The Key with Inside Higher Ed

Ep 69: A Major Cross-College Collaboration

Colleges tend to compete rather than collaborate. That’s why a new five-college cooperative in New Mexico is so unusual.

This week’s episode explores the Collaborative for Higher Education Shared Services, or CHESS. It’s made up, so far, of five independent community colleges in New Mexico that have teamed up because they think they’re stronger together than apart.

They’ve started by agreeing to create a common enterprise resource planning structure to share resources and information in areas such as accounting, student records, human resources and payroll, but the vision ultimately includes many of the features you might see in a formal college system, including smoother student mobility and more efficient and cost-effective campus operations.

In the conversation, the presidents of two of the colleges, Becky Rowley of Santa Fe Community College and Tracy Hartzler of Central New Mexico Community College, discuss the combination of trust, subjugation of institutional ego, and internal culture change required to bring about a massive cross-institutional collaboration like this. They acknowledge the help they’ve gotten from the external partners guiding their work, CampusWorks and Workday.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman.
This episode is made possible by the support of Formstack

Ep 68: Higher Ed’s Flexible Work Future

The era of flexible work in higher education has begun.

The pandemic drastically altered our collective relationship with work in the moment, but how will faculty, staff and administrative jobs look differently going forward? In this week’s episode, administrators at two institutions that are addressing these questions head-on discuss their approaches.

Natalie McKnight is dean of the College of General Studies at Boston University and co-chair of its Committee on the Future of Staff Work, whose recommendations underpinned the university’s new policy allowing many employees to work up to two days a week from home. And Bryan Garey, vice president for human resources at Virginia Tech, discusses the university’s evolving “flexible work” policy under which nearly 10 percent of the workforce has already qualified to work 100% off site.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman. This episode is sponsored by Formstack. 

Ep 67: Community College Bachelor’s Degrees Gain Ground

In the last month, California enacted a law that could greatly expand the number of bachelor’s degree programs being offered by the state’s 116 community colleges. And Arizona approving legislation allowing massive systems like the Maricopa Community Colleges to award their own four-year degrees for the first time.

Half of all states now enable their community colleges to offer baccalaureate degrees, but how many, and in what fields, remain a source of contention in many places. Advocates for the programs say they fill essential gaps left by four-year institutions in their states in providing educational opportunities to adults and other underrepresented students and meeting essential needs in health care and other industries. Efforts to create or expand community college bachelor’s programs are often opposed by four-year colleges and universities concerned about the quality of the programs and, let’s be honest, lower-cost competition.

There’s a lot we don’t know about these emerging programs, and in this week’s episode of The Key, Debra Bragg of New America describes a report mapping the community college baccalaureate landscape. In the interview, she describes what we already know – and have yet to learn – about these programs, how we might gauge their effectiveness, and what they tell us about why so many students struggle along the traditional path of transferring from two-year to four-year institutions.

Ep 66: Enrollment Declines, No Free Community College: Higher Ed’s Rough Week

Are politicians and the public losing faith in higher education?

Last week delivered unwelcome news to colleges and universities. New data from the National Student Clearinghouse showed that college enrollments tumbled again this fall, with hundreds of thousands fewer students opting to start or continue their educations than even during the heart of the pandemic last fall.

And a scaled-back version of President Biden’s Build Back Better Act contained about $40 billion in new funds for colleges and their students -- barely a third of the previous iteration and missing key initiatives such as much-touted tuition-free community college.

This week’s episode features three thoughtful observers of the higher ed landscape on what these developments mean and why they matter. Tamara Hiler is director of education at Third Way, a center-left think tank in Washington. Robert Kelchen is professor and chair of education at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. And Teresa Valerio Parrot is a principal at TVP Communications.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman.

This episode is sponsored by Formstack.

Ep 65: Debating the Value of College Arts (and Other) Programs

Federal data now allow anyone who wishes to identify academic programs whose graduates on average earn more than enough to repay their student debt -- or don’t. As journalists and think tank analysts dissect the data, many of the programs whose graduates don’t earn enough to repay their debt prepare people for industries that don’t pay very well but that society values, such as teaching or the clergy.

Degrees in the arts are a particular target. In this week’s episode of The Key, New America’s Kevin Carey and Doug Dempster, former dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, debate the wisdom of pursuing degrees in the arts and other low-paying fields, whether economic outcomes are the best way to judge the value of those programs, and the prospects for driving down the costs of those programs.

Ep 64: A Struggling College’s Plea for Help

“Time is growing short.” That’s how Bloomfield College’s president, Marcheta P. Evans, described the struggling private college’s situation this week in an atypical plea for help.

Bloomfield, whose students are overwhelmingly black, Hispanic and from low-income backgrounds, acknowledged that it won’t make it through the 2022-23 academic year in its current condition, and asked for help from potential philanthropists and partner institutions to keep its mission alive.

In this week’s episode, Marcheta Evans discusses the New Jersey college’s unexpected approach to an increasingly common plight. She explains why it chose to go public about a situation many institutions hide, and it’s options for surviving and even thriving.

This week’s other guest is Barbara Brittingham, president emerita of the New England Commission of Higher Education, who as leader of the accrediting body in the demographically challenged Northeast encountered more than her fair share of financially ailing institutions.

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

Sponsor is Formstack

Ep 63: We Are All Data People

Data is a four-letter word in some quarters of higher education, even as many people call for colleges and universities to get better at using data and analytics to support institutional decision-making. Plenty of academics equate discussions about “data” with an overemphasis on efficiency or productivity or accountability, and worry that college leaders will put algorithms and numbers ahead of thoughtful analysis. 

Amelia Parnell strongly believes in the power of good information to help college faculty and staff members make better decisions. But in her new book, “You Are a Data Person: Strategies for Using Analytics on Campus,” from Stylus Publishing, Parnell describes a very expansive view of data-informed conversations that just about everyone in a campus community can and should be able to participate in.

Parnell, vice president for research and policy at NASPA–Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, joins this week’s episode of The Key for a conversation about the different ways that professors, administrators and staff members can use data in their everyday work and contribute to important discussions across the institution – whether they consider themselves “data people” or not.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman.

This episode of The Key is sponsored by D2L.

Ep 62: Amazon’s Approach to Employee Education and Training

This episode explores the retailer’s $1.2 billion investment in helping workers earn degrees -- and how it reflects the complicated, sometimes conflictual relationship between colleges and employers.

Last month Amazon announced a plan to spend $1.2 billion by 2025 to expand its employee education and training offerings, which include a set of internal programs but also cover the full cost of academic programs up to bachelor’s degrees for its front-line workers.

In this week’s episode of The Key, Amazon’s vice president for workforce development, Ardine Williams, discusses the company’s new investments as well as its relationship with colleges and universities, which she describes as more cooperative than competitive.

Williams also discusses the signals that employers like Amazon send about how they view the quality of traditional higher education programs and institutions and her views about the value of a liberal arts education.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman.

This episode of The Key is sponsored by D2L.

Ep 61: Putting Career Readiness at Higher Ed’s Core

Many employers and critics of higher education think many colleges and universities focus too little on ensuring that their graduates thrive after they leave, and favor holding institutions accountable for how their students fare in the job market. That’s unpalatable to a lot of academics, who view a college education as about more than how much you earn. 

The guests in this week's episode, Wake Forest University’s Andy Chan and Christine Cruzvergara of Handshake, endorse the view that colleges and universities should be collecting and sharing data about how well they are preparing students for success in the workplace, given that that’s the primary reason many students go to college. 

But the set of common metrics they propose colleges use to measure their own performance is broad, and it includes such data as how much institutions expose students to experiential learning in college to graduates’ satisfaction with their jobs once they leave. 

Chan and Cruzvergara discuss the need for colleges to prioritize their students’ career readiness, and to move beyond tired debates pitting learning against vocation.  

Hosted by Doug Lederman, co-editor of Inside Higher Ed

This episode is sponsored by D2L.

Ep 60: COVID’s Impact on the Return to Campus

Despite our expectations and hopes, here we are in another COVID fall. This week’s episode of The Key examines how the pandemic is affecting institutions, students and employees as most colleges and universities strive to keep their reopened campuses … open.

Elizabeth Redden, a senior reporter who has driven Inside Higher Ed’s coverage of the pandemic since its earliest days, joins The Key to discuss a wide range of issues:

• Enormous variation in how the coronavirus – and politics related to the pandemic -- are playing out in different parts of the country.
• How students are complying with their colleges’ vaccination mandates.
• What we know, and may not know, about the state of COVID infection on campuses.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman.

This episode of The Key is sponsored by D2L.