The Key with Inside Higher Ed

The Carnegie Classifications are an enduring institution in higher education – but they’re about to undergo a facelift that could be dramatic. This week’s episode of The Key explores the recent news that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching -- which created the main system we use to differentiate among types of colleges and universities about 50 years ago – had chosen the Americ...

College students almost certainly lost ground academically during the pandemic. But do we know how much? And what should colleges do about it? This week’s episode explores a free report Inside Higher Ed published in December, “Back on Track: Helping Students Recover From COVID-19 Learning Disruption.” It examines the available evidence about how the pandemic affected students’ educational paths, a...

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 c...

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 Ge...

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 degre...

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 versi...

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 cle...

“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 potent...

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 th...

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 acade...

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 F...

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 disc...

The Biden administration has promised once-in-a-generation investments and changes in higher education. Legislation introduced in the House of Representatives this month would take meaningful steps in that direction. This week’s episode of The Key digs into what could end up being one of the most significant pieces of federal higher education policy making in many years: the Build Back Better Act....

Most of us had hoped for a lot more stability this fall, but here we are. For those of you involved in teaching and learning at your colleges and universities, that means continuing to live in that sometimes uncomfortable space you’ve inhabited for the last 18 months: Will my class have to go remote tomorrow? Have I designed my course to withstand that kind of disruption? Can I be effective no mat...

Much higher education coverage related to COVID-19 focused on 18-year-old students being displaced from their dorms and listening to history lectures or watching biology videos in their childhood bedrooms. Relatively little attention was paid to the pandemic’s impact on career and technical education, much of which involves hands-on learning. In this week’s episode of The Key, Shayne Spaulding, a...

A wide range of education and training providers strive to help working adults enter or advance in the workforce. Community colleges and a growing number of other nonprofit and for-profit universities are intensifying their longstanding efforts. Companies like Amazon, Google and others are investing in their own programs, with and without colleges. And an almost endless array of startups, funded b...

The set of programs, policies and pathways by which learners move between colleges and universities is complex and often incoherent. Many students enter the transfer maze and never get through it, costing them time and money. That’s especially problematic because the students who seek to transfer are disproportionately those whom higher education has historically served least well – students from...

“Learning loss” – the idea that students failed to stay on their previous trajectory – has been much discussed in K-12 education during the pandemic. We hear far less about it in higher education, even though students and faculty members alike consistently say they believe students have learned less in the last year than they usually do. In this week’s episode of The Key, we discuss what colleges...

Students have offered mixed assessments of their learning experiences during the pandemic year. Many of them have complained about the lack of interaction with peers and professors in virtual environments, but appreciated the flexibility they gained in when and how they learned. With many colleges planning a significant if not full return to their physical campuses this fall, what will students be...

Many college students and professors will return to their physical campuses this fall, and it’s tempting to think things will return to “normal” when they do. But given the events of the past 15 months, what happens in the classroom come September is likely to be anything but normal. In this week’s episode of The Key, Mays Imad, professor of pathophysiology and biomedical ethics and coordinator of...

Listening to alternative points of view isn’t a particularly favored activity in many corners of society these days. But it remains one of the best ways – perhaps one of the only ways – of bridging the many divides (racial, economic, cultural) currently afflicting many aspects of our world. So argues Ronald A. Crutcher, president of the University of Richmond and author of I Had No Idea You Were B...

What skills, knowledge and abilities do students develop as they navigate through college? How do students themselves know, and how do institutions arm their graduates to show prospective employers what they know and can do? This week’s episode explores an effort to iterate beyond the academic transcript, which has historically been the main tool available to students, institutions and employers a...

The COVID-19 pandemic forced almost every college or university to make do without a physical campus at some point in the last 15 months. But many students and employees yearned to return, and most institutions anticipate resuming at least quasi-normal in-person operations this fall. But changes in how students learn and employees work will almost certainly compel most colleges and universities to...

Students and state and federal governments alike are asking increasingly hard questions about the return on their investment in postsecondary education, as tuitions and debt grow.   In this episode of The Key, which is sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, three experts with a diverse set of perspectives discuss the government role in ensuring value from academic institutions and progr...

Most Americans say they pursue a degree or other credential after high school to improve their job or career prospects. So many efforts to judge the value of a college credential have focused exclusively on graduates’ income. A new report from the Postsecondary Value Commission expands that definition, considering other, longer-term economic measures (such as economic mobility and wealth) and reco...