While details of President Obama's college affordability proposals are not fully known, what is clear is that higher education is going under the microscope to prove its value. Add to that a growing chorus of pundits who believe that a liberal arts education is a waste of time and a relic of the past. But […]
"Engage with the career center" sounds a bit like "eat your vegetables" to a college student. Students know they should access career planning resources, but other options from the campus activities buffet beckon. In surveys, graduating students from Loyola University Maryland's Sellinger School of Business and Management raved about the faculty and facility, but not […]
How many members of your faculty would enjoy teaching the same courses, day in and day out, throughout a 30-, 40- or even 50-year career? Not many. Staying motivated and intellectually challenged is not always possible at schools where promotions or lateral career moves are rare. Faculty may find themselves disengaged, even downright bored, teaching […]
These days, institutions can't say they fully "control" their recruitment and enrollment process—but they can adjust to how prospective students and their families are navigating it. Five years ago, RuffaloCODY set out to understand the student perspective by conducting what is now an annual survey of high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors. The goal was […]
In the epic Hunger Games trilogy, Katniss learns that to survive, it is not enough to know where to be—it is just as important to know where not to be. For higher education, this means knowing what programs to curtail, and what markets to stay out of. Many institutions need to reduce their reliance on […]
The majority of students, when they enter college, have been vaccinated against meningitis, a potentially deadly bacterial infection of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. In fact, 37 states mandate meningitis vaccination or education before entering college, according to the Immunization Action Coalition, which is financially supported by the Centers for Disease Control […]
For an increasing number of faculty members, class prep has gone high tech. It's not about simply reviewing notes and planning course exercises. It also involves stepping in front of a video camera. Whether it's for distance learning programs or flipped classrooms, colleges and universities now need faculty who are able and willing to teach […]
I live in a world of lectures, faculty meetings and final exams. For my environmental science students and me at Widener University in Chester, Pa., however, it's also a world of hands-on research on a butterfly farm in Costa Rica, or experiential learning in the rainforests of Peru. This world didn't include university food service […]
The challenges for executives operating state-wide higher education Systems and the flagship research universities within those Systems have grown more baffling with each passing year. From UMass and UNC to LSU, Wisconsin, and Oregon, we hear regularly about frustrated and embroiled leadership. Public Systems have always been subject to strains, both within themselves and beyond, […]
A personal web domain, paid for by the university until graduation, is now part of the package for first-year students at one Virginia liberal arts school. Since this past fall, incoming freshmen at the 5,000-student University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg have been offered their own domain to create a personal website where they can […]
