The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

After A Period Of Decline Are Satellite Campuses Ready For Growth

Only a generation ago, such universities as Northeastern and Boston University had campuses strategically sprinkled throughout eastern Massachusetts. Higher education thrived in various local settings, especially for adults returning to college on a part-time basis. Much of this has now vanished - though perhaps it is re-emerging in new forms and for very different purposes. Why did satellite campuses boom, and then fold? Despite recent publicity about new sites nationally and overseas, this has actually been a declining business for most established institutions. But are new campuses likely to once again be a growth industry? Read more at:
http://blogs.providencejournal.com/ri-talks/this-new-england/2012/05/jay-a-halfond-new-englands-disappearing-satellite-college-campuses.html 

 

Online Learning Is Transforming Higher Education

In the coming decade, emerging technologies will thoroughly transform higher education. Although distance learning and computer-assisted education have been around since the 1960s, financial pressures are forcing institutions to develop aggressive online programs.When education goes online, how professors teach, what students learn and how institutions are structured will change significantly. In the past couple of years, traditional colleges and universities have designed their own programs in an effort to increase tuition income without expanding the physical plant. It remains to be seen whether this financial bet will pay off. Read more at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-21/college-crackup-and-the-online-future.html#disqus_thread

'We're Losing Our Minds' Author Says Higher Ed Must Focus On Student Learning

An estimated 50 percent of people who receive a four-year degree from an American college lack the skills expected of a college graduate, which means U.S. higher education needs to fundamentally change the way they operate, say the authors of "We're Losing Our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education." Their basic message: While national debate over the value of a college education has focused on the cost, the more critical issue is whether students are acquiring the skills that have long been associated with a college degree. That includes critical thinking and analytical skills, master of their field of study, and the development of a moral perspective and sense of personal and social responsibility. Read more at:
http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2012/05/us_colleges_put_low_priority_o.html

Higher Ed Is Wasting Money On 'Keeping Up With The Joneses'

Competition, we are constantly told, encourages individuals, institutions and companies to take the risks necessary for innovation and efficiency. But in higher education, competition often discourages risk taking, leads to overly cautious short-term decisions, produces a mediocre product for the price, and promotes excessive spending on physical plants and bureaucracies. It’s about “keeping up with the Joneses,” an official at Wright State University said in a Dayton Daily News article last fall detailing why colleges in Ohio were spending hundreds of millions of dollars on student centers and other nonacademic attractions in a down economy. Read more at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-17/competition-is-killing-higher-education-part-1-.html

Only Three Countries Represented In World's Top 10 Universities

Britain’s leading higher education publication, The Times Higher Education, Thursday released its 2012 reputation rankings for universities worldwide. Only three countries are represented in the top 10 – Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States – with Canada, Switzerland, Singapore, and China landing institutions in the top 30.  Hong Kong, Germany, and Australia squeezed into the top 50, and India once again fared poorly in the rankings, not even registering in the top 100. Read more at:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2012/0315/World-rankings-top-10-universities-around-the-globe/How-to-interpret-reputation-rankings

 

New Leader Chosen For The College Board

David Coleman, an architect of the common core curriculum standards that are being adopted in nearly all 50 states, will become the president of the College Board, starting in October. Mr. Coleman’s new position will involve a continued focus on college readiness. “We have a crisis in education, and over the next few years, the main thing on the College Board’s agenda is to deliver its social mission,” he said in an interview on Tuesday. “The College Board is not just about measuring and testing, but designing high-quality curriculum.” Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/education/david-coleman-to-lead-college-board.html?_r=2&hpw

More College Presidents Are Coming From Outside Of Academia

Michael Alexander has heard it all before: People with business backgrounds do not understand academia and are ill-equipped to lead colleges and universities. He has a ready rejoinder to such talk: “Balderdash.’’ A growing number of colleges seem to share his faith in the value of outsider presidents, PhD or no PhD. Twenty percent of college presidents in the United States now come from fields outside academia, a sharp increase from 13 percent just six years ago. Many believe the trend is a symptom of the increasing corporatization of higher education, as colleges, especially smaller ones with lackluster or limited endowments, struggle to steady their finances and attract students willing and able to pay high tuition. Read more at:
http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-14/metro/31690571_1_college-presidents-colleges-and-universities-academia

Student Loan Debt Crisis Will Lead To Higher Education Meltdown

What do I project will happen? Very simply over time the demand for college education in general AND 4-year private colleges and universities specifically is going to tail off. In the process, these institutions of higher education are going to get increasingly squeezed financially to make ends meet.Let’s further extend that thought. I think it is not only plausible BUT likely that over the course of the next decade we will witness a number of colleges and universities, primarily private, literally shut their doors. Read more at: 
http://www.senseoncents.com/2012/05/student-debt-bubble-impending-doom-for-colleges/#ixzz1uwsV59El

College Presidents Confront The Reality That They Need A New Business Model

At a time of diminished state funding for higher education and uncertain federal dollars, Mr. Gee says that public colleges and universities need to devise a new business model to pay for the costs of education, beyond sticking students with higher tuition and greater debt. “The notion that universities can do business the very same way has to stop,” said Mr. Gee. College presidents across the country are confronting the same realization, trying to manage their institutions with fewer state dollars without sacrificing quality or all-important academic rankings. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/business/colleges-begin-to-confront-higher-costs-and-students-debt.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 

 

Can A University Run Like A Growth Business Buy Its Way to Success

Nothing like this existed here seven years ago, when Nido Qubein, a motivational speaker and multimillionaire, became president of what was then a sleepy little Methodist college. It was Qubein who launched the effort to transform the 88-year-old school into a nationally recognized institution. Some $700 million has already been spent to refurbish and expand the campus. “The world is marveling at how High Point University has grown so successfully in the midst of the worst economic times in 54 years,” Qubein says. Since becoming president in January 2005, he’s raised about $159 million in gifts and pledges, and has promised to kick in $11 million of his own money. There’s more to come: new dorms, a health-sciences school, a college of pharmacy, a sports arena—all told, a planned $2.1 billion in improvements by 2020. All this in the middle of a depressed North Carolina mill town. Read more at:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-19/bubble-u-dot-high-point-university