As financial aid administrators know, there's no shortage of free and fee-based programs designed to help students get a handle on personal finance and keep up loan payments when the time comes. Increasingly, colleges are working with their institutional banking partners to develop engaging, accessible and trusted financial literacy content. Banks have access to nationwide […]
Outside of online and in-person financial literacy sessions, colleges and universities are finding innovative strategies to guide students toward being more financially responsible in both their college and adult lives. In 2017, the University of Missouri began limiting what students could purchase with their campus cards. The intent was to help students to control the […]
Campus construction projects suggest growth and prominence in a time when higher education costs are rising, privatization is increasing and administrators are perpetually challenged to compete for resources and faculty. When projects are carefully managed, they suggest vibrancy and viability to your most important customers: students, their families and, of course, donors. Virginia Wesleyan University's 10-year […]
Institutions looking to grow must actively empower staff to ensure that administrative services keep pace with the flood of new students. Implementing the Laserfiche content services platform significantly improved the way Oklahoma Wesleyan University (OKWU) does business, but the more important benefit has been for students, says Systems Administrator Lidija Bell. "We were losing so […]
In a nutshell, what is an omnichannel payment approach? Omnichannel is the ability to take payments anytime, anywhere through any channel. It is also the ability to deliver those payments securely and manage them centrally for easy reporting and administration. Higher ed leaders want to provide a frictionless experience for students, parents and other constituents, […]
College classrooms of yore were often fortresses reinforced with concrete floors and walls. Listening to a lecture in such hard-surfaced rooms was like trying to decipher sound in an echo chamber. After years of complaints from students and faculty, many colleges and universities have begun upgrading classrooms and lecture halls by installing ceiling baffles, fabric-covered […]
Leaders of the Arkansas Career Pathways Initiative strive to provide students with more than just college access and employment. Graduation and a well-paying career—in fields such as health care, education and industrial maintenance—top the list of goals for the low-income parents who participate. "We don't just want to put people in minimum-wage jobs or in […]
Arkansas Community Colleges Arkansas Career Pathways Initiative, 2005 Funding: Pathways is funded by the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Implementation: Each campus hired case managers to work with low-income parents. Training: The state trains case managers to work with people experiencing poverty. Endicott College (Mass.) Keys to Degrees, 1993 Funding: The university is […]
More than half of the 40,000 students at California State University, Northridge, are first-generation. Three thousand are international. And every one of them belongs, says Paul Schantz, director of web and technology services in the Division of Student Affairs for CSUN. "We want students to feel like CSUN is their home," Schantz says. "And if […]
When Cathy Stickney first arrived in Northbridge as the superintendent of Public Schools, she was that candidate whose eyes were wide open. After all, Stickney knew going in that the Northbridge Public Schools had a low college-bound aspiration and admission rate; and importantly, a low four-year graduation rate than the statewide average. Worse yet, 25 percent […]