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January 22, 2011
Sterling College will serve up a new academic program in farm-to-table food studies in summer 2011.'Vermont's Table: Farming, Cooking, and the Rural Experience' will combine hands-on culinary training using local vegetables and meats with in-depth examination of Vermont farms, cheesemakers and agricultural businesses. The program will include courses in Whole Farm Thinking and Farm-Scale Production of Value-Added Products, seminars in...
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January 19, 2011
Yale University could offer a firsthand curriculum on the fickle nature of philanthropy.First, there's the lesson on dirty money. Last week, the Yale Daily News reported that the university agreed to pay $1 million to Industrial Enterprises of America, to settle the company's complaint that its former CEO, a Yale alumn named John Mazzuto, made a $1.7 million donation to...
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January 18, 2011
University of Maine System Chancellor Richard L. Pattenaude announced that a search committee has identified four finalists to become president of Maine's flagship public university in Orono after current President Robert Kennedy steps down in June 2011.The finalists are: · Donald J. Farish, president of Rowan University in New Jersey; · Paul W. Ferguson, provost and vice chancellor for academic...
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January 18, 2011
The New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) will hold its ninth annual New England Higher Education Excellence Awards on Friday, March 11, at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf Hotel. 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...
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January 17, 2011
Last month, I suggested we separate hype from reality—not so much to criticize distance learning, but to seek an even higher ideal. Much of what is thrust under the umbrella of distance learning isn’t conducted at much distance, isn’t well supported and limits opportunities for institution-wide collaboration and innovation. Distance learning should be an exciting appeal, rather than just a p...
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January 14, 2011
The University of Massachusetts selected Robert Caret, president of Towson University, to succeed Jack M. Wilson as head of the five-campus university.A chemist with degrees from the University of New Hampshire and Suffolk University, Caret will need to concoct an effective potion for UMass, which the Boston Globe described as "struggling to climb into the elite ranks of public universities...
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January 13, 2011
In August 2010, nine openly gay college leaders met to form a first-of-its-kind collegiate organization, the LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education. Among their ranks were three officials from New England: Ralph Hexter, past Hampshire College president and among the first openly gay presidents; Katherine Ragsdale, president of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge; and Theo Kalikow, president of the University of...
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January 9, 2011
For nearly 20 years, the print editions of The New England Journal of Higher Education (and its predecessor Connection) published a quarterly collection of facts and figures called "Data Connection." It was a sort of ripoff of the underrated Harper's Index. The key was to cleverly juxtapose pieces of interesting data, with no expressed overarching context. The glue, in our...
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January 8, 2011
The good news is that the New England states are showing slight gains in revenue collections. The bad news is that it will not be enough to stave off a new round of budget cuts for the coming fiscal years. States are preparing budgets for FY12 and FY13 while addressing shortfalls in FY11 budgets. Most states have spent stimulus funds...
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January 7, 2011
Comings and Goings ... Jack Wilson said ... Departing University of Massachusetts President Jack Wilson told the Sun newspaper of Lowell, Mass., that he will join the faculty at the UMass Lowell campus when he steps down from the system presidency this summer. Wilson will become a tenured professor of emerging technologies in the College of Management. He was named...
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January 6, 2011
Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine announced the 'Best Values in Public Colleges 2011," its annual ranking of 100 public colleges and universities in the U.S.Four New England institutions are on the list: the University of Connecticut, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of New Hampshire and the University of Vermont. Among the 100 public colleges in terms of value for...
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January 6, 2011
DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education, Anya Kamenetz, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vt., 2010Anya Kamenetz, a 2002 graduate of Yale and staff writer for Fast Company, could be an academic's worst nightmare. Articulate, forceful and skilled—her writing lobs volleys of criticisms that are hard to refute and harder still to ignore. In ...
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December 30, 2010
The University of Rhode Island, in collaboration with Rhode Island Hospital, will offer a five-year dual degree program to teach graduates to apply physics to treating cancer and other human diseases.Set to launch in September 2011, the 162-credit program combining a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's in medical physics, will be the first of its kind in New...
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December 30, 2010
The weekly Mass High Tech newspaper recently published a list of New England institutions with the largest "tech graduate enrollment." The list of 20 includes some famous New England private research institutions such as MIT and Harvard as well as seven public universities.Although Mass High Tech didn't use a specific definition of "tech" programs, it offered survey respondents examples of...
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December 29, 2010
Trustees at Northern Essex Community College in Massachusetts seemed poised to choose Lane Glenn to succeed David Hartleb, who is retiring in June after 15 years as president.Glenn has been vice president of academic affairs since 2006 at the 7,439-student college with campuses in Haverhill, Mass., and Lawrence, Mass. Before joining Northern Essex, he was dean of academic and student...
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December 29, 2010
The University of Maine at Augusta found a new niche for its online program in Information and Library Services thousands of miles away in Micronesia.UMA has partnered with Palau Community College to bring its bachelor's program to students in Micronesia.UMA is also helping the community college build an online format for its associate degree program to make it more accessible...
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December 21, 2010
The University of Connecticut appointed Susan Herbst as its first female president. Herbst was executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer at the University System of Georgia and, before that, acting president of the State University of New York at Albany. Her brother, Jeffrey Herbst, is president of Colgate University.Meanwhile, New England will have to learn to live without two...
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December 21, 2010
In the U.S., postsecondary education has long driven individual social mobility and collective economic prosperity. Nonetheless, the nation’s labor force includes 54 million adults who lack a college degree; of those, nearly 34 million have no college experience at all. In the 21st century, these numbers cannot sustain us. Returning to learning: Adults’ success in college is key to America’...
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December 15, 2010
The nation is consumed by the quest to grant more college degrees. A new report by Douglas Harris and Sara Goldrick-Rab if the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers a look at how to do that cost-effectively.'The (Un)Productivity of American Higher Education: From Cost Disease to Cost-Effectiveness" compares several practices to see which are cost-effective for producing more degrees. The practices include...
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December 14, 2010
The rising cost of tuition, the loan burden, the diminished grant availability—these usually come to mind when the subject is paying for college. Surprisingly, though, many students are actually entitled to thousands of dollars in refunds, usually paid when students borrow more then they need to, or when late federal aid arrives supplementing already paid tuition fees.The distribution of these...
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December 13, 2010
A mismatch is brewing between the supply of skilled workers in New England and the increasing demand for such workers, according to a new report by the New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.The study by senior economist Alicia Sasser Modestino shows that, over the next 10 years, New England will face not only a...
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December 12, 2010
Harnessing America's Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning, Peter Smith, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2010In 1970, I was a high school student in a suburban New England town. The invasion of Cambodia and the shootings at Kent State had brought spectacular illumination to the end of the academic year and dimmed hopes that the war in Vietnam would soon be over. But optimism and idealism left over ...
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December 8, 2010
Hebrew College of Newton, Mass., announced it will be move its operation to Andover Newton Theological School in 2011 or 2012, contingent on the sale of its current building.The college is facing debt of more than $32 million.Hebrew College offers undergraduate degrees and several master's degrees and certificates in Jewish Studies and Jewish Education.Hebrew recently teamed up with Northeastern University...
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December 7, 2010
“About every two years someone comes up with this story. There is absolutely nothing to it—it's simply not true,” Peter Capelli, Professor, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, commenting on the Georgetown's college labor supply shortage forecast. —“Prediction of Worker Shortage Has Critics,” The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.), April 10, 2010. The recent response by Anth...
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December 2, 2010
Private colleges, nonprofit hospitals, museums, soup kitchens and churches are exempt from property taxes. As cash-strapped host municipalities look for more revenue, their interest in collecting payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) from charitable nonprofit organizations will grow, according to a report by the Cambridge, Mass.-based Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. In recent years, many cities have expanded PILOTs and...
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December 1, 2010
Ten of the 32 new Rhodes Scholars are from New England or studied in the region.They are: Mark Jia and Nicholas DiBerardino, both of Princeton University; Laura Nelson of the University of Virginia; Zachary Frankel, Daniel Lage and Baltazar Zavala of Harvard; Alice Baumgartner and William Zeng of Yale; Gabrielle Emanuel of Dartmouth; and Jennifer Lai of MIT.Chosen from regions...
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November 30, 2010
According to a June poll by First Focus, an advocacy organization dedicated to making children and families a priority in federal policy, 70% of Americans support the DREAM Act. Rallies are occurring all across the country. There is even a hunger strike in Texas to help get the bill passed. In addition, legislators from the six New England states seem...
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November 30, 2010
World-class and working class New England colleges made changes at the top today.Tufts University, the world-famous research university centered in Medford, Mass., announced its next president will be Anthony P. Monaco, pro-vice-chancellor for planning and resources at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. A neuroscientist, Monaco identified the first gene specifically involved in human language. He will succeed...
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November 30, 2010
The notion of the "college labor market" as a fixed set of occupations is remarkably static. In contrast, we assume that job and skill requirements are dynamic. (This lively debate over future demand of college-educated workers will continue in our Forum.) Northeastern University economists Paul E. Harrington and Andrew M. Sum argue that in our recent report Help Wanted, we “radically over...
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November 29, 2010
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick vowed to push for in-state tuition for illegal immigrant students at state colleges during his second term.Patrick announced the plan earlier this month at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition's annual Thanksgiving luncheon. Though no specific details were revealed, Patrick's plans draw on many of the 130 immigration reforms recommended by an advisory panel a...
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November 22, 2010
The Florida Department of Education announced the nation's first state assessment to incorporate common core standards.Working with the test developer McCann Associates, Florida will launch the test at 28 colleges in an effort to both place students and assess readiness for college-level work. Florida's Postsecondary Education Readiness Test (PERT) will be given to high school and entering postsecondary students.PERT uses...
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November 18, 2010
Trustees of the University of Maine System got an update this week regarding the financial and programmatic health of the state's seven university campuses and its online and distance-learning initiative called University College.Last year, projected budget shortfalls to the tune of $42.8 million prompted administrators to reevaluate the management and academic structures of the Maine system. At its November 2009...
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November 18, 2010
If only they had their health … President Obama has emphasized the importance of higher education, and recently implemented ambitious higher education finance reform that will serve to benefit college students now and in the future. Although these changes are noteworthy, little has been done to help the many individuals who currently owe student debt, particularly private debt, and are no lon...
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November 12, 2010
The Malden, Mass.-based Immigrant Learning Center Inc. (ILC) and Babson College will collaborate on a statewide conference for immigrant entrepreneurship to be hosted at Babson's Executive Conference Center in Wellesley, Mass. on Wednesday, Nov. 17, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.The ILC says immigrants are "jet fuel" for entrepreneurship in Massachusetts, from neighborhood revitalization to increasing numbers of transnational businesses...
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November 12, 2010
G. K. Chesterton famously once said: “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” This, I believe, applies to distance learning as well. There is far too much self-congratulatory hyperbole about the growth and pervasiveness of online learning – which exaggerates reality and overlooks the true revolution occurring less visibly. Much of wha...
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November 11, 2010
On Oct. 25 and 26, we took part in an unprecedented convening of higher education leaders in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Led by the University of Massachusetts Boston, representatives from 40 colleges and universities from across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Caribbean gathered with representatives from the Haitian Higher Education community, including the minister of education and the chancellor o...
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November 10, 2010
It's over. Gone are the acrimonious debates, boisterous crowds, vicious campaign attack ads, incessant robo calls and campaign paraphernalia cluttering street corners, highways, lawns and sidewalks. The voters have spoken in New England and across the nation.Nationally, Republicans swept races for governor, the state legislatures and the U.S. Congress. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), Republicans now...
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November 10, 2010
The percentage of state lawmakers who are women will shrink to 23% in 2011, down slightly from almost 25% in 2010, according to a new report by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).This reverses a trend in which women made up a larger proportion of state legislatures each year back to 2005 when women comprised just over 22%.While New...
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November 8, 2010
The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce has engaged in a highly publicized campaign claiming that the nation will face a very substantial deficit of college graduates by 2018 if the American postsecondary system fails to rapidly expand the number of college degrees it awards each year. Indeed, the employment projections developed by Anthony Carnevale and his colleagues at Georgetown U...
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November 5, 2010
MassBay Community College was awarded a five-year, $2 million grant under the U.S. Department of Education's Strengthening Institutions Program, which aims to help campuses serve lower-income students by enhancing academic quality, institutional management and fiscal stability. The Wellesley, Mass. college also won approval of a three-year Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) grant from the Education Department for...
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November 3, 2010
The Boston think tank MassINC will present "What just happened?" First impressions of the 2010 election results" with panelists Alison King of New England Cable News, Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe and Steven Koczela of MassINC Polling Group, on Friday, Nov. 5, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. To register, click here.****The...
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November 3, 2010
For-profit colleges such as the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University offer an alternative to traditional two-year and four-year non-profit institutions by focusing, if their rhetoric is to be believed, on learning 'relevant material you can apply immediately to your workplace.' With the rise in unemployment and the difficulties college grads are experiencing securing jobs, for-profit colleges are able to...
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November 3, 2010
This past September as thousands of college students moved into their dorms, the Boston Globe ran a front-page story about UMass Amherst. The theme of that story was familiar to anyone who has worked in public higher education in Massachusetts: The university community has high aspirations, but those hopes and plans have been consistently thwarted by public apathy and governmental neglect. Quoting...
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November 1, 2010
Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU) will host a lecture by University of Connecticut economics professor Fred Carstensen, director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, on Wednesday, Nov. 10, at 11 a.m., in the J. Eugene Smith Library.The lecture is part of the David T. Chase Free Enterprise Institute's Distinguished Lecture Series and is open to the public.Carstensen has completed...
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November 1, 2010
Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter will speak at the Regis College Fine Arts Center in Weston, Mass., on Monday, Nov. 8, at 4 p.m. Carter will be promoting her new book, Within Our Reach, which addresses a mental health system that, Carter says, "continues to fail those in need" despite recent scientific breakthroughs in diagnosing and treating mental illnesses. Carter...
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October 29, 2010
Gateway Community College (GCC) looks to go full speed ahead this spring with a new associate degree in railroad engineering technology (RET), the first of its kind offered by an institution of higher education in the Northeast.Metro-North Commuter Railroad approached GCC more than a year ago to find ways to enhance the education of current Metro-North employees who are eligible...
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October 29, 2010
Only a small fraction of the billions of dollars that foundations grant annually for education goes toward the specific needs of lower-income and vulnerable students, according to a study by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog.The committee's new report Confronting Systemic Inequity in Education calls on foundations to address the root causes of intergenerational inequality...
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October 28, 2010
The Rennie Center released A New Era of Education Reform: Preparing All Students for Success in College, Career and Life which calls attention to the need for 21st century skills in today's classrooms.The report, funded by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, summarizes a survey of Massachusetts district and school leaders coupled with their opinions on the importance of 21st century...
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October 27, 2010
The College Sustainability Report Card 2011 is out today, revealing the profiles of 322 schools and their sustainability policies. The fifth edition of the report by the Sustainable Endowments Institute assesses 52 indicators, ranging from green initiatives to recycling programs, and uses an A to F letter-grading system to evaluate different colleges and universities nationwide.Some New England campuses made honor...
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October 26, 2010
Average student loan debt grew to an average of $24,000 per student in the Class of 2009, up 6% over the Class of 2008, according to the latest national report from The Project on Student Debt.The report is especially worrisome for New England where all six states have higher student debts levels than the national average. New Hampshire had the...
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October 25, 2010
Do you feel a chill? Recently, the trustees of the Connecticut State University System decided not to raise tuition and fees. This decision marks the first time in a decade that tuition and fees have not increased within the four-school system.'It would be awesome. It is kind of expensive enough now,' says Sara Perran, a student at Central Connecticut State...
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October 22, 2010
The Nellie Mae Education Foundation posted an RFQ to its website for a consultant/consulting team to help guide its Proficiency-Based Pathways project.The project aims to: deepen the foundation's understanding of the emerging sector of proficiency-based education systems; and support the development of quality proficiency-based pathways to high school graduation and beyond. Proficiency-based pathways would reform the educational process so a...
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October 22, 2010
The Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education is organizing the Prepare Maine Gubernatorial Forum. Sponsored by WABI-TV5, the televised forum will be held at Bangor High School on Wednesday, Oct 27, at 7 p.m. The forum will provide opportunity for candidates to share their platforms on education, workforce development and Maine's economic future.Prepare Maine looks to ensure that all young...
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October 21, 2010
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...
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October 21, 2010
Most colleges reported an increase in student applications for fall 2009 admission, while 29% reported decreases (the largest proportion since 1996), according to the 2010 State of College Admission report released Wednesday by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC).The share of applicants offered admission at four-year institutions was 67% for the fall 2009 admission cycle. The average institutional...
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October 20, 2010
College of the Atlantic President David F. Hales announced he will retire at the end of the academic year. During his tenure, the college became a carbon-neutral institution, expanded its faculty and diversified its academic programs. A search for a new president is underway for the 2011-12 academic year.Suffolk University President David Sargent, whose high pay captured regional and national...
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October 18, 2010
The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston will host a free forum, titled "Mismatch in the Labor Market? Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Skilled Labor in New England," on Tuesday, Nov. 30, from 8:30 a.m. to noon.Alicia Sasser Modestino, senior economist at the FRBB's New England Public Policy Center will describe the misalignment between the number of workers employed and the...
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October 18, 2010
If you sometimes suspect college rankings are pushing the agenda of some untold sponsor, here's a poll whose sponsor is nakedly advertised: the "State of Scruff" Schick Hydro Hairiest Colleges Study from the makers of Schick Hydro® razors and Sperling's Best Places.The findings suggest Rutgers, Harvard, the University of South Florida, Georgetown and American University are the hairiest colleges in...
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October 15, 2010
Employed wives brought home 47% of their family's total earnings in 2009, up from 45% in 2008, according to a new report by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.That 'marks the largest single-year increase in 15 years,' according to the report Wives as Breadwinners: Wives' Share of Family Earnings Hits Historic High during the Second Year of...
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October 15, 2010
Members of NEBHE's STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) PBL (Problem Based Learning) project recently visited Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Ariz., to film solar-energy production sites. The film will become part of a multimedia case study for use in high school and college classrooms. The STEM PBL project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education project of the...
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October 15, 2010
In line with the priorities set forth by the Obama administration and the Lumina Foundation, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) released a report outlining the goals and policy initiatives needed to propel the 16 Southern states to 60% postsecondary degree and certificate attainment by the year 2025.In the preface to No Time to Waste, SREB President Dave Spence points...
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October 15, 2010
At no point in recent history has the need for educational institutions to justify their investment value been greater than today. Despite news of a “slow recovery,” budget cuts continue with drastic consequences for schools serving all levels of education. During these economically insecure times, when government-supported industries are competing for scarce public funds, evidence of educatio...
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October 14, 2010
Business professionals interested in learning how to better identify and manage financial risk can turn to a new master's program in Financial Risk Management at the University of Connecticut.The program's location in Stamford, Conn., provides students with the opportunity to interact with finance professionals in Stamford and New York. Not only that, residents of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island...
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October 13, 2010
Like the traditional four seasons in New England, election season has the potential to bring about stunning change. This year, races at the gubernatorial, federal and state legislative levels will have significant impacts on education and policy in the region for years to come.The political landscape in New England will be dramatically altered following the Nov. 2 midterm elections. At...
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October 13, 2010
In this recession, one market is thriving—community colleges. Just last week, the White House held the first-ever national summit for community colleges. President Obama proposed that by 2020, an additional 5 million adults will hold community college degrees and certificates and announced millions of dollars in privately funded grants. [Participate in our Forum on the president's goal for community colleges.]With...
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October 12, 2010
The New England Board of Higher Education held a conference on Reinventing the University: New Models & Innovations for 21st Century Realities at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston last Monday, Oct. 4. But the discussion continues thanks to a variety of social media.To track our social media coverage check out the links below: NEBHE's Twitter page. #NEBHEcon hashtag (real-time...
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October 12, 2010
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,...
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October 8, 2010
The University of Massachusetts Amherst will offer formal, three-year bachelors degree programs in selected academic disciplines. Beginning next fall, first-year students seeking majors in Economics, Music and Sociology can elect to travel a shortened route to their diplomas; other programs (e.g. Linguistics, Dance and Spanish) could be added to this pilot program in the future.UMass Amherst emphasizes that in order...
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October 8, 2010
Look for more new bylines in NEJHE's online incarnation at www.nebhe.org ...Join me in welcoming interns to NEBHE's Department of Policy and Research: Darrell Aaron, David Mabe and Courtney Wilk, all of the Harvard Graduate School of Education....
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October 8, 2010
The MacArthur Foundation recently listed its 2010 Fellows on its website. Awardees of the fellowships, sometimes referred to as "genius grants," range from artists and linguists to historians and scientists.Among the 2010 awardees are two educators: high school teacher Amir Abo-Shaeer, a physics teacher and director of Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy in Goleta, Calif., and music educator Sebastian Ruth, the...
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October 6, 2010
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people face a 'chilly' climate on college campuses, according to the first-ever national report chronicling LGBT experiences at U.S. colleges and universities.The State of Higher Education for LGBT People for 2010, published by Charlotte, N.C.-based Campus Pride, reports that LGBT students experience significantly greater harassment and discrimination than their heterosexual peers. LGBT people also...
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October 3, 2010
Jane Goodall will speak at Western Connecticut State University's O'Neill Center in Danbury, Conn., on Saturday, Oct. 9, at 8 p.m., as part of her Roots & Shoots North America Training Summit. Events to be held from Friday, Oct. 8, through Sunday, Oct. 10, will mark the 50-year anniversary of the anthropologist's groundbreaking scientific research on chimpanzees....
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September 30, 2010
Stonyfield Farm CEO Gary Hirshberg, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CEO Paul Levy, Boston Globe writer Scott Kirsner, Cape Wind CEO Jim Gordon and Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone will be among speakers at the Progressive Business Leaders Network's 4th Annual CEO Summit to be held Friday, Oct. 8, from 7:45 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Bentley University in Waltham,...
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September 30, 2010
The nation seems to have suddenly awoken to the reality that for-profit academic institutions are a force to be reckoned with. For so long, they have been ignored as inconsequential, second-rate competition, and vilified for their greed and lack of quality. Two events seemed to have changed their image into something far more formidable: the realization that government-sponsored financial aid goes...
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September 29, 2010
Award-winning film director, producer and writer Spike Lee will speak about his life, his work and the capacity for film to effect social change, during a talk at Boston University's George Sherman Union on Wednesday Oct. 6, at 4 p.m.The event is free and open to the public. No RSVP required. Admission is first-come, first-served....
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September 29, 2010
The New England Council (NEC) will sponsor remarks by U.S. Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) and U.S. Department of Labor Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training Jane Oates on strengthening connections between business and postsecondary education for young adults in New England. The event will be held Thursday, Oct. 21, at 8 a.m., at Northeastern University.The remarks by Tierney and Oates...
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September 29, 2010
The New England Board of Higher Education's Reinventing the University: New Models & Innovations for 21st Century Realities conference is Monday Oct. 4 at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.Whether or not you're attending, NEBHE wants YOU to join in the conversation!Follow @NEBHE on Twitter and make sure to use hash tag #NEBHEcon for real-time updates, live chat and more...
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September 28, 2010
Education technology boosters see the classroom as a changing frontier. New gadgets. New connections all the time. But with continuing budget cuts, teachers stuck to traditional modes of instruction and little support from district administrations, new tech advances often go unused or misused, according to education leaders, technology providers and policymakers who gathered in Boston today for EdNet's 2010 conference....
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September 28, 2010
The International Institute of Islamic Thought awarded the Hartford Seminary $1 million to help endow a professorship in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations.The gift will help fund a chair in the Islamic Chaplaincy and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary's Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.Timur Yuskaev, assistant professor of Contemporary Islam and director of the Islamic...
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September 27, 2010
A few hundred people packed the Trinity Rep theater in downtown Providence Wednesday, Sept. 15, and Thursday, Sept. 16, with ears and minds open. More than a dozen entrepreneurs and artists told stories of how they used innovation and social technologies to help solve problems from protecting mothers in childbirth to cleaning up unwanted graffiti to turning grease into fuel. Much of the Busine...
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September 14, 2010
As the New England Board of Higher Education celebrates its 55th anniversary this year with our new content hub website, Facebook, Twitter and other social media, it is comforting to know our early history has a place in one of the oldest journals in New England. The New England Journal of Medicine recently added online archives containing material published between...
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September 10, 2010
The New England states, like the rest of the nation, are finally starting to show signs of a recovery from the Great Recession of 2008, albeit at different paces. Three of the states, however, still have unemployment rates that are about four percentage points above where they were before the recession began in 2007 (Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut). The smaller increases in unemploym...
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September 3, 2010
The monthly jobs report released today provided little comfort to those hoping for a strong turnaround in the job market over the next few months. Private-sector payroll employment levels in the nation increased by just 67,000 jobs between July and August. However, most of the gains in private sector employment came from health services (+28,000) and social assistance agencies (+12,000),...
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August 31, 2010
Among the little truly predictable—or at least those rare things I’ve been able to successfully predict—I would suggest these three truths. First is the inevitability of recessions. Whether the result of human folly or business cycles, the economy will contract—probably about once every decade, give or take, and probably in direct proportion to the degree to which we lived beyond our me...
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August 26, 2010
The New England Council announces two congressional breakfasts in September. The business group will present U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) on Friday, Sept. 10, from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., at the Bedford Village Inn, and U.S. Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) on Tuesday, Sept. 21, from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., at The Hartford Club.There is no cost for NEC...
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August 26, 2010
Among recent comings and goings on New England campuses, Kenneth W. Freeman, former CEO of Quest Diagnostics Inc., was appointed dean of Boston University's School of Management. Freeman also chairs the board of trustees at Bucknell University and is an executive-in-residence at Columbia Business School.****Harvard Business School also welcomes a new dean, Nitin Nohria, who served as co-chair of the...
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August 26, 2010
Richard D. Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, will discuss his book Tough Liberals: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy, at a forum sponsored by the Pioneer Institute, the Boston-based think tank that advocates free-markets and limited government.The forum will also feature remarks from panelists including Deborah A. Gist, commissioner of the Rhode Island...
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August 21, 2010
The Ford Foundation awarded Fairfield University a two-year $200,000 grant to lead a national study of undocumented immigrant students of Jesuit universities.Research at the university's Center of Faith and Public Life will seek to understand the connections between American Jesuit universities and undocumented students. The study will consider the best strategies to support and challenge undocumented students throughout their college...
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August 20, 2010
The number of U.S. colleges and art and trade schools offering degree programs in video game design will reach 300 nationally this fall—a nearly 20% increase in degrees offered in the field over last academic year, according to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).Twenty of the programs are offered at New England colleges.Vermont's Champlain College, an early pioneer in the field,...
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August 20, 2010
The overwhelming majority of U.S. school districts and states fail to provide resources black males need in order to close the graduation gap.According to the Schott Foundation, during the 2007-08 academic year, only 47% of black males graduated from high school "on time" with their entering cohort.The foundation reports that more than half of the 50 states have graduation rates...
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August 19, 2010
Ten years ago, Beloit College of Wisconsin found a gimmick that won it a yearly splash in the media spotlight.It was 1998 when the college first released its Beloit College Mindset List of "cultural touchstones" thought to shape the lives of students entering college.As if to underscore the tool's blend of intellectual curiosity and the college's quest for ink, the...
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August 18, 2010
Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology (BFIT) was awarded a grant of more than $360,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to introduce new two-year programs in Alternative Fuel Vehicle Operations and Maintenance and a bachelor's degree in Sustainable Automotive Business Practices.The programs aim to train and retrain technicians for hybrid vehicles, making BFIT the only provider of "green" technicians in...
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August 17, 2010
The higher education sector greatly outperformed the national economy's modest recovery during the first half of 2010, with job openings soaring by 36%, according to a new study by HigherEdJobs, a leading resource in academia-related employment.In 2008, higher education responded to the recession by relying more on part-time employees and focusing more recruitment on academic faculty instead of administration and...
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August 13, 2010
After the January 2010 earthquake that shook Haiti, President Barack Obama asked former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to lead a fundraising effort to assist the Haitian people. Their response, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund (CBHF), helps people and small and medium-sized enterprises in Haiti access the formal business sector and promotes job creation, especially jobs with a...
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August 12, 2010
Last week, a banker asked us a thoughtful question about the relatively low unemployment rate among adult bachelor's degree holders (25 years and older) we had written about in The New England Journal of Higher Education. Noting that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release this month shows those age 25 or older with a bachelor's degree have an...
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August 10, 2010
Bunker Hill Community College received a $23,000 grant from the housing authority in nearby Somerville to support development of a learning community within the Boston suburb's Mystic housing project.Known as SomerPromise, the learning community will kick off this fall, providing about 25 students who are residents of the project in nearby Somerville with faculty/staff and peer support for their college...
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August 9, 2010
He was bored and restless by age 42. He had vertically integrated a major media business, insofar as he owned his own publishing company, newspaper and book series, and even aspects of the postal system. He was an acclaimed author and civic leader. He decided to retire early to pursue his true passion and curiosity: his interest in science. His inquisitiveness in how things worked wasn’t the...
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August 6, 2010
June 2009 is seen by many as the end of the Great Recession. Strong growth in GDP following massive monetary and fiscal responses to the collapse in housing and financial markets meant that the economy was on the mend. Yet a year later, 1.1 million fewer people are working, and the unemployment rate is stuck at 9.5%. Worse still, more than one million individuals have left the job market since Apr...
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August 3, 2010
The U.S. Department of Education named Massachusetts and Rhode Island among 19 finalists in the national Race to the Top competition.The competition rewards states that adopt standards and assessments to prepare students for college and career success, build data systems that measure success, recruit effective teachers and principals and "turn around" low-achieving schools. In the first round of the competition,...
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August 2, 2010
NEBHE has updated its directory of links to all things related to New England higher education, including the region's more than 250 degree-granting colleges and universities, hundreds of public policy institutes and other regional and national resources.We have tried to fix broken links, added some new ones and updated others. Please continue to check back for links as both the...