For centuries, colleges and universities have been exempt from paying property taxes, and there's no good reason to change. But that's not stopping people from trying. From Connecticut to California, critics are questioning property tax exemptions while arguing that colleges are getting a free ride on the backs of taxpayers. With states and municipalities still […]
Decades ago, U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell eloquently stated: "The strength of the United States is not the gold in Fort Knox or the weapons of mass destruction we have, but the sum total of the education and character of our people." Shortly thereafter, Pell backed up his statement by sponsoring legislation to provide grants to […]
Community colleges have achieved the goal of providing broader and cheaper access to higher education. Now, experts and administrators say, the focus must turn more aggressively toward student success and completion.
Located in downtown Manhattan, the 23,000-square-foot Innovation Center at The New School is an AV-intensive facility that's open 24/7. The flexible space has become a hub for collaborative, cross-disciplinary learning for the institution's nearly 10,000 students, who are spread out on a fragmented urban campus. CHALLENGE New School officials wanted to create a destination where […]
In an era when prospective students and their parents can learn about hundreds of schools from the comfort of their homes, the in-person campus tour offers a golden opportunity to tip the scales in your favor. The tour is also the most influential factor in enrollment decisions, according to a 2012 Noel-Levitz study. But too […]
The notion of doing more with less—less budget, less time, fewer resources—has been the mantra in many IT departments for some time. But the institution leaders gathering at this year's EDUCAUSE Annual Conference are now more concerned with: "How can I do something different to get more value with the resources I have?" This shift […]
Academia's cyber preparedness (or lack thereof) has received less media attention than that of certain retailers and financial institutions, but nonetheless the cyber risks confronting universities are pervasive and alarming. Consider recent breaches suffered by educational institutions. At the University of Maryland, an outside source gained access to a secure records database that held information […]
There is an opportunity that many universities are unaware of that can provide immediate tax cash savings. If you have conducted renovations to your buildings in the past, you may be in a position to take advantage of recently released Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") regulations. The following provides a brief background of the opportunity, outlines […]
It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child. To make a huge change at a university, it takes the entire village, a.k.a. a really good team, to make it happen. Here's our story. Millersville University of Pennsylvania has 7,500 undergraduates, 1,000 graduate students, seven unions representing faculty and staff, and […]
Fans at a University of New Haven football game might notice an odd sideline sight: medical personnel with their heads hunched over smartphones. But these athletic trainers are not checking text messages or updating their Facebook status. Rather, they are monitoring real-time data about the force of their players' on-field collisions. In 2013 the Connecticut […]
