Aspire A blog about the present and future of higher education

Depending on who you talk to, online education is either the big man on campus (BMOC, for the acronym-minded) or the elephant in the classroom. Colleges and universities are launching new or expanded online programs for a multitude of worthwhile—and sometimes hotly debated—reasons, but the basics come down to these: to attract new students, boost enrollments, diversify student populations and ... Read More »

Several recent reports have been alarming those of us in higher education who care deeply about the future of community colleges and those who attend them. One is Bridging the Higher Education Divide: Strengthening Community Colleges and Restoring the American Dream, a new report from the Century Foundation task force on “preventing community colleges from becoming separate and unequal.” Some ... Read More »

Are you thinking of heading back to school? If so, it wouldn’t just be you and Rodney Dangerfield there. The latest research shows that adults are heading back to college in higher numbers than ever. And with grim projections of employability shortfalls looming in the not-very-distant future, adding some academic feathers to your cap makes more and more sense with every hotly sought-after ... Read More »

In my experience in higher ed, I’ve learned this rule: Governance is impervious to being fixed. Somehow it works, and no degree of AAU guidance will make it uniform, or even rational. And a university’s governance works only at that university; whereas one school takes 12 minutes to approve a new concept, another may take 12 years. In general, though, ... Read More »

Minority students face a number of challenges as they enter higher education (including entering it, as this recent New York Times item highlights)—not the least of which are the economic hurdles. Two recent articles focus on the uphill battle faced by minority students as they engage with higher education—from weighing the decision to apply, to enrolling and matriculating, to successfully ... Read More »

Imagine the city of New York—all 8 million people. Take a moment to appreciate how many people that is: every skyscraper, apartment building, housing project; every subway, plus Times Square and Grand Central Station, all packed to capacity. Next, add another two million people; suddenly, New York City is bursting at its seams, teeming with 10 million people. Now, put them ... Read More »

The Indiana-based Lumina Foundation is an independent, private foundation committed to improving higher education, specifically by increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality college degrees, certificates and credentials to 60 percent by 2025. A report Lumina released last week examines a rise in the annual number of American college graduates since the end of the last century. In 1995, less than a quarter of ... Read More »

In my last post, I shared the results of my inquiry into what motivates faculty to teach online. To quickly recap: Based on my research conducted at St. Bonaventure University, the following factors heavily influence faculty’s interest in teaching online: • The ability to reach more students • The flexibility of teaching online • A belief in the effectiveness of ... Read More »

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article, author Karin Fischer discussed the concerns that international students and their parents have about safety as they consider attending schools in the United States. These worries are particularly relevant in Boston because one of the three casualties of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings was Lingzi Lu, a Boston University graduate student ... Read More »

Inside Higher Ed technology reporter Ry Rivard’s recent in-depth post covers the process and challenges numerous state universities are experiencing as they incorporate Coursera online materials into their curricula. Rivard outlines a number of ways that schools may implement these tools; a synopsis of these, drawn from his post, indicates an intriguing range of opportunities: Some university officials say they ... Read More »