The Key with Inside Higher Ed

What would postsecondary education look like in a world where true lifelong learning – people engaging in education or training at many points throughout their lives – was the norm?
This week’s episode of The Key features a conversation with Mauro F. Guillén, the William H. Wurster Professor of Multinational Management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Post-Generational Society.

The book isn’t about higher education; it explores cross-cutting trends -- people living longer and healthier lives, and technological changes that shorten the half-life of our knowledge and skills – that promise to blur the “stages” (play, schooling, work and retirement) into which most of us have historically divided our lives.

In the conversation, Guillén discusses the implications of these shifts for institutions and learners, and what it would take for colleges and universities to truly operate as providers of lifelong learning for people in a society where one’s chronological age becomes less meaningful and work and learning blend throughout our lives.

The Key is hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman. This episode is sponsored by Coursedog

The episode features two higher education professionals, Mike Krause from the John M. Belk Endowment and Ashley Flood from Purdue Global, on adult learners. Krause and Flood talk about the needs of adult learners, how an institution can support their success and practical ways to assist students.  

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Student Success Reporter Ashley Mowreader. This episode is sponsored by InsideTrack.

This week’s episode of Voices of Student Success features Jody Greene, associate campus provost for academic success at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on the relationship between faculty and student success, how UCSC is empowering faculty to practice equitable course design and the future of academic success.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Student Success Reporter Ashley Mowreader. This episode is sponsored by InsideTrack.

This week’s episode of Voices of Student Success features Adelí Durón, the inaugural director of the Latinx Resource Center at the University of California, Irvine, on its mission and how she works to ensure student voices inform programming, engagement and center leadership.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Student Success Reporter Ashley Mowreader. This episode is sponsored by InsideTrack.

Three years ago, Inside Higher Ed created a podcast to try to give its audience insight into how the COVID-19 pandemic was affecting colleges, employees and students, with a particular focus on the more “invisible” students who too often fly under the radar of journalists and campus leaders. 

This week’s episode, The Key’s 100th, features a discussion with Paul Fain, who as Inside Higher Ed’s news editor launched the podcast and nurtured it through its first year. Paul, whose newsletter The Job explores the intersection of employment and education, talks with The Key’s host, Doug Lederman, about the people working on behalf of those invisible students and the issues they’re addressing. 

The Key is hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman. This episode is sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Gateway courses” are supposed to clear the path to fields of study, but for millions of students who struggle in those key classes, they often shut the door prematurely.

This week's episode of The Key digs into early efforts to develop courseware for 20 high enrollment courses that can make or break whether students from all backgrounds persist and ultimately complete their educations. The goal of the initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is to bring together colleges, companies and research organizations to build digital courses that can be used on dozens if not hundreds of campuses to eliminate gaps in performance by students from different backgrounds.

Ariel Anbar is a President’s Professor at Arizona State University, which is working with Carnegie Mellon University and the publisher OpenStax to create a general chemistry course heavy on active learning and real-world problem solving. Jeanette Koskinas is chief product officer at Lumen Learning, which is developing an intro statistics course in close collaboration with students and instructors at institutions like Rockland Community College and Santa Ana College.

The Key is hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman. This episode is sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The complex, confusing process by which students move between colleges has been an acknowledged barrier impeding postsecondary completion, particularly for underrepresented students. The issue is drawing increasing attention from policy makers, given rising concerns about value and equity.

This week’s episode of The Key looks at some of the transfer work being done by the major college and university systems that enroll a majority of today’s learners. Two experts participate in the discussion.

Dan Knox is director of the Institute for Systems Innovation and Improvement at the National Association of System Heads, known as NASH, which is undertaking various efforts to align the work of state systems on attacking this problem. Rebecca Karoff is associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Texas System, where she oversees a transfer advisory group and works with other systems in the state on these issues.

The Key is hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman. This episode is sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Key continues to share Inside Higher Ed’s latest collaboration with Times Higher Education – Campus Podcast. Eve Riskin, dean of undergraduate education at Stevens Institute of Technology, talks about the power of mentorship, diversity in excellence and what she, as an electrical engineer and computer scientist, thinks about the emergence of generative AI.

Episode sponsored by Stevens Institute of Technology.

The Key shares Inside Higher Ed’s latest collaboration with Times Higher Education – Campus Podcast. This interview features Montclair State University President Jonathan Koppell as he discusses how universities can be more proactive in rebuilding public trust in higher education. It’s tied to accessibility and degree completion, he argues, and universities need to acknowledge their failures in meeting those objectives. Meanwhile, service learning and supporting minoritized groups are central to Dr. Koppell’s institutional strategy. And with many institutions in the US facing financial difficulties, he discusses his decision to merge Bloomfield College into the Montclair system. 

This week’s episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, builds off a great conversation that took place earlier this month at Digital Universities U.S., an event Inside Higher Ed co-hosted in Chicago with our partners from Times Higher Education. The conversation featured leaders from three very different institutions talking about how their institutions create online or blended educational experiences that build a sense of community and belonging for students, prepare faculty and staff members to respond to learners’ social and psychological needs as well as academic ones, and use data effectively.

Joining the discussion were Sarah Dysart, senior director of online learning at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; Omid Fotuhi, director of learning innovation at WGU Labs; and Jeremy Alexis, vice provost in the office of professional and continuing education at Illinois Institute of Technology. Times Higher Education’s Charlotte Coles moderated the conversation.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman. This episode is sponsored by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.