As we speculated last year, the shift to the use of families’ Prior-Prior Year (PPY) financial data on the FAFSA has come to pass. Starting in October of 2016, the FAFSA will be available for students to complete for college enrollment in the 2017-18 academic year. This shift has far-reaching implications not only for timing […]
How many alcoholic drinks do you think the typical female or male college student consumes each week? Some of you may be surprised to learn the results of a 2015 study I conducted. I surveyed a random sample of 496 students at a mid-size public university in New England to determine their weekly drinking habits […]
Officials at the University of Missouri in 2012 looked at the business troubles of its academic press and decided the most prudent path forward was to shut it down. The community disagreed, lobbying against the closure, and the university recanted. The whole affair emphasizes that academic publishing is not about dollars, but about the proliferation […]
Carine Feyten Chancellor and president, Texas Woman's University Topic: Safety and security Trend: Campus safety certainly is going to get more attention from senior administration—and how we are perceived by prospective students and their families will impact their "buying decision." Finding the right balance of open and enjoyable campus life and controls that might mitigate […]
What does 2016 have in store for digital professionals in higher education? New and revisited technologies promise to drive online marketing for colleges and universities. Watch these five trends to help you set a course. Podcasting The first column I wrote for University Business a decade ago focused on an emerging trend: podcasting. But beyond […]
Students, of course, have lives beyond the classroom. That’s why campus success initiatives in 2016 will spread further beyond the classroom and academic sectors, engaging students in a spectrum of activities and support designed to steer them toward a meaningful diploma and fulfilling life after graduation. Highlighting this trend is Texas Woman’s University, which just […]
Although it has been a boon to commercial services such as Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and others, cloud computing hasn’t completely caught on in higher education. That’s according to the 2015 “Campus Computing Project” report, released in October at the Educause conference in Indianapolis. The migration to the cloud among higher education and government institutions has […]
Embezzlement originating from any corner of campus can threaten any college and university. As for the losses, they can be big. Take, for example: Emory University in Atlanta. In July, a former employee received an 18-month prison term for stealing over $300,000. As an administrative assistant in the school of nursing, she misled students into […]
Numbers drive action in higher education. Whether they represent SAT scores, marketing leads, submitted applications, admitted students, tuition dollars, GPA, fundraising targets or graduating class size, numbers are used throughout your institution to make decisions and assess success. When you measure what you do, you end up doing what you measure more than anything else. […]
Like it or not, we spend a lot of time on planes and in airports as we travel to campuses across the Nation and around the world. Over the 2015 summer session we sensed winds of change in the aeronautics industry – read as, devising new global security measures; retrofitting outdated air fleets; and creating […]
