Many higher education institutions are scrutinized by their campus community and the media for the way that they respond, or fail to respond, to allegations of sexual assault. Tack on the fact that nearly 100 colleges and universities are currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for…

Presidents, trustees, and senior administrators at New England colleges and universities all feel the pressures: keep tuition down, be competitive academically, and make sure the physical campus draws talent from a shrinking pool of traditional high school graduates and new nontraditional students. Given resource limitations, something's got…

New England's long winter and seemingly interminable wait for spring has this author thinking about what colleges could do with their campuses during the summer. The options are almost infinite, although the cost-benefit analysis clearly varies. For some students, being on campus in the summer is preferable to going home, where the…

This article presents a sampler of notable developments in the world of higher education. Among them are: (1) At the University of Southern Maine, faculty leaders and President Theo Kalikow are working together to address the challenges that stand in the way of economic sustainability. In the spring, after announcing a plan to fire a dozen tenured…

The erosion of the college credit monopoly, the devaluation of the degree and the rise of new forms of credentialing suggest a generation of students and higher education institutions somewhat different than the previous generation. Consider a higher learning environment where students create their own academic portfolios and shape their…

A history of the idea that education institutions have some responsibility to contribute to the effort of sustainability can be traced back centuries ago but would certainly also note the founding in 1993 of the Boston-based group Second Nature to promote the concept and practice of education for sustainability. Second Nature is best known for…

Many students begin higher education unprepared for college-level work in mathematics and must take non-credit developmental courses. Furthermore, many are "math-phobic" and avoid courses, majors and careers that involve quantitative work. Yet science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields are among the few job-growth areas in the…

Two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 15, killing three and injuring more than 260. The pressure-cooker bombs sent shrapnel at leg-level, leading to amputations for 15 victims. An immediate concern was how to deal with the feelings of school children whose sense of safety was shattered by the blasts. As the city healed, Boston…

Veterans play a critical role in the U.S. economy. For many returning veterans, education is the first step to successfully reentering civilian life and the workforce. Since the inception of the first GI Bill (Servicemen's Readjustment Act) in 1944, higher education has been responding to the needs of military students. Veterans are dedicated…

Innovators and entrepreneurs are using technologies to make freely available the things for which universities charge significant money. MOOCs (massive open online courses), free online courses, lecture podcasts, low-cost off-the-shelf general education courses, online tutorials, digital collections of open learning resources, open badges--all are…

According to the recent "New York Times" Education Life section, this was the "Year of the MOOC." That's "massive open online courses." It is what "Times" columnist David Brooks called a "campus tsunami" and Thomas Friedman declared as the "college education revolution." That's because anyone, anywhere can now take a course from some of the best…

No sooner has the Net Price Calculator (NPC) wave crashed ashore, the next wave of college-choice transparency in the form of third-party data aggregators is threatening to engulf American colleges and universities. Since last October, NPCs have become a fact of life for American colleges and universities. Some are doing the bare minimum to comply…

Knowledge is humanity's first and final frontier. From the Edenic exodus to flights beyond earth, mythic narratives reveal that going where no one has gone before to learn what no one has known before drives people like no other quest. That quest, for many millennium largely driven by spiritual needs, has become core to economic and social…

Higher education is at a crossroads, not only in the U.S. but also globally. This challenge is prompting an immigrant union to once again take up the labor movement's historic role of speaking for the common good and the broad interests of working people. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 615 represents 18,000 property service…

In 2008, Rhode Island was in the early stages of refocusing its economic development efforts on transitioning to a knowledge-based economy. This move would require an educated workforce, largely deemed the responsibility of the state's 11 public and private institutions of higher education. For a state with slightly over a million residents and…