The cost of college, a daunting concern for many American families, is now the central storyline of a Hollywood movie. In a short-lived summer movie release called The House, Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler, a middle-class couple, open an illegal casino to cope with their personal gamble: how to pay for their daughter's college tuition. […]
Public higher education has faced significant turning points over the last 70 years. The mid-century GI Bill that cemented higher education's place as a public good and a private gain is one. Another is the transfer of research from declining corporate labs to university labs in the 1980s, to carry forward technology, health and quality […]
President Lyle Roelofs likes to buy running shoes for his students at Berea College—as long as they get some exercise with him twice weekly before class. Starting at 7 a.m., students—along with faculty, staff and community members—can run four miles with him or walk two with his wife.
Giving to American higher education has enjoyed a significant increase over the last decade, far exceeding inflation. Despite the recession in 2008-10, giving to higher ed grew steadily from $23 billion in 2006 to $34 billion in 2015, a healthy increase that's highlighted by a significant and continuous stream of megagifts (more than $50 million). […]
More than half of students at Indiana University's seven campuses started the fall semester with at least one e-textbook loaded directly into their learning management system account—at about a quarter of the cost of a new print edition. And at the University of California, Davis, students in hundreds of courses use e-textbooks and take interactive, […]
It happened suddenly – on the pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Chronicle of Higher Education – read as, industrialist Henry Rowan placed a $100 million strategic bet on creating a new kind of engineering school – i.e. reengineering engineering education for the better. Rowan's legacy transformed the Glassboro […]
Now more than ever, enrollment leadership requires a coordinated campus team to respond to emerging internal challenges as well as shifting external forces. One college president likened the job of chief enrollment officer to a pilot flying the plane while building it. In short, the immediate drive to fill enrollment goals today competes with the […]
Now that the dust is beginning to settle from the political tsunami created by the campaign vitriol, many folks in the education community are ready to challenge the subliminal messages of building the wall, deporting the immigrants, and removing the safety nets that support the Nation's underserved Latino populations. Significantly, The National Center for […]
Tom Snyder retired in June after nine years at the helm of Ivy Tech, the nation's largest singly accredited community college system. Snyder's coming from a corporate background gave him a different perspective about higher ed in general and community colleges in particular. For one, he realized the role community colleges play in serving millions […]
In his book, Breakpoint: The Changing Marketplace for Higher Education (Johns Hopkins Press, 2015), Jon McGee says higher education is in the midst of an extraordinary transitional period that has significant implications for how colleges understand their mission, their market and their management. McGee, vice president for planning and public affairs at the College of Saint […]
