The U.S. Department of Education has been working to establish the Postsecondary Institution Rating System (PIRS) since President Obama announced it in August 2013. The proposed system is planned to provide consumers of higher education with objective data and information that helps students make educated decisions between different institutions. It also aims to improve the […]
Donald Farish President, Roger Williams University, Rhode Island Topic: Tuition and financial aid Trend: Well over half of the nonprofit private colleges failed to meet either their enrollment or revenue targets this fall. Despite this, I predict that the overwhelming majority of these schools will continue to increase both tuition and discount rates next year, […]
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 […]
What does the typical student of today look like compared to the student of five or 10 years ago? Who is the new “traditional” college student? The non-traditional adult learner is now more prevalent than the traditional college student who comes straight from high school. This is where the market is growing, and the colleges and universities that are successful […]
When you think “rebranding campaign,” it most likely conjures up images of marketing and communications officers meeting with the school president and board of trustees to toil over logo colors, mascots and slogans. In reality, it’s a much more complex process, involving the entire school community. And its impact can be felt across all institutional […]
What are the biggest challenges facing higher education as a business? There are a few challenges that institutions face today. For such a long time, many were in a continuous growth pattern, developing new programs and online programs for receptive audiences. That certainly is not the case today. Many institutions are experiencing flat enrollment and […]
The go-to data point used to indicate whether an institution is helping students reach success has tended to be its graduation rate. Post-graduation employment is another indicator that colleges and universities will note for ROI-focused students and families. While these signs of success aren’t going anywhere, the definition of student success has evolved to include […]
There exist an endless number of articles, books, blogs, and interviews on the state of higher education (HE) in America. The themes are consistent – fewer resources, fewer students, bloated administrative staff, less affordability, unsustainable student debt, poor graduation rates, unimpressive employability skills and what the heck is a MOOC and why should I care. […]
If “the medium is the message” as Marshall McLuhan so famously proclaimed in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, then what is the message of contemporary distributed learning? One can only wonder what McLuhan would say in 2014. Yet, as far back as 1967, McLuhan predicted that “the little red schoolhouse is already well on […]
Georgetown University officials had a bit of an epiphany recently about the impact of their noncredit courses. While the offerings had been around since the 1990s, administrators hadn’t realized the big benefits they could bring to the institution. “What started as fairly standard, adult-education, personal-interest type of courses has evolved into a major part of […]
