The skill set required for today's top jobs in higher education has never been more extensive or demanding. Boards of Trustees are looking for leadership in several areas: academic authority, fundraising ability, public relations and media savvy, legal and political sensitivity, as well as ease of movement between constituent groups—alumni, students, faculty, parents, donors, business […]
Several years ago we shared with University Business readership our prognostications on contemporary polytechnic institutions popping up across the U.S. In relatively short time, higher ed is still surfing the Polytechnic Revival wave at engineering schools, colleges, and universities across the Nation. The common heritage of Classic Polytechnics extends back to the 1745 founding of […]
Students may forget their campus cards in their rooms or figure they don’t need their wallet for a short walk around the quad. But the one thing they are likely never to be without is a phone. In the consumer space, customers want to use their phones for many purposes, most certainly including retail transactions. […]
For all the advantages of online learning—flexibility, personalization and affordability among them—there can be downsides for some students. Traditional, on-campus students can take advantage of a wide variety of social and extracurricular opportunities, but online students may feel isolated and disconnected from their peers and from their college or university—and risk losing the engagement so crucial […]
In an era when prospective students and their parents can learn about hundreds of schools from the comfort of their homes, the in-person campus tour offers a golden opportunity to tip the scales in your favor. The tour is also the most influential factor in enrollment decisions, according to a 2012 Noel-Levitz study. But too […]
Academia’s cyber preparedness (or lack thereof) has received less media attention than that of certain retailers and financial institutions, but nonetheless the cyber risks confronting universities are pervasive and alarming. Consider recent breaches suffered by educational institutions. At the University of Maryland, an outside source gained access to a secure records database that held information […]
With YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets, virtually nothing escapes the pubic's notice, and judgment. It's one reason higher education is paying much more attention to risk management now than in the past. There are also more risk-generating contingencies, such as mass shootings, and accountability standards, such as for the prevention of sexual […]
Fans at a University of New Haven football game might notice an odd sideline sight: medical personnel with their heads hunched over smartphones. But these athletic trainers are not checking text messages or updating their Facebook status. Rather, they are monitoring real-time data about the force of their players’ on-field collisions. In 2013 the Connecticut […]
In just three years, enrollment at Lone Star Community College grew by about 50 percent. The six-campus system, located in the north Houston metro area, now has more than 95,000 students and has experienced explosive data growth, as well—from 40 terabytes to 1.6 petabytes. A data collection that big is hard to imagine. But as […]
Have you heard about Periscope yet? If you follow tech early adopters, journalists, celebrities or even politicians on Twitter, you might have already seen Periscope notifications for live broadcasts in your feed. Acquired for $100 million by Twitter in March 2015, the live-streaming mobile app could be either the next big thing or the latest […]
