As we finish out a semester that so many people–faculty, staff, students, administrators–have found unbelievably tough, I can’t help thinking that we need a wholesale re-imagining of how we do higher ed. I saw a tweet the other day that said we’re living through an era, like the Great Depression, or WWII, where everything has … Continue reading
Filed under Postsecondary …
Many Young Adults Choose Work Over College
As colleges around the country resumed in-person learning in the fall of 2021, many educators expected students to return to campus after taking a pandemic gap year. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Ivory Tower: even fewer students showed up than during the worst months of the pandemic in the fall … Continue reading
Can colleges compete with companies like Coursera?
If you believe the underlying premise of Arthur Levine’s and Scott Van Pelt’s new book, the country is moving from a national, industrial economy to a global knowledge economy — and that has significant ramifications for higher education…. They say colleges will see their control over the market slip while consumers increase their power. New … Continue reading
Why I Went from Proctored Exams to Open-book
The pandemic encouraged me to re-think the way we can assess student learning in large general education courses. Last spring, the proctoring centers had to close down, and live proctoring with a person at the other end was no longer an option. There was an automated system in place, but there were technical difficulties with … Continue reading
One State’s HBCUs Are Seeing More Interest From Adult Students. Here’s How They’re Responding
At Fayetteville State University, adult students make up about 48 percent of the overall student population. At Elizabeth City State, administrators have seen a nearly 50-percent increase in adult-student enrollment in just the last two years. Adult learners now account for 22 percent of the university’s student population. That growth has prompted administrators to take … Continue reading
Report: Federal income-driven repayment ‘built to be a debt trap’
The federal government’s systems that allow student borrowers to repay loans based on their income are flawed and can end up saddling them with more debt, a new report argues. This can affect borrowers’ financial health and well-being, it says. While debt under these income-driven repayment plans can theoretically be forgiven after 20 to 25 years, … Continue reading
We’ve seen ‘The Chair’. Now it’s time for ‘The Adjunct’
The Netflix series The Chair, which follows the struggle of a newly appointed English department chair, debuted to much fanfare. It was hailed In The Atlantic as “Netflix’s best drama in years” and in the Wall Street Journal as a “sharp take on academia”. Continue reading.
These Colleges Are Betting That Culturally Relevant Textbooks Will Improve Student Outcomes
Millie González and her colleagues aren’t here to argue about whether open educational resources are on par with traditional textbooks一she says research has borne that out. González and Framingham State University, where she is interim director of Whittemore Library, are part of a consortium in Massachusetts looking to answer different questions. Like: What would happen if students … Continue reading
Virtual Learning Can Be a Gateway to Increasing Equity in Higher Education
While many are eager to return to campuses this fall, it became increasingly obvious that virtual course delivery would need to be an integral and lasting part of our curriculum moving forward, even prior to the uncertainty surrounding the surges of the delta variant. It’s undeniable that many of our students have greatly benefited from the … Continue reading
Six Ways to Fall in Love With Teaching Again
Issues with the bureaucracy of education, funding, changes in class size, class structure, and mode of instruction, as well as student issues, all contribute to our falling out of love with the teaching profession. Additionally, oftentimes personal obligations and responsibilities add stressors that create burdens and affect our happiness in our personal and work lives, … Continue reading
Professor Van Ry 