9 billion. Established in 1994 by the Midwestern Higher Education Compact, the MPP saved participating members approximately...
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July 25, 2011
Editor's Note: Our DC Shuttle column has changed gates, so to speak. With frequent arrivals of higher ed news from our partner The New England Council, DC Shuttle will now appear in Newslink, rather than the Journal section, of http://www.nebhe.org. President Obama hosted an education roundtable on July 18 with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Domestic Policy Chair Melody Barnes and...
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July 25, 2011
I have spent much of my working life studying and promoting student loans. As a good liberal Democrat, I spent years arguing for the expansion of the old Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) which had its roots in Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. My professional life included stints working for one of the nonprofit FFELP agencies and being a co-founder of an entirely private nonprofit, ...
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July 20, 2011
In mid-June, we reported that Connecticut and Vermont had completed budgets in record time. Now it's Maine and New Hampshire's turn in this very difficult budget year. Maine State Budget After a rocky start, Maine's newly elected Republican Gov. Paul LePage got much of what he asked for, as the Republican-controlled Legislature approved a $6.1 billion two-year budget, which included...
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July 19, 2011
The House Education and Workforce Committee advanced the third in a series of bills to reform the No Child Left Behind law on Wednesday. The bill (H.R. 2445) would expand states' freedom to distribute federal education funding, allowing them to take money allocated to a specific program and redirect it to other activities indicated by federal education law. Committee Chair and bill sponsor John Kl...
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July 18, 2011
Late last month, NEBHE senior fellow and Massachusetts Board of Higher Education Chair Charles Desmond and I launched a series of interviews with key leaders in New England philanthropy. Our goal was to paint a picture of what philanthropies see as the key issues and challenges facing higher education and how potential funders can have the most meaningful impacts on education in New England. Our ...
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July 14, 2011
More than 40% of high school students feel unprepared to use technology as they look ahead to college and work, and only 8% of teachers fully integrate technology in the classroom, according to Integrating Technology with Student-Centered Learning, a new report prepared for the Nellie Mae Education Foundation (NMEF) of Quincy, Mass., by Education Development Center (EDC) of Newton, Mass.The...
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July 13, 2011
Two years after the depth of the Great Recession, the economy is still a major factor in college-enrollment decisions, according to a new survey by Concord, Mass.-based Maguire Associates and Fastweb.com. Nearly one-third of high school seniors who did not enroll in their first-choice college said the main reason was that they could not afford it, according to the survey...
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July 11, 2011
On Thursday, House Education and Workforce Committee Chair John Kline (R-MN) introduced No Child Left Behind (NCLB) reform legislation (H.R. 2445). The bill, which would give states and school districts almost complete control over how they spend federal education funding, is the third in a planned series of five education reform bills from House leadership. Supporters of the measure say that it w...
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July 5, 2011
The Education Department released College Affordability and Transparency Lists on Thursday. The 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act requires the Education Department to produce six lists, with three examining tuition and fees and three examining each institution's average price of attendance minus grants and scholarships. The lists are also divided by type of institution (public/private, two-yea...