Stephanie Murphy, a security specialist with the Columbus State Community College police department, realized officers were having trouble communicating with one segment of the Ohio institution’s 26,000 students.  A group of campus officers bought into her novel policing solution, volunteering to learn American Sign Language (ASL) in the summer and fall of 2016. These officers, […]

A greater level of accountability around access and outcomes looms on the horizon for higher ed administrators in 2017 and beyond. Experts across the ideological spectrum predict the federal government and the general public to demand more transparency in the data released about how graduates of specific campus programs fare in the job market.  This push could […]

Instant Admissions Day at Unity College in Maine provides benefits beyond the immediate acceptance of students’ applications, President Melik Peter Khoury says. This accelerated enrollment approach provides a clearer picture of the 700-student private college’s incoming class. “The more we understand who’s coming and the needs they have, we are better able to invest and […]

Designed by the company Freight Farms, the hydroponic lettuce farm inside a shipping container at Stony Brook University in New York uses 90 percent less water than traditional growing methods to provide an acre’s worth of leafy greens to campus dining halls. Students use farm-management technologies such as cloud-synced growth data and a smartphone app to control lighting. Underway […]

Considering that textbooks can account for 25 percent of a community college student’s degree, some institutions have banded together to develop more open educational resources. A coalition of institutions in Washington recently launched a competency-based online business degree that doesn’t require textbooks. When students pay for the course, they also pay for all of the […]

Open educational resources have grown over the last few years from one-off oddities in single courses to the basis of entire degree programs. Cutting out textbook costs for students tops the list of reasons administrators encourage faculty to develop and adopt these free—or very inexpensive—resources, also known as OER. Other enticements include immediate access for […]

Some advocacy groups see student loan debt as not just a financial problem, but a growing social justice concern, as well. The Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which studies economic inequality, has released heat maps showing loan defaults concentrated in zip codes representing black and Latino communities. And in August, 40 civil rights, legal aid and […]

By the end of August, two students had already lived in an emergency-housing apartment dedicated to the homeless at Kennesaw State University outside Atlanta. And the unit, one of the first of its kind in the country, had opened only two weeks earlier, says Marcy Stidum, coordinator of the university’s Campus, Awareness, Resource and Empowerment […]