EL PASO, Texas—Diana Natalicio, recently named one of the 100 most influential people in the world, hopes the honor causes a little dissonance in the minds of people who care about higher education. She wants observers to wonder why Time magazine placed her, the longtime president of The University of Texas at El Paso, on […]

A community college in upstate New York has seized on a residential life trend spreading rapidly at four-year institutions: the living-learning community. The concept—meant to encourage campus engagement and retention—houses together students pursuing the same major or who have similar lifestyle interests. At Onondaga Community College, a dozen or so communities—which have grown from a […]

Almost all U.S. colleges and universities now award certificates, digital badges and other forms of microcredentials so students can quickly show an employer specialized skills they’ve acquired. Driving this fast-growing trend are workforce millennials who want to learn, for instance, how to operate an Amazon delivery drone or repair a self-driving car without having to […]

Helping all students reach their full academic and professional potential lies at the heart of several the initiatives honored as this summer’s Models of Excellence. An “App Factory” at a regional state university turned its paid interns into hot business commodities who have been hired quickly after graduation. In the year-round program, students train their […]

A bit of institutional self-interest motivates campus leaders when they work to spend money with businesses owned by minorities, women, veterans and other underrepresented groups. In fact, the institution’s own bottom line comes into play, says D.M. Hodnett, director of the University of Missouri System’s Supplier Diversity and Small Business Development Program. “If we can’t […]

A few dozen community colleges will get financial backing to design degree programs based wholly on free, open educational resources (OER) in a sweeping effort to make higher ed more affordable.  Full-time community college students spend about $1,300 a year on textbooks, ultimately representing about a third of the cost of their associate’s degrees, says […]

An act as simple as handing out bottled water and granola bars before a long evening class can change the course of a college career—especially when the student on the receiving end is a single mother who has just rushed over to campus after a full day at work. Of course, bigger hurdles like tuition, […]

Some low-income high school students in Adams State University’s service area, the rural valleys of southern Colorado, live up to 50 or 60 miles from campus. That adds several hours of distance to the financial hurdles that stand in the way of higher education. Thanks to a new federal pilot program, these students can now […]