The changes to higher education after widespread vaccination and a "return to normal" will vary greatly from college to college. Just as there was no "one way" to run a university pre-COVID-19, there exists no single template or model to guide the post-COVID-19 university. However now is the time to start figuring out what…

Complete College America (CCA) is partnered with the National Student Clearinghouse in promoting the latter's Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP), a data and reporting tool for tracking student success metrics. The PDP is offered at nominal cost, built for democratized data access, and encompasses transfer data native to Clearinghouse products,…

The Bay View Alliance (BVA; https://bayviewalliance.org/) is a network of research universities working together to support and sustain the widespread adoption of instructional methods that lead to better student learning. The BVA's research action cluster on collaborative course transformation sought and received funding from the National Science…

The pandemic's impact on enrollment is best documented by timely reports issued by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Their reporting as of December 2020 showed that overall enrollment in fall 2020 declined by about 2.5%, although it was down more among undergraduates, about 3.6%. While students from all racial/ethnic groups had…

Digital transformation (Dx) refers to a series of deep and coordinated culture, workforce, and technology shifts that enable new educational and operating models and transform an institution's business model, strategic directions, and value proposition. Dx initiatives on many campuses are anchored in student success goals. As a result of this…

Florence Rosenfeld Howe died on Saturday, September 12, 2020. She had created an indelible life of magnitude and consequence. In 1982, when Howe was 53 years old, she published an influential article in "Change," "Feminist Scholarship: The Extent of the Revolution." If the article now seems conventional, that is a sign of how…

Institutions of higher education face unprecedented challenges in serving their students and greater society. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted research and education globally, colleges and universities had been working for decades to better respond to societal, student, and faculty needs. The full impact of the COVID-19…

For decades, educators and policy makers have called for reform in higher education, yet now the urgency is palpable. The COVID-19 pandemic and heightened attention to systemic racism have highlighted the fact that outdated teaching practices can stunt student learning and trust of science, maintain systemic biases, and prevent equitable…

How can faculty development (FD) support responsive innovations? At one end of the spectrum are rich, time-intensive programs grounded in frameworks like the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, where instructors' innovations are part of larger projects in which they design and conduct comprehensive research studies in their courses. At the other…

Bay Path University in Massachusetts developed a COVID dashboard and related safety practices enabled by data (Anderson, 2020) during the pandemic. The dashboard has capabilities, in which information technology staff partnered with executive management, human resources staff, health offices, and others to identify key performance indicators…

In the early months of every year, the author interviews some two dozen presidents, chancellors, provosts, and chief business officers to learn about the challenges and opportunities for which they are preparing in the coming year or two. The interviews are focused on institutional strategy, and the leaders rarely mention technology. Not so this…

Recent events demonstrate the need for better pedagogical preparation, particularly for online instruction. There has been a sudden burst of professional development nationwide in light of the glaring need. But across higher education more broadly, questions still persist: Isn't teaching more art than science? Will faculty learn about and…

At the start of the third decade of the 21st century, the United States is entering a period of unprecedented demographic shifts affecting higher education. Not only are many states already seeing fewer high-school graduates, with more facing this trend as the decade progresses, but in all but a few regions overall population growth will level and…

2020 promises to be a watershed year for American foreign policy. In February, the United States struck a deal with the Taliban that would withdraw troops from Afghanistan, ending America's longest and most expensive war. A month earlier, the Iraqi parliament voted to expel American soldiers from the country. With the potential departure of U.S.…

Indian River State College (IRSC) transforms lives by offering high-quality, affordable, and accessible education online and on five campuses located on the southeast Treasure Coast of Florida. Between 1988 and 2000, IRSC took the initiative to rally the communities IRSC serves around innovations to stimulate economic development and to prepare…