The future looks very bleak for many small and medium-sized colleges and universities in the U.S. Amid all the gloom and doom, though, there is one strategic opportunity for small to medium-sized universities: incorporating carefully designed international student recruitment into the overall recruitment plan for the next five to seven years.

Colleges and universities have a significant role to play in shaping the future of race and class relations in America. As exhibited in this year's presidential election, race and class continue to divide. Black Lives Matter movements, campus protests, and police shootings are just a few examples of the proliferation of intolerance, and higher…

Mathematical modeling is an open-ended research subject where no definite answers exist for any problem. Math modeling enables thinking outside the box to connect different fields of studies together including statistics, algebra, calculus, matrices, programming and scientific writing. As an integral part of society, it is the foundation for many…

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…

More than three-quarters of administrators, faculty and staff at Jesuit colleges agree or strongly agree that "admitting, enrolling, and supporting undocumented students fits with the mission of the institution." And yet 40% recently said there were no known programs or outreach to undocumented students of which they were aware. There is…

Higher education officials have long been familiar with the concept of "summer melt," where students who have paid a deposit to attend one college or university instead matriculate at a different institution, usually presumed to be of comparable quality. In previous research, drawing on longitudinal data from various urban school…

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…

Leaders in higher education are standing up to the greatest challenge today by providing education for sustainability, preparing graduates to create a sustainable economy. They are providing the opportunity for more students to access higher education by reigning in costs through energy efficiency and smart building. And by demonstrating…

Over the past decade, policymakers and business leaders across New England have been concerned that the region's slower population growth and loss of residents to other parts of the country will lead to a shortage of skilled labor--particularly when the baby boom generation retires. Prior to the Great Recession, the concern was that an inadequate…

New England universities performed more than $4 billion worth of research and development (R&D) in 2009, but the region's share of total R&D performed by all U.S. universities remained at 7.3%, down from more than 10% in the 1980s. The region's university research labs have been world-famous for ideas that breed companies and whole…

In the context of the recent efforts to arrive at a federal budget, articles abound in the popular media and trade publications debating both the value of Pell Grants and their rising cost to the U.S. government. Both pros and cons of the debate hold value. Pell Grants are what enable many low-income families to send their children to college and,…

U.S. universities have had century-long success in absorbing existing professions into their curricula--by making academe their gatekeeper. These professions often started with apprenticeships and short training courses leading to a certification examination--and were then elevated and "academized" into a comprehensive body of knowledge,…

A lot of national attention was paid over the past few months to a situation in Central Falls, Rhode Island, where the superintendent took the action of firing all the high school's teachers. What started off as a small story about a labor dispute between the administration and the teachers' union at the high school catapulted into the national…

People have a habit of taking international comparisons of various aspects of higher education that are produced in--to put it gently--dubious ways, and delighting in their terrible and/or falling position. It's time to cease and desist this self-flaggelatory habit. Even rhetorically, as a goad to improve, the statements have been uttered so often…