As director of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, Thomas Bailey is the nation’s preeminent scholar of community colleges. After recognizing that myriad reform efforts directed at community colleges showed little evidence of improved outcomes, he and his CCRC colleagues, Shanna Smith Jaggars and Davis Jenkins, set out to learn why […]
The setting: AAA Four Diamond Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, a 230-acre Spanish Revival resort where guests strolled along the headwaters of the Florida Everglades (beware of gators) and next to a championship golf course en route to UBTech sessions and other conference activity. The conversation: technological innovation and leadership as well as institutional and […]
A small group of Tufts University students mounted a six-day hunger strike in May, but their target wasn’t fossil fuel divestment or nuclear disarmament. The Tufts Labor Coalition had pitched tents in front of the suburban Boston school’s administration building to protest the planned layoff of campus custodial workers. While such staff cuts might not […]
The wave of first-generation and low-income students now seeking higher ed access is placing unprecedented financial strain on the full spectrum of liberal arts institutions, says James F. Jones, the interim president of Sweet Briar College. But while other higher ed leaders acknowledge this and other challenges, many say the shutting down this year of […]
A pair of draft horses often plows the campus farm at Sterling College. Sterling does have tractors—its agriculture students have to learn how to use all varieties of equipment—but the energy-saving horses are just one step in the Vermont school’s extensive and award-winning sustainable dining program. The farm produces about 20 percent of the food […]
Snow College’s latest travel policy included new, logical restrictions. For example: Employees would be reimbursed only for for hotel stays on days that matched an event’s agenda, and they could no longer expense a first-class airline seat. The Utah college got lots of comments—about three-quarters of them negative—when the regulations were posted for a 30-day […]
The Great Recession of 2007-08 had a profound impact on both public and private universities. In How the Financial Crisis and Great Recession Affected Higher Education (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Jeffrey R. Brown, a finance professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and co-editor Caroline M. Hoxby, a Stanford economics professor, examine universities […]
There was a time when colleges and universities could put their best marketing message out to the masses, and wait for students to respond and express interest. Today, it's about being aggressive without being pushy, being more student-focused without being intrusive, and being more open to digital communication without sacrificing authenticity. It's a fine line […]
Colleges and universities miss a significant opportunity to capture the attention of their primary web audience—teens and young adults—when their websites aren’t designed to perform well on mobile devices. A 2014 study of 200 public and private schools in New Jersey and Pennsylvania found that more than 70 percent of those institutions did not have […]
Institutions are under increasing pressure to provide more services, despite reduced operating budgets and elusive funding, and amid calls to hold down tuition. To meet these challenges, leading institutions are combining innovative approaches to technology and strategy by moving to the cloud, adopting managed services and focusing on strategic planning. In this web seminar, originally […]
