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 […]
EL PASO, Texas—Diana Natalicio, recently named one of the 100 most influential people in the world, hopes the honor causes a little dissonance in the minds of people who care about higher education. She wants observers to wonder why Time magazine placed her, the longtime president of The University of Texas at El Paso, on […]
Amid the stress and scandal besetting many universities, regional campuses and two-year colleges have quietly and steadfastly gone about the business of promulgating education as a public good and in so doing supporting the American Dream. The stressors of the university community are by now well known. Declining enrollments, a loss of faith that education […]
The momentum building behind higher ed analytics is hardly surprising, considering the explosion of tech tools available to make sense of institutional data. What might surprise some, though, is who on campus is responsible for predictive analytics. Rather than assigning the task to institutional research or creating a new department, schools are tapping administrators in […]
This FutureShock is the third in a trilogy of commentaries on the for-profit (private sector) higher education industry and the implications of an increasingly complex and skeptical regulatory environment. In this piece we focus on the emergent, some say irreversible, megatrend turning private sector schools, colleges, and universities into nonprofits and vice versa. Consumer activist […]
Eight years ago administrators laying plans for Guttman Community College in New York City set a goal: This school would not be like so many other community colleges with low completion rates. Guttman would make getting students to graduation a primary mission. That approach is proliferating across the community college sector, says Melinda Mechur Karp, assistant […]
Meredith College, celebrating its 125th anniversary, recently adopted a new brand—"Going Strong"—that reflects its reputation, enrollment and financial strength. While Meredith's fundraising and application rate are the highest in our history, several other women's colleges have recently either gone coed or closed. Questioning the relevance of women's colleges is a bit obvious—and not so easy […]
The twin goals of affordability and diversity dominate the nation's push to expand access to higher ed, but another critical factor—geography—is drawing more attention for the role it plays in where students go to college. With more than half selecting colleges less than 50 miles from home, there's growing concern about "education deserts"—localities that lack […]
As a new study shows one group of students falling farther behind in the struggle to land jobs with salaries that will allow them to pay off debts and achieve financial stability, some experts say it's the country's education system that needs to adjust. Only a small percentage of African-American college students enroll in the […]
Soon after becoming president of Georgia State University in 2009, Mark P. Becker set out to answer a question: How can you create a better university, in the heart of a large, diverse city, where many of your students are first-generation or low-income, and who face challenges not seen as commonly at a typical flagship […]
