Make Your Veterans Resources Center Effective

The New York Times this week ran a thoughtful feature following one military veteran’s transition from the battlefield to campus life. This and other recent articles on veteran students reveal that: Don Pfeffer, director of the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs, Higher Education Veterans Programs, and Jayne Lokken, a professor and counselor at St. Cloud […]

Community College Finance: Maintaining Liquidity

2010. A report from Moody’s Investors Service stresses that as community colleges experience enrollment surges during this down economy, many will issue bonds as a means of raising the capital needed to provide the new construction, renovation, and technological infrastructure projects needed to meet the growing demand. As community colleges take on more debt to […]

Improving Community College Student Success

Last week, a new study involving 13 participating institutions, Jobs for the Future, and the Delta Cost Project released a report on cost return for student success initiatives; with the report, the researchers made available a cost-return calculator that ties program-level cost data to student outcomes in success programs. With increasing federal and public pressure […]

Marketing the Value of the Education You Offer

In October after the release of the College Board’s Trends reports, we interviewed Robert Massa, vice president for communications at Lafayette College, for tips on marketing the value and affordability of your institution. This week, we have asked Bob Sevier, senior vice president of strategy at STAMATS, for practical strategies toward publicizing the value of your academic […]

Recruiting Military Students

Even though this market is largely dominated by the for-profits, the past year has seen many non-profit universities make initial investments in services for military students, especially since the passing of the post-9/11 GI Bill. We asked Jim Paskill, principal and creative director for Paskill Stapleton & Lord; Eric Craver, director of marketing and recruitment […]

Revamping the Computer Lab

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education highlighted a trend in which many US colleges and universities are either phasing out the traditional computer lab or revamping that space to provide more effective opportunities for collaborative learning and group study. The trend is a response to pervasive research on the impact of collaborative […]

Making it Easier for Students to Graduate Sooner

Encouraging students to graduate on time (or early) is a priority for many higher ed institutions. However, many students find speedy degree completion difficult due to obstacles in securing the courses they need to complete degree requirements. Lucie Lapovsky, president of Lapovsky Consulting and past president of Mercy College, offers some advice on correcting curriculum inefficiencies […]

Creating a Crisis-Ready Emergency Notification Policy

Virginia Tech had two contradictory emergency notification policies, which stalled efforts the day of the massacre. What does your emergency notification policy need to include? When the state of Virginia provided its update on the official report on the Virginia Tech massacre, correcting factual errors and revealing details about breakdowns in emergency communications on the […]

Campaigns, This Side of the Recession

A Marts & Lundy report recently highlighted the drop in major gifts to colleges and universities this year, and made recommendations that institutions embarking on a campaign expect to rely on fewer multimillion-dollar gifts and concentrate on securing more contributions of under a million. This report came quickly on the heels of statistics from The […]

First Steps in Supporting Part-Time Faculty

Among other findings, the recent Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) has highlighted the phenomenon of “part-timerness” prevalent not only among students attending evening and weekend classes but also among adjunct faculty. The survey authors have called upon two-year institutions to take steps to better engage and support part-time faculty. As the percentage of […]