The University of Connecticut’s recent announcement of a planned learning community intended for first- and second-year African-American male students has reignited a decades-old debate regarding ethnically themed living spaces on campus. Two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights penned a letter to university President Susan Herbst urging her to reconsider the community’s launch. […]
An institution’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system drives many of its core processes. ERP software allows students and faculty to access key information, and staff to automate previously manual tasks. It is critical for administrators to make their other programs, such as payment technology systems, integrate seamlessly with the software that governs so much on […]
As the 2016 Presidential campaign heats up this summer and the nation looks inward, candidates need to come up to speed in addressing a chronic water crisis in Flint, Michigan and across America. For good reason, this water resource catastrophe has captured the attention of national media and turned Flint into the posterchild for rebuilding […]
Making heads or tails of the many factors influencing student outcomes—while necessary—is daunting and difficult. For one university, a single wagging tail is making a dent in several barriers to student success. Resident comfort dog Zoey gives some emotional relief to students living away from their family and pets. In Zoey's 40-plus-hour work weeks, she […]
Choices for commencement speakers are making headlines this season, and higher ed officials are aiming to make sure those headlines are positive. Many colleges now prioritize student input and diversity when choosing commencement speakers. They are also developing screening processes to ensure speakers are both engaging and appropriate for the audience of graduating students and […]
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 […]
As we speculated last year, the shift to the use of families’ Prior-Prior Year (PPY) financial data on the FAFSA has come to pass. Starting in October of 2016, the FAFSA will be available for students to complete for college enrollment in the 2017-18 academic year. This shift has far-reaching implications not only for timing […]
When endowment returns are way down, it’s not exactly prudent to spend the same percentage of the endowment for institutional operations each year, with the assumption that target investment payoff percentages will return. And, right now, down they are. Endowment investment returns fell from an average of 15.5 percent for Fiscal Year 2014 to 2.4 […]
A siloed approach rarely works for any effort on higher ed campuses, much less student success and retention. Yet five years ago at Manhattan College, located in the Bronx in New York City, academic assistance was handled individually by each of the institution’s five schools. “Then the college implemented a Center for Academic Success and hired […]
Creating new academic initiatives with other institutions relies on three key ingredients: interest in the program from faculty and students; commitment from each campus administration; and a reasonable opportunity for success. This advice comes from Neal Abraham, a physics professor and executive director of the Five Colleges, Incorporated in Massachusetts. It’s the second largest consortia […]
