The Journal

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...

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...

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...

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: ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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, ...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

July 5, 2011

Is demography really destiny? The makeup of the population and the perceived value of education are changing. So this year following the decennial census, we're presenting our demography figures a few ways. (We also presented a set in January.) The universities of the Connecticut State University System (CSUS) attracted more than 7,000 students of color this year—a 35% increase since 200...

June 27, 2011

Architecture and Academe: College Buildings in New England Before 1860; Bryant F. Tolles Jr.; University Press of New England, 2011 It’s not the topic that New England’s higher education institutions generally boast about, but for many it is their most obvious attribute—the brick, stone, mullioned, porticoed and columned facades that helped set the standard for what much of coll...

June 27, 2011

On Wednesday, the House Education and Workforce Committee approved the second of five total planned bills on federal education reform for the 112th Congress. By a vote of 34 to 5, the committee advanced legislation (H.R. 2218) which would allow governors, state education agencies, and charter school boards to parcel out funding to expand or duplicate successful charter schools. States without caps...

June 24, 2011

We invited each of the six New England governors to write articles on future challenges facing higher education in their respective states. ... The Future of Higher Education in Connecticut by Dannel P. Malloy, Governor of Connecticut Outwardly, the results appear impressive—growth in enrollments and degrees granted, expanded campuses and program offerings, and a well-known reputation ...

June 20, 2011

The New England economy continues to outperform the national economy. That is the good news. But both the region’s and nation’s economies continue to have low and staggered growth. The slow recovery from the 2008-09 recession is largely due to factors outside New England influence, including the European debt crisis, volatile energy markets and continued decline in the national housing...

June 20, 2011

On June 11, Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that if Congress is unable to pass a comprehensive overhaul of the 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law before the beginning of the 2011-12 school year, he would grant states waivers for the law's most burdensome requirements if they agreed to implement a set of reforms. While he has not fully developed the alternative plan, Secretary...

June 13, 2011

Republican senators boycotted a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) which was called to discuss recruiting practices at for-profit colleges. Ranking Member Michael Enzi (R-WY) said in a letter that “until the Majority demonstrates a sincere willingness to hold fair hearings on higher education, we will not participate in any hearings on thi...

June 13, 2011

NEJHE presents exclusive articles by New England's governors on higher education in their states ... Thanks to our dedicated teachers and committed students, Massachusetts leads the nation in student achievement and classroom innovation. We’ve made education our top priority because it’s the path to a more fulfilling life, a more rewarding career and a richer society. I have personally expe...

June 9, 2011

While most in the academic community know about the attempt to rein in the for-profits, few are aware of its collateral damage. In October, the Department of Education issued its Program Integrity Rules, intended to protect federal funds especially from those for-profit institutions with high student loan default rates. Well-intentioned though this was, the DOE dropped an inadvertent bombshell: Al...

June 6, 2011

On Thursday, the Education Department released the final "gainful employment" rules for vocational schools. In order to qualify for federal financial aid, for-profit and certificate programs will be required to prepare students for gainful employment by meeting one of three requirements: the average annual student loan payment is not more than 30% of a graduate's discretionary income; the average ...

June 6, 2011

NEJHE presents exclusive articles by New England's governors on higher education in their states ... Last spring, 83% of Maine public high school students who began high school four years earlier received a diploma. About 65% of those graduates likely enrolled in some form of postsecondary education—at a public university, private institution, community college or elsewhere. A 2008 re...

June 4, 2011

New Hampshire governor and longtime NEBHE delegate and chair, Walter Peterson died at age 88 on Wednesday, June 1. Walter attended William and Mary College and the University of New Hampshire before serving as a naval officer in the Pacific theater of World War II. After the war, he graduated from Dartmouth College. In 1948, with his father and brother, he founded The Petersons Inc. Real Estate...

June 1, 2011

NEJHE presents exclusive articles by New England's governors on higher education in their states ... Connecticut’s strategy for higher education focuses on one central goal: to increase student success. While other states in New England and beyond are increasing the percentage of adults with degrees, Connecticut’s rate of increase for young adults has dropped to 34th out of 50 states. For a...

May 31, 2011

On Wednesday, the House Education and Workforce Committee advanced the first bill (H.R. 1891) in a planned series of education reform legislation. Under the bill, which was approved along party lines (23-16), $400 million in funding for over 40 education programs created under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) would be repealed. Republican supporters of the bill, sponsored by Congr...

May 23, 2011

On Monday, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) announced that she and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced legislation (S. 969) aimed at encouraging and improving science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. The bill would provide planning and implementation grants on a competitive basis to help states integrate engineering instruction into K-12 education. Sen. Snowe said in a press rel...

May 22, 2011

Quality Education as a Constitutional Right: Creating a Grassroots Movement to Transform Public Schools; Theresa Perry, Robert Moses, Lisa Delpit, Ernesto Cortes Jr., Joan T. Wynne, editors; Beacon Press Books; 2010; Paperback $16 Quality Education as a Constitutional Right offers a provocative look at the continued disconnect between the rhetoric of reform and the facts of the real world. Stat...

May 16, 2011

On Friday, Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) introduced the first (H.R. 1891) of a series of education reform bills planned by the House Education and Workforce Committee. Congressman Hunter chairs the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, and his bill is aimed at reducing wasteful spending in K-12 education. The legislation would eliminate 43 education programs in o...

May 9, 2011

The U.S. Education Department is going ahead with its proposed "gainful employment" rules for for-profit colleges, despite industry advocates calling on Congress and the courts to intervene. Originally scheduled to be issued last September, Education Secretary Arne Duncan delayed the regulations after receiving about 90,000 letters on the issue, most of them in opposition. The most recent version ...

May 9, 2011

In the context of the recent efforts to arrive at a federal budget, articles abound in the popular media and trade publications debating both the value of Pell Grants and their rising cost to the U.S. government. Both pros and cons of the debate hold value. Pell Grants are what enable many of our low-income families to send their children to college and, when more and more jobs require a minimum ...

May 2, 2011

When it comes to creating an international campus, America’s universities are far better at welcoming faculty and students from abroad—and sending students to study abroad—than in truly elevating global consciousness. Simply having foreign individuals on campus doesn’t make global citizens of the rest of us. Exposure is hardly sufficient. Like wallflowers at a dance, there is sadly too lit...

April 29, 2011

There is an exciting new opportunity for universities and colleges to advance the New England economy and at the same time help address environmental concerns. The current snapshot of New England’s economy relative to other areas is favorable. The region suffered less decline during the recent recession than the national average, and the region’s recovery has been stronger than the national...

April 18, 2011

On Thursday, the House and Senate both passed a fiscal year 2011 budget compromise (H.R. 1473) which would make almost $40 billion in cuts to federal spending. The bill is much more restrained in its cuts to education programs than was the House Republicans’ spending legislation (H.R. 1) which passed the House in February. The Head Start program would receive a small increase over current fu...

April 12, 2011

Since the start of the global financial crisis a little over two years ago, many concerns have been raised on how it might affect funding to higher education and whether or not it might hasten moves toward greater cost sharing. While, globally, some steps have been taken in this direction, in most countries, hard decisions have yet to be taken on this issue. Our inaugural annual survey of global ...

April 5, 2011

To listen as many of us incessantly complain, one would think academe is chronically resistant to change, new ideas and innovative programs. We often hear the smaller the stakes, the greater the petty battles—no opportunity is too minute to stall and impede. Before tenure, junior faculty need to be protected while they build their publications dossier; after tenure, they no longer need to ca...

March 10, 2011

New England universities performed more than $4 billion worth of research and development in 2009, but the region’s share of total R&D performed by all U.S. universities remained at 7.3%, down from more than 10% in the 1980s.The region's university research labs have been world-famous for ideas that breed companies and whole industries in fields ranging from biotechnology to photonic...

February 22, 2011

Book Review MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World; Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams; Portfolio/Penguin 2010; $27.95 Reviewed by Alan R. Earls. In a recent check of Google search term rankings, the term “wiki” garnered more than 100 million inquires over the prior 30 days. Presumably, some portion of that traffic was generated by those seeking for MacroWikinomics or its...

February 15, 2011

A new literary genre seems to be booming—book-length critiques on the state of American higher education. While a few celebrate American exceptionalism, most lament the decline of higher learning. Whether exuberant or depressed, their tone is rarely tempered. The authors’ demographics suggest why—they are generally at the twilight of their own academic careers, taking one last shot at the st...

February 8, 2011

Over the past decade, policymakers and business leaders across New England have been concerned that the region’s slower population growth and loss of residents to other parts of the country will lead to a shortage of skilled labor—particularly when the baby boom generation retires. Prior to the Great Recession, the concern was that an inadequate supply of skilled workers would ham...

January 25, 2011

For more than half a century, NEBHE has been publishing tables and charts exploring "Trends & Indicators" in New England’s demography, high school performance and graduation, college enrollment, college graduation rates and degree production, higher education financing and university research.Our printed compendium richly juxtaposed 60-plus figures on state, regional, national and global...

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...

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 ...

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’...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

August 2, 2010

Secularism is controversial in today’s political debates, championed by some and vilified by others. So when Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., opened a center for the study of secularism in September 2005, some people worried that it could become a source of friction on campus—yet another battleground in the culture wars that are wreaking havoc in higher education. The reality has been fa...

July 26, 2010

The U.S. once had the world’s highest percentage of adults with a college degree, but has now dropped to 10th, according to the OECD. In an attempt to reverse this slide, a number of policymakers and foundations have sought to make increased degree attainment a national priority. President Obama has articulated the goal that America will regain the world’s highest rate of degree attain...

July 19, 2010

Ways to build momentum for college completionAmong policymakers at the federal and state levels, as well as within the philanthropic community, there is an overdue awareness that the U.S. and its constituent states need a more highly educated citizenry and workforce. The country is already well behind several other countries in the proportion of its young adult population that has attained a colle...

July 19, 2010

In the past two years, the global financial crisis has wreaked havoc on businesses in America and abroad. But the gloom and doom seems to have had the opposite effect on business schools. The reason is that a recession often signals the perfect time for proactive students to sharpen their skill sets, shift their career goals (whether toward a different industry or role) and place themselves in a p...

July 12, 2010

This is my first experience writing about something I understood far better in high school than throughout college and career. Not only do I suspect I am not alone, but I believe this is symptomatic of the very point I plan to make. Unlike so many other fields, the sciences tend to sort us early in our lives between insiders and everyone else. Those excluded early—or who eventually drift awa...

July 12, 2010

We have a habit of taking international comparisons of various aspects of higher education that are produced in—to put it gently—dubious ways, and delighting in our terrible and/or falling position. It’s time to cease and desist this self-flaggelatory habit. Even rhetorically, as a goad to improve, the statements have been uttered so often that they have lost all meaning and effe...

July 6, 2010

The Texas Transfer Success Conference, held at eight sites across Texas in May 2009, drew more than 1,000 attendees from Texas and international colleges and universities. The purpose of the conference was to discuss strategies and principles for increasing the effectiveness of inter-institutional transfer for students. In Texas, some 80% of bachelor degree holders will earn credits from more than...

June 23, 2010

The following is excerpted from “Make Way for Millennials! How Today's Students are Shaping Higher Education Space” by Persis C. Rickes, founder of the Massachusetts-based higher education consulting firm Rickes Associates. The full piece first appeared in Planning for Higher Education, the journal of the Society for College and University Planning at www.scup.org/phe.html. The monikers are...

June 21, 2010

New England claims many of the largest college endowments on earth, but even the titans have been beaten and bruised by the current deep recession. New England has the dubious distinction of some of America’s smallest state appropriations and highest tuitions and fees for public colleges and universities. Education advocates joke about the region’s public campuses going from state-op...

June 21, 2010

New England universities performed more than $3.7 billion worth of research and development in 2008, but the region’s share has dropped to 7.3% of the U.S. total, down from more than 10% in the 1980s. Had the region’s share stayed at 10%, an additional $1.5 billion would have been spent in New England university labs in 2008 alone. New England university research labs have been world-...

June 21, 2010

Only 19% of students at New England’s traditionally two-year community colleges graduate within three years of enrolling—and the rate is even lower among minority groups. Nearly 60% of all higher education degrees awarded in New England are conferred on women. More than one-quarter of doctorates awarded by New England universities go to foreign students, while fewer than two in 10 ...

June 21, 2010

Fewer than half of New England students who finish high school have completed the necessary courses and mastered the skills to be considered “college ready.” But New England states perform above the national norm on most indicators of college readiness. In Massachusetts, a new “Vision Project” has five goals: increase the rate of high school graduates who attend college; ...

June 21, 2010

More than 928,000 students were enrolled at New England’s colleges and universities in 2008, up by more than 100,000 students over the decade. Nearly half of New England college students attend private institutions, compared with just over one-quarter nationally. Women students began to outnumber men on New England college and university campuses in 1978, and the imbalance has grown to a...

June 21, 2010

More than three-quarters of New England 9th-graders graduate from high school in the normal four years time, compared with 70% nationally. Several foreign countries outperform the U.S. in the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with a high school credential. Fig. 6: Public High School Graduates in New England, 2010 to 2022Click on the chart to view it full size in a new window.Source: New England...

June 21, 2010

Since 1990, New England’s population has grown by just 9%, compared with 23% for the nation as a whole and more than 62% for the Mountain states. New England’s slow population growth has scared off potential employers and threatened the region’s clout in the population-based U.S. House of Representatives. Massachusetts is among eight states in the Northeast and Midwest th...

June 15, 2010

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Nellie Mae Education Foundation President Nick Donohue to discuss the foundation’s new direction. This new direction focuses on "student-centered" learning opportunities exploring different ways to engage students, different places students learn and different people students connect with to help them achieve skills and knowledge. Th...

June 15, 2010

Every March on campuses across the country, students participate in a time-honored tradition: spring break. For the past 15 years, Bay Path College students have spent their spring break having a truly transformational experience through our “Capitals of the World” program. The students visit the major capitals of Europe, many for the first time, and see some of the most remarkable historic an...

June 11, 2010

When a university, or any organization, and its recruiting firm set out to find a new leader, they usually begin and end in a delusion. They declare their intention to find the best person for the job and, once all the sorting and sifting are done, they announce that they have indeed found the best person for the job. The odds are they have done no such thing—and, more to the point, there is...

June 7, 2010

Economic vitality and environmental protection have long been linked in New England, and will be again with efforts to address climate change in the region. There is an emerging body of literature to support the potential economic benefits of a so-called “green economy” in the region and the nation. In New Hampshire, economic studies of both the Renewable Portfolio Standards and R...

June 4, 2010

Accessibility, affordability and accountability characterize the work of President Barack Obama who, since taking office, has worked with Congress to influence policy that affects both K-12 and higher education. Stimulus funds in the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act provided nearly $50 billion to states to help offset state budget cuts and to spur initial reform efforts. Subsequen...

June 4, 2010

You’d think that being the nation’s only private, urban, two-year technical college might be a source of some notoriety, especially if that institution also traces its history back to a bequest in Benjamin Franklin’s will. But even among New England’s higher education community, Boston’s Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology (BFIT) is a hidden jewel. The reasons to pay attention t...

June 4, 2010

Today’s fast-paced and Internet-driven society provides a lot of opportunities for innovation in the college financial aid world. As tuition costs continue to rise faster than average incomes, more students are turning to private lenders and other third-party organizations to finance their educations; the Harvard Educational Review estimates that there was a 76% increase in the amount of debt th...

June 4, 2010

The Gates Unbarred: A History of University Extension at Harvard, 1910-2009; Michael Shinagel; Harvard University Extension Monograph, Puritan Press, Hollis, N.H., 2009; $14.95 Reviewed by Alan R. Earls, a Boston-area writer who earned a graduate certificate through Harvard Extension. The old saying, attributed variously to John F. Kennedy and Count Ciano, that success has many fathers might...

June 4, 2010

Of the many, many articles written on Harvard University’s endowment woes, I have yet to read one actually sympathetic with Harvard. Perhaps this reflects our gleeful voyeurism when the high-and-mighty fall, or sense of justice that the reckless should pay for their recklessness, or belief that no university truly needs or deserves such a large nest egg, or perhaps the reality that, even after t...

June 4, 2010

Evidence about the role that “soft factors” like student engagement and school environment play in influencing whether high school students go on to enroll in college is hard to come by. Over the past two years, the Center for Labor Market Studies (CLMS) of Northeastern University, with support from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and the Rhode Island Board of Governors of Hig...

June 4, 2010

When faced with a challenge, the people of Maine tend to be very pragmatic and straightforward. Those cultural values helped guide our approach to dealing with a rapidly growing structural gap in the finances of the University of Maine System.Even before the international financial crisis, we were looking at a $42.8 million projected annual shortfall between revenues and expenses within four ...

June 4, 2010

The Vermont Community Foundation’s 2009 report on postsecondary education asserts that college graduates live longer, healthier, more lucrative lives than their peers who did not graduate college. But the report is harsh in its assessment of the readiness of Vermont high school students for college, revealing that: one in three juniors is not proficient in reading; seven in 10 are not profic...

June 4, 2010

Editor’s Note: The Summer 2000 issue of Connection, NEJHE’s predecessor, included a series of pieces headlined “Charter Colleges: Evolution of a Plan,” exploring whether public colleges could operate more efficiently and produce higher quality educational results if they were freed from the controls imposed by state bureaucracies. Community colleges are under inc...

June 4, 2010

The value of a college degree is well documented. College graduates earn at least 60% more than high school graduates. Beyond the economic value, college graduates show higher rates of civic participation, engage in volunteer work and even have a much higher likelihood of being “happy,” according to a 2005 survey by the Pew Research Center. Students who drop out without attaining a col...

June 4, 2010

A lot of national attention was paid over the past few months to a situation in Central Falls, R.I., where the superintendent took the action of firing all the high school’s teachers. What started off as a small story about a labor dispute between the administration and the teachers’ union at the high school catapulted into the national education reform debate and had everyone talking ...

June 2, 2010

NEBHE’s compendium of higher education trend data has been a widely consulted collection of state, regional and national statistics for more than half a century. The 60-plus tables and charts richly juxtapose figures on college readiness, higher education enrollment, financing and much more, while offering a shorthand of New England’s cultural and economic vitality. The data are drawn from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the College Board, the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems and NEBHE’s own Annual Survey of New England Colleges and Universities. The data are compiled by former NEBHE research analyst Sue Klemer, who is now with North Shore Community College’s Department of Planning and Research. Click below to view the full carts and figures for each of our research categories: Demography High School Success College Readiness Higher Education Enrollment College Success Financing Higher Education University Research

April 7, 2010

In the fall of 2005, the Academic Council of Tufts University proposed a new slogan to characterize its mission in educating students: “New Leaders for a Changing World.” Many colleges, of course, have slogans of various kinds. The challenge is how each translates its words into action in an authentic manner. This theory of leadership (proposed by Robert Sternberg, co-author of this article)�...

February 10, 2010

Why improving college transfer pathways makes good sense for New England CHARI A. LEADER FROM THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION, WINTER 2010 It’s rare for policymakers to think of higher education pathways beyond their own experiences as traditional students. Many went to college directly after high school, stayed in dorms and graduated ready for careers. But the world tod...

February 10, 2010

Incorporating cost management and productivity improvements into financing decisions ... Higher education is being challenged to increase access and degree attainment for all student groups—a tall order under any circumstances, but particularly daunting in the current economy. To do this, institutional and policy leaders will need to find ways to reduce costs and permanently reduce spending dem...

February 7, 2010

A few years ago, Mathew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker generated big laughs and big box office sales in Failure to Launch, an absurd comedy about a 26-year old man still living in his parents’ basement, spending his days watching television and playing video games while the world passed him by. The film was closer to the truth than many of us have been willing to admit. Young American men...