Purdue and Kaplan: A Good Business Deal That May Hurt Students
In late April, Purdue University, a selective-admission public university, shocked the higher education community (including its own faculty) by announcing that it had purchased a large chunk of for-profit Kaplan University. The purchase would give Purdue an immediate, mostly-online operation consisting of 32,000 students, 15 physical locations, and 3,000 employees....
The Power of Predictive Analytics for Student Retention
What if you could use data you already collect to identify which entering students are most at risk of leaving your institution, allowing you to target the most appropriate services to populations that need them? This is exactly what Eastern Connecticut State University is doing. Rhona Free, Eastern’s vice president...
Hallmarks of Excellence in Online Leadership
Online learning has “gone from a wild frontier to a more established professional [undertaking],” says Jay Halfond of Boston University, Senior Fellow of the UPCEA Center for Online Leadership and Strategy and Chair of the National Task Force on the UPCEA Hallmarks of Excellence in Online Leadership. As the field...
Four Steps to Building Institutional Support for Blended Learning
“Building an effective blended learning culture needs strategic partners across multiple campus constituents and not just faculty. Strong support from higher-up administration coupled with faculty goes a long way towards the acceptance of such alternative learning strategies across campus.” These ideas come from Sunay Palsole, PhD, associate vice provost for...
How Faculty Teaching Load, Employment Status Affect Student Performance
Some years ago, Witt Salley, EdD, director of online education at Clemson University, was working for a community college in Missouri. The college had a growing online presence, and it was handling this demand by allowing faculty who were willing to teach online to do so as an overload. This...
Best Practices for Conducting a Faculty Search
“The success, stability, and morale of an academic department largely depend on its faculty.” This is according to Thomas Weidner, chairperson of the School of Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science, and Samuel Cotton, chairperson of the Department of Technology, of Ball State University. At the 32nd Annual Academic Chairpersons...
Creating a Strategic Plan for Global Engagement: Ideas for Academic Leaders
“Our goal was to make sure students on campus understood that they would be working in a global environment,” says Karen Kashmanian Oates, Peterson Family Dean of Arts and Sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. As scientists and engineers, WPI students are poised to enter a truly global marketplace, with companies...
What Students Are Looking For In An Institution
One of the most difficult decisions for upper leadership in a university is how to apportion funds for capital improvements and new and ongoing academic programs. Often, the decision comes down to perceptions of what students are looking for in the admission process. However, data about what factors students seek...
Using Social Media to Support University Branding
Timothy Cigelske, currently the social media director for Marquette University, discovered the power of social media in his previous life as a journalist. “I stumbled on social media as a way to research stories; it’s a useful reporting tool,” he says. Years later, both he and social media have matured,...
Why Alternative Credentials Are Critical to Institutional Success
Anyone who has ever attended a program advisory committee meeting knows that it can be a mix of exciting inspiration and terrifying fear that one’s programs are not doing enough to prepare one’s graduates. While members of the business community will often give helpful, positive commentary on the knowledge the...
