Turbulence in the world of campus finance since the Great Recession has been starting to smooth, but the outlook is hardly pre-recession rosy. Multiple forces are pushing institutions to change from the status quo. Institutions are feeling more pressure to advocate for state higher ed funding, prove their value to students and support the simplification […]
From declining numbers of traditional-age high school graduates and changing student demographics, to the overall concern among consumers about the value of a higher education, anxiety will haunt enrollment administrators moving forward. "Last year was a stressful year for many colleges, and it has just exacerbated because of market conditions," says John Lawlor, principal and […]
In many ways, 2015 will look a lot like 2014 with respect to facilities. But there are trends impacting the creation and use of physical space on virtually every college and university campus. Institutions will be curbing new construction activity, getting creative about funding, paying more attention to overdue maintenance, and planning more for mixed-use […]
Higher ed’s reliance on adjunct faculty, hardly a secret anymore, has gotten much scrutiny in the past few years. Institutions of all types benefit from the fact that adjuncts—provided they don’t become eligible for health benefits by working more than 30 hours a week—can be employed for a fraction of the investment needed for full-time […]
When Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa published Academically Adrift in 2011, it exposed the shortcomings of undergraduate learning. In their new book, Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates, Arum, a sociology professor at NYU, and Roksa, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia, find many recent graduates are ill-prepared to land decent […]
Time and again, institutions struggle with properly deploying a new assessment platform. Often that fault lies with the vendor who lacks the knowledge or institutional expertise to provide sound counsel on how it should be accomplished. Take a different approach and it will be a success: 1. Separate orientation and training. Make it crystal clear to […]
In the past few years, many universities have begun to explore a concept frequently and successfully implemented in the corporate world, but previously rare in higher education: shared services. The term “shared services” refers to a streamlining process where administrative tasks or technology management services that regularly occurred across several departments in the organization are […]
The setting was big, the company was good and the technology talk was buzzing at this year's UBTech Conference, held June 16 to 18 at The Mirage Las Vegas. And based on the feedback from our 1,273 attendees, the "Technology Changes Everything" tagline will be put into practice as administrators and educators from the more […]
For today’s college students, on-the-go lifestyles present a challenge when it comes to finding time to eat, and, more specifically, eat well. In 2010, when Adriana Marie Reyes of The University of Arizona surveyed 219 undergraduate students for her honors thesis on what influences college students’ eating habits, 82 percent said they would eat healthier […]
The students you’re trying to reach today have grown up in a world in which nearly everything was an advertisement. When they were still in diapers they were bombarded with cartoon characters aggressively hawking sugar-laced cereals, and as they’ve grown older, the commercials, emails, texts, pop-ups and social posts crowding their view have only increased […]
