The Key with Inside Higher Ed

Ep. 111: Stackable and Alternative Credentials Go Mainstream

This week’s episode of The Key explores whether the emergence of shorter-term and alternative credentials pose a threat -- or offer salvation – to traditional colleges and universities.

The episode draws from a panel discussion at last week’s annual ASU+GSV Summit involving a number of thoughtful higher ed leaders. It featured Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, President Marlene Tromp of Boise State University in Idaho, Ann Kirschner, interim president of Hunter College of the City University of New York, and Maria Anguiano, executive vice president for learning enterprise at Arizona State University.

The conversation explored whether or not colleges and universities will adapt their curriculums and their delivery models to supplement degrees with certificates and credentials, sustaining their historical advantage as the primary path for learners seeking career advancement and better futures.

The group was overall pretty bullish about higher education’s ability to adapt to the changing expectations of learners, but also clear-eyed about the fate of colleges that don’t: declining relevancy and, in some cases, extinction.

The Key is hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman. This episode is sponsored by the Strada Education Foundation.

Ep. 110: Underemployment of College Graduates: How Concerned Should We Be?

Half of all graduates don’t work in jobs that require a bachelor’s degree. What can institutions do to best prepare their students for work?

More than half of bachelor’s degree holders are underemployed a year after graduation, and roughly four in 10 are still underemployed a full decade later. How worried should we be about those rates, and what can colleges and universities do to decrease them?

That question was at the heart of “Talent Disrupted,” a recent report from Strada Education Foundation and the Burning Glass Institute, which adds important nuance to the larger discussion about post-college outcomes for graduates.

In this episode, we dig into the report with two experts. Carlo Salerno is a managing director at the Burning Glass Institute and an author of the aforementioned report. Gary Daynes is founder and principal of Back Porch Consulting and a former professor and senior administrator at several private nonprofit colleges.

They discuss what underemployment means and how serious a problem it is, the conditions that contribute to it, and what colleges and universities can do to shield their graduates from it.

The Key is hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman. This episode is sponsored by the Strada Education Foundation.

Ep. 109: Voices Of Student Success: Creating Community for Students in Recovery

Many students on college campuses struggle with substance use and abuse, but fewer have a supportive community they can turn to.

In this episode, Angela Lauer Chong, associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students at Florida State University speaks about supporting students’ physical and emotional health through LIFT, a collegiate recovery program.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Student Success Reporter Ashley Mowreader. This episode is sponsored by InsideTrack. Read a transcript of the podcast here.

Ep. 108: Helping Learners Plan Their Path Through College

The “guided pathways” model as not just a student success initiative, but a way to redesign how a college operates.

This week’s episode of The Key podcast explores the “guided pathways” model, which hundreds of community colleges have embraced to give students a clearer path to reaching their educational goals.

Davis Jenkins, a senior research scholar at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College, and Hana Lahr, a senior research associate and director of applied learning there, join The Key to discuss their recent papers evaluating how guided pathways has spread, what iterations of the model work best, and what it takes to bring about this kind of sweeping, “whole college” change at institutions that can be both tradition-bound and financially strapped.

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

Ep. 107: Voices Of Student Success: Making College Visible to Rural Learners

In this episode, host Ashley Mowreader spoke with Ron Slinger, president of Miles Community College, to learn more about the college’s Opportunity Realized program and how the initiative is benefiting Montana, the college and students’ futures.

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

Ep. 106: Higher Ed News Roundup: Athlete Unions and the FAFSA Fiasco

A panel of news hounds discusses some of the biggest stories involving colleges.

This week’s episode features a conversation about some of the hottest news developments unfolding in higher education today.

Topics include how the recent formation of a union for basketball players at Dartmouth College might help to reshape college sports, the turmoil created by the federal government’s botched roll-out of the federal financial aid form, and what Inside Higher Ed’s recent survey of college and university presidents says about higher education and about campus leaders themselves.

Joining the discussion is Katherine Knott, who covers federal policy for Inside Higher Ed, and Erin Hennessy, executive vice president at TVP Communications and an acute observer of higher education.

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

Ep. 105: Voices of Student Success: Improving Textbook Affordability

Affordability is a top concern for higher education leaders, and professors are directly responsible for the affordability of their course materials. In this episode, Patty Goedl from the University of Cincinnati at Clermont discusses her OER e-textbook, which she wrote and developed to make her managerial accounting course more accessible to learners.

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

Ep. 104: Higher Education in a ‘Post-Generational Society’

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

Ep 103: Voices Of Student Success: Adult Learners in Higher Education

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.

Ep 102: Voices of Student Success: Engaging Faculty in Student Success

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.