The piece of paper. That’s what students are shooting for—a diploma, the tangible proof that they’ve met all requirements, completed the courses they had to complete, and graduated.
Who wants to wait for that?
University of Wisconsin-Stout graduates didn’t have any choice.
Despite a freeze introduced three years ago on full-time hiring, which was necessitated by statewide funding cuts to higher education, Miami Dade College still regularly hires part-time workers to fill support roles.
Until 2009, students at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College (N.C.) could wait as long as two hours to be seen by a counselor in student services, which includes the offices of admissions, advising, financial aid, and the registrar. After signing in on a sheet of paper in one of the four offices, students waited to be seen. Sometimes they were then referred to another office, where they got in the back of the line. The process was not only time-consuming, but frustrating.
It costs much more to recruit new students than to keep the ones you have, which is why retention is so important to colleges and universities.
With a 67 percent one-year retention rate costing $6.5 million in lost revenue annually, Valdosta State University (Ga.) officials knew they had to act. The problem was data that could have helped identify remedies were sorely lacking, and what little information the institution possessed was difficult to access and analyze.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more paper-laden function than accounts payable. Receipts, invoices, check requests, purchase orders, contracts, and more keep A/P personnel knee-deep in forms and documentation.
Frederik Logevall, the John S. Knight Professor of International Studies and director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University, has been appointed the university’s vice provost for international relations, to begin July 1. He will succeed Alice Pell, who has served as vice provost since 2008. A history professor with expertise in U.S.
University Business readers know Jim Samels and Jim Martin as the coauthors of the long running “Future Shock” column in each issue and online. The column covers a broad range of topics from higher education management and leadership issues to community relations and sustainable thinking.
Although many campuses are tobacco-free, it would be rare to find 100 percent compliance among staff, faculty, and students. There are usually a handful of smokers huddled together in a corner, puffing away.
More than 1,130 U.S. higher ed institutions have implemented smoke-free campus policies, and the number is expected to climb, according to the organization Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights. The University of California can soon be added to the list. Starting in 2014, each of its 10 campuses will be tobacco-free, says UC, Riverside spokesperson Kris Lovekin.
Before entering college, Nicole, a junior at a small liberal arts college in New England, had been getting treatment for anorexia for two years. Finding a college with adequate mental health services was one of her biggest concerns, so she was relieved when the director of counseling services at the college she selected promised her a full treatment, complete with a weekly dietician meeting and regular sessions with a psychiatrist and a therapist.
Mention “teacher training” to the typical college professor and his eyebrow will raise like the wing of a raptor. Talons may follow.
College professors are experts in various disciplines—political science, mathematics, the biology of anthropology, the history of technology, and other disciplines from arcane to pedestrian. Teaching ability is universally presumed to accompany expertise in a discipline. Call it pedagogy by osmosis.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have captured the headlines in higher education in the past year. These new platforms were developed to enable both open access and large scale participation in online courses. Many top tier universities are joining the MOOCs bandwagon, afraid of missing an important piece of the Web-based phenomenon. It is our goal as educators to assess whether or not they can become a best practice in online learning.
Every teaching hospital and academic medical center knows that the process of becoming accredited and re-accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) is an arduous task. The ACGME is attempting to ease this burden by introducing a new accreditation model called The Next Accreditation System (NAS).
The search for and first years in office of a new president at a public university can carry extra burdens, say experts on those institutions. For starters, says presidential search consultant John Thornburgh, the vetting of candidates becomes a more complicated proposition because of the transparency usually practiced by state schools.
The Universities of Oregon, Illinois, and Virginia have plenty in common. They all rate as leading research institutions, boast a high-achieving graduate and undergraduate student body, and field formidable athletic teams that compete regularly for national championships.
