The Key with Inside Higher Ed

Colleges are increasingly being judged by how well they prepare students for jobs and careers after they leave, and in response most are trying to adapt their programs and offerings to align with the needs of employers. How are they doing? This week's episode of The Key uses two recent studies (from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce and from the Upjohn Institute) as a j...

National estimates find around one in five students have dependents, but few colleges and universities have accurate numbers of who their parenting students are and what their circumstances may be. Student parents are faced with additional financial stress and time constraints compared to their non-parenting peers, so how can higher ed leaders find these parents and better serve them? In this epis...

Colleges and universities are undergoing intense pressure from a lot of angles – and their provosts are arguably at the epicenter of most of them. A new episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, explores our 2024 Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers and topics such as the future of tenure, cost-cutting around academic programs, and the potential impact o...

The last year has been a hellish one for many college financial aid directors – and, not surprisingly, for the head of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, who’s leaving his role after 14 years. This episode of The Key features a conversation with Justin Draeger, who recently announced that he would soon wrap up his work as president and CEO of NASFAA for a new role le...

Discussions about the impact of generative artificial intelligence in teaching and learning are steadily moving beyond questions about whether and how students will cheat. Today’s episode of The Key is drawn from a workshop expertly led by Inside Higher Ed’s Colleen Flaherty at the Digital Universities U.S. conference at Washington University in St. Louis. The conversation on “Teaching with Genera...

How Arizona State University is working with Open AI to shape the development of generative AI. This week’s episode of The Key explores the recently announced partnership between Arizona State University and Open AI – one major way colleges and universities are trying to make sure higher education isn’t left behind in generative AI’s development. The conversation that follows was drawn from a sess...

Zakiya Ellis, a longtime policy expert, on whether we’re asking the right questions and have the right data. This weeks’s episode of The Key podcast explores a vexing question: how might policy makers and college leaders go about showing that getting a postsecondary education pays off for later in life? The episode features a conversation with Zakiya Smith Ellis, a principal at the education polic...

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...

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?...

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  St...

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 Co...

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 .

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-...

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...

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 Peren...

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...

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 e...

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...

“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 o...

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 univers...

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 Institu...

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 m...

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 ble...

As public support belief in the value of higher education has steadily declined in recent years, most of the attention for turning that around has been on improving the career readiness of graduates and making college more affordable. But an emergent group of college leaders believes the real key may be to ensure that all learners, regardless of background, have experiences in college that help th...