Need-based financial aid was supposed to give everyone an opportunity to get into college and better their lives and career prospects. But that assistance is not always applied as intended, says the third edition of New America's "Undermining Pell" report. Nearly half of the public, four-year colleges studied now leave the most financially needy students on […]
Although their leaders might claim otherwise, ratings by U.S. News, Princeton Review and others are of outsized importance to universities today. But what about the many colleges that didn't rank high with these reviewers? How can they compete with the list-toppers? One answer may be that what really matters to prospective students is not so […]
Just hours before it was scheduled to be administered in June, the ACT college admission test was canceled in South Korea and Hong Kong. Approximately 5,500 international students were turned away from testing centers after ACT Inc. announced that it had received credible evidence that test materials in these regions had been leaked in advance, […]
As highly visible institutions with perceived "deep pockets," colleges and universities are targets for lawsuits arising from injuries and property damage only tenuously tied to the schools' actions. The negligence of contractors, vendors, and professional service providers can and do land universities in court where they pay millions of dollars to defend and settle claims […]
As colleges and universities look for ways to deliver more online services to students and faculty, they also want the best performance from their IT investments. For many, that means moving to the cloud. Whether your goal is lower operating costs or better application performance, it's still a good business decision. University of Maryland University […]
With increasing urgency, today's colleges are being asked—by business, government and the nonprofit field—to impart so-called "21st century skills" of communication, collaboration, problem-solving and creativity to their students. What's often missing from the list is leadership, which galvanizes these other skills and equips students to make informed decisions, take meaningful action, and develop pathways to […]
A campus washing machine should send students a text when their clothes are done, and it can. Thanks to a concept called the Internet of Things, anything—really, anything—can and will be hooked up to a network. A simple bathroom scale in an athlete's dorm room can connect to Wi-Fi and transmit weight, body fat percentage, […]
A bit of institutional self-interest motivates campus leaders when they work to spend money with businesses owned by minorities, women, veterans and other underrepresented groups. In fact, the institution's own bottom line comes into play, says D.M. Hodnett, director of the University of Missouri System's Supplier Diversity and Small Business Development Program. "If we can't […]
Remember the "Flutie Effect"? That's the claim that Boston College applications increased as a result of Doug Flutie's last-second Hail Mary pass that won a football game against the defending champs from the University of Miami. Now we may be seeing the opposite—let's call it the Scandal Side Effect—where a school's bad publicity can drive […]
Sometimes, well-known propositions lead to predictable conclusions. But not always. Occasionally, they lead to surprises—and even busted myths. Here's one: Wealthy, private institutions willing to invest large endowments in financial aid for poorer students do the best job of expanding access to higher education and reversing the trend toward greater income inequality. That statement turns […]
