The Other 85 Percent

Recently there have been several articles about colleges objecting to expectations that they report learning or academic outcomes. For example, this Inside Higher Ed article describes how Division III schools object to a proposed NCAA requirement to report graduation rates for their athletes. The schools say that this will drive costs up.  But, they also [...]

This New York Times blog post discusses a report from Public Agenda about a report underwritten by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation titled “With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them.” Some 600 young adults, ages 22 to 30, who had left college before getting a degree were surveyed.
I object to the opening comment that Tamar [...]

The answer, according to this report from Inside Higher Ed, may simply be because we have to do it for accreditation. What the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment report reveals is that many colleges are measuring what undergraduate students learn. The problem is that they are not using the data to make improvements.  For-profit [...]

This article in Inside Higher Ed describes how the Colorado State University Board of Governors considered, ever so briefly, privatizing part of the university system to assure survival. The idea of public institutions doing something like this has been around for decades. The idea usually picks up some steam when we are in a fiscal [...]

This piece on Inside Higher Ed is a response to the proposal to require nurses to have a bachelor’s degree in order to be licenses for practice. This is a more rational approach. It recognizes the realities facing nurses, health care, and the other 85% students. The tone is super, as Beverly [...]

Inside Higher Ed reports on a new study from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching that calls for the bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) to be required for entry into the field of nursing. The authors of the study are correct in stating that the demands on nurses are increasingly complex. [...]

This Inside Higher Ed article is a reminder to the higher education world that “the clock is ticking” in terms of accountability expectations. I have repeatedly written about the expectations that higher education become more accountable for its actions and its outcomes. David C. Paris correctly predicts that higher education will be challenged [...]

This Inside Higher Ed article describes a white paper by Louis Soares of the Center for American Progress. Soares calls for the creation of an Office of Consumer Protection in Higher Education. The office would encourage colleges to produce better data on how effectively they serve students, and set up a way for disgruntled students [...]

As Inside Higher Ed reports, there has been yet another gathering of higher education leaders talking about how higher education needs to change.  This time they talked about the need to serve diverse and non-traditional students, borrowing ideas from the for-profit colleges and creating flexibility for students.  All sound good until you hear that one [...]

In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Christopher C. Morphew and Barrett J. Taylor, a professor and a doctoral student in educational leadership, describe their finding that schools often use multiple mission statements, in part to influence their standing in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. As they write, this may or may not [...]