John Harney: At Business Innovation Factory, inspiration, ideas and personal stories in the face of the 'isms' holding us back

Every September, I get a new fix of inspiration at the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) summit of innovators, in Provide. Last week, I was at BIF’s 12th summit, my sixth.

My main inspiration this year came from Dave Gray. The founder of the strategic design consultancy XPLANE, co-founder of Boardthing and author of Liminal Thinking gave a simple message: Shut off autopilot. As he said, the only place we can make change is in the now. Problem is we don’t often think about now because we’re on autopilot.

First piece of advice then: Shut off autopilot and do something different. In an organization, he added, one cog shutting off the dance can change everything. We all talk about disruption a lot, he said, but we don’t disrupt ourselves.

Well, it’s hardly a disruption (a word you hear a bit too much in innovation circles), but I vowed to do one thing different from the past, and not write exhaustively about every speaker I heard. For the ones I left out, it’s not them, it’s me. Happens that the stories that really hit me included the starter and the closer.

The starter was Bill Taylor, founder of Fast Company. He researched his new book by seeking outextraordinary stories in ordinary places—not Silicon Valley or Kendall Square,  in Cambridge, but retail banks, insurance companies, even parking garages. He told, for example, of the “Megabus effect” that had replaced up-to-then drab bus experiences with modernized double-decker busses complete with big windows, GPS so  that it would be easy to avoid traffic backups, wifi for device-beholden passengers, seatbelts so riders felt safe and smooth ticketing via the internet.

Taylor also spoke of Lincoln Electric, an Ohio company founded in 1895 that makes welding systems and thinks progressively. In 1948, company leaders said Lincoln will never lay off an employee and it never has, not even during the Great Recession.

A sign over the factory gate says, “The actual is limited; the possible is immense.” A sort of BIFy take on the proud, "Through these gates pass the best shipbuilders in the world” motto at Bath Iron Works (which by the way, can’t claim Lincoln’s no-layoff promise).

The closer was Ross Szabo. On the outside, everything looked fine for the class president, varsity basketball player with a 3.8 GPA. But he was hardwired for mental- health problems. At age 11, he visited his older brother in the hospital after the sibling had a manic episode. Ross himself was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 16.

Over the jokes of classmates, he started to talk about his disorder ... and classmates started listening. But in his 20s, he attempted suicide, began heavy drinking and experienced psychotic episodes. He dropped out of American University, then returned four years later and earned a degree in psychology. He recently developed a mental-health curriculum for college that is now used in college fraternity life, orientation and athletics programs. We need to normalize mental health, he said. “Mental health isn't for when things go wrong. It's something you build, like physical health.”

Videos of the storytellers will begin to be released starting in mid-October atwww.bif.is/summit. Jessica Esch did telling sketches of the BIF proceedings.

Among tidbits between Taylor and Szabo, Matt Cottam, co-founder and chief design officer at the Providence-based design firm Tellart, spoke of Tellart’s exhibit at the “Museum of the Future: Machinic Life” in Dubai showing how robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will augment human experience.

One example: replacing the uncomfortable aspects of airport security with soothing warm towels that can immediately be scanned for pathogens and other threats. Or automatically adding vitamin C to drinks when a certain number of office workers come down with a cold. Or building a game in the Dubai arcade that requires people to be active and delivers biometric information. Or building an algorithm that takes a 1,000-year view on environment risks, rather then the current shortsighted focus on just a few generations. As machines become better at reading our emotions, Cottam asked, will we naturally employ them to take better care of us? Will we trust AI enough to have avatars be our nannies?

New demographics

Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, noted that around 1900, U.S. life expectancy was 47. But half of American babies born in 2007 will live to 104. Coughlin credits the gains not only to doctors, but also to civil engineers, noting that clean water has done more than anything else to add to life expectancy.

In Japan, more people are buying adult diapers than kids’ diapers. Coughlin pointed out that the fastest-growing part of the population is the 85 and over group. And Gen Z people should prepare not just for five to eight jobs, but for five to eight careers. Your kitchen will be able to monitor what food you’re running low on. Smart toilets will tell you whether you took your medicine. Smaller grocery stores with lower shelves and more compact parking lots will cater to the aging, childless shoppers.

Longevity could mean a lot of time for retirement. And perhaps for loneliness? Kavita Patel, a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital Community Physicians and healthcare-policy adviser, said loneliness is the single most preventable public health epidemic today. People often feel alone, she said, but loneliness is a feeling that no one cares about you. And loneliness worsens other diseases, she said. She told of a study in Australia finding that 37 percent of early teenagers and young children say they only feel more alone when they get on social media.

 She cited the longitudinal Framingham health research, famous for its heart study, which also studied loneliness and found lonely people tend to affiliate with other lonely people. And people who are not lonely would actually become lonely if their networks were made up of lonely people. What can we do? Screen for the condition, for starters, she said. And change views. Hospital chiefs brag about private rooms, but such rooms are very isolating and presumably make people lonelier, according to Patel. Also reach out and touch people! (To be sure, that's a tall order in a society poisoned by political correctness, fear of lawsuits, fear of infection and fear of condescension.)

Out of this world

Kava Newman, deputy administrator at NASA, said she expects to see humans within the orbit of Mars in the 2030s. She believes that if Mars had life 3.5 billion years ago, then something went terribly wrong, that could teach lessons about life on Earth. (I had seen her a few years earlier at BIF when she was a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, talking about the pressurized, skin-tight Bio-Suit she developed that gives astronauts unprecedented flexibility in space.)

Irwin Kula, a rabbi who talks about disruptive innovation, is president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership described as a “do-tank” committed to making Judaism a public good. Kula noted that “nones” are the fastest-growing religion. As disruption guru Clayton Christensen would put it, the “incumbents” are in trouble. True, 40 percent of Americans say they go to church, but observers found it’s more like 23 percent. A lot of people think that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife, Kula said.

We need an innovation ecosystem in area of religion, suggested the rabbi. (I had also seen Kula a few years earlier at BIF with his moving Jewish chants set to voice messages from people about to die in the 9/11 attacks.)

Stowe Boyd is a “work futurist” who coined the term hashtag. He said ism’s are holding us back.

Anywhereism is about mandating work anywhere, Boyd said. But most companies are actually decreasing square footage of offices to save money, even if many people are less happy and less productive in open spaces. Airspace, he noted, bring similar open plans, glass walls, communal table-desks, high ceilings and artisan touches not only to offices, but also to cafes, hotels and home. 

Workism and the cult of leadership go back to the fact that organizations are not democratic. 

Horizontalism suggests that a bossless organizational model would seem to liberate us, but, Boyd suggested, moving away from hierarchy without making other changes is like a mob tearing down a dictator’s statue, but not ousting dictator himself. It’s just a new business model where we become managers and the managed. 

Techism tells us that using more tools, we’ll be more productive, but we’re actually less productive.

Darden Smith, an Austin-based singer, is the founder and creative director of SongwritingWith: Soldiers. He sang and played guitar at the BIF summit. Folky, he made references to hearing Bruce Springsteen as a kid, being influenced by Dylan and Elvis Costello. But he said (repeatedly) that he doesn’t believe in cynicism anymore; he believes in love. (Never mind that smart cynicism empowered those musical heroes!)

New starts

Coss Marte started selling pot at 13, then other drugs. He said he came up with a different way to sell drugs. He and his 20 or so assistants all started wearing suits, and the operation grew to be a multimillion-dollar business. Then he got busted and ended up jailed in a 9’x6’ cell. Told by doctors that he was dangerously overweight, he started working out and lost 70 pounds in six months.

After his release, he developed a unique fitness program based on the one that had worked for him in prison. With that program, he launched a prison-style fitness bootcamp on the Lower East Side of Manhattan called ConBody. He built his own gym to look like a prison cell and staffed the operation with other formerly incarcerated people. To scale up, he then began offering online videos, where he said, exercisers can feel safe learning from a convict who’s not physically there.

Roberto Rivera, president and “lead change agent” of The Good Life Alliance, spoke of how he went from being a dope dealer to being a hope dealer. He found out he was learning-disabled, which he came to see as learning differently. Rivera started his own clothing line. Did a rap: I know you love it/freestyle here at the storyteller summit. He created his own major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison called “Social Change, Youth Culture, and the Arts.” “And this person who was told he was LD is now getting his Ph.D in education.”

As he noted, “Standard educational goals can produce high-achievers who go to Ivy League schools, earn their MBAs, join blue-chip corporations, and devise brilliant financial schemes that build immense wealth for the few on Wall Street, and chaos for everyone else. ... We want all kids on both sides of the gap to have a moral compass, to think critically, and to make the institutions that they’re a part of and the communities that they serve to be more just and more humane.”

Kare Anderson was diagnosed as “phobically shy” as a child. Classmates prevailed on her to run for student body president in fourth grade. She said she won because students had less positive views about the two other contenders (a cautionary tale?).

She is a “synesthete”—a person who sees colors when she hears sounds and that she has no sense of direction. She felt out of sync in many situations and was overly sensitive to stimuli. The upside is that the way her brain works has allowed her to help others go “lower and slower” as they become accessible to those around them and ask lot of questions. That questioning habit led her to a successful job as a reporter with The Wall Street Journal.

John Harney is executive editor of the New England Board of Higher Education.

Ross Gittell/Jeremy Hitchcock: 'Skating to where the puck is going'

New England’s economy has improved, but economic opportunity and skills gaps contribute to slower growth in employment, income and social mobility than in previous recoveries from recessions. With an aging population and relatively slow natural growth rates in the labor force, these gaps put the future of the New England economy at greater risk than that of other regions.

There are ways to overcome these gaps. Stronger bridges between education and employment (“E-to-E”) and specifically between the region’s employers and community colleges can be built, which would benefit the regional economy and individuals and their families across New England.

The data are strong on the benefits for state economies and for individuals from advancing higher educational attainment. In New Hampshire, for example, moving the percentage of working-age adults with college attainment from its current level of approximately 50% to 65% would mean a $1,400 increase in per-capita personal income and an increase of about $130 million in state revenue annually, according to the National Center on Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS).

For individuals in New Hampshire, the increase in average weekly earnings from high school graduate to associate degree is over 21% and, for bachelor’s and higher, over 50%. Even with the strong returns to higher education, the percentage of working-age adults with a college degree is not rising fast enough to keep New Hampshire among the top states in educational attainment and make up for the retirement of the state’s aging, highly educated Baby Boomers.

Nationwide, from 2008 through 2012, the percentage of U.S. adults with an associate degree or higher increased by 1.5%, while New Hampshire’s percentage increased by less than half that—just 0.7%. This is occurring while increasing numbers of employers are bemoaning the lack of available skilled workers and many New Hampshire working families are struggling financially.

Currently many high school graduates in New England, particularly from low-income families, are going directly into the labor market and taking jobs in relatively low-paying positions in retailing and services with very limited advancement prospects. They will very likely be the “working poor” for an entire generation. They will receive low pay and be the first to lose their jobs during the next economic downturn. The challenge and the opportunity is to inform these young people and their parents of the benefits of going to college and working in the region—and the consequences of not going to college. Business and education leaders have to provide guided, supportive and affordable pathways to college completion and into fruitful employment in New England.

The lack of skilled workers while many residents remain marginally employed might be best characterized as an education-to-employment gap—an E-to-E disconnect. Individuals without postsecondary education or an applied higher education skillset are not as successful as those with higher education and with their education aligned with the needs of companies that are hiring for well-paying positions. In New England, the employer needs are increasingly complicated and specialized. Employers need workers with the so-called “soft skills” of communication and teamwork, plus the ability to problem-solve and think critically—and they increasingly require workers with domain expertise in a field that they can apply, for example, marketing, industrial design, machining or coding.

But fixing the problems in the labor market and economy is more complicated than advocating “advanced education.” In Future of the Professions, Oxford University economist Daniel Susskind talks about 130 licensed professionals, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a Standard Occupational Classification to define 840 different occupations. It used to be employment was as simple as medical school for a doctor, law school for an attorney, business school for an accountant, engineering school to be a civil engineer, or a community college for welder.

Those examples—medical, accounting, welding, engineering programs—suggest the value of an “apprentice-type” model with education aligned with and drawing on work experience and tied to employment after credential obtainment. And there are many examples of programs at the doctoral, bachelor's and certificate levels that continue to be effective at education-to-employment progression and are based on apprenticeship-like approaches. But what we need now are more programs developing student skillsets for which there are rising numbers of unmet jobs. In many of these, a credential alone will not complete a graduate’s training, but will be part of their E-to-E journey. This gets more pronounced as the economy becomes more complicated.

Because E-to-E is traditionally decoupled and new jobs are being created outside standard progressions, too small portion of the population can fill these jobs—and that is slowing the growth of the economy. There are many fields and job classifications that have no well-defined program or progression. Education institutions and business organizations need to partner more than ever to create the bridge from education to employment to close the skill gap and the opportunity gap.

We can point to several places where building that E-to-E bridge from education to employment has been successful in New Hampshire. In each of these cases, N.H. community colleges have been a catalyst for creating on-ramps to economic opportunity and employment. Great Bay Community College (GBCC) in Portsmouth and Rochester, and Nashua Community College are partnering with suppliers to the global aerospace industry, Albany International, Safran and GE to train workers in advanced composite materials manufacturing and CNC machining. In these programs, college faculty worked closely with company engineers, management and frontline workers to design curriculum. Students’ program work includes on-the-job experience and students have internship opportunities and virtually guaranteed employment after successful program completion.

Given the context of the opportunity and skills gaps we face, it’s clear that we need to cross the chasms. If we can tap that potential, we can unleash another wave of growth and enhance the competitiveness of the region. How can we broaden work-based education and training models beyond traditional Department of Labor strategies and other traditional apprenticeship practices to have them span K-12, postsecondary education and the workforce with a larger number of employers and industries, including in the fields of health, IT and financial services.

One of our previous education solutions was a general purpose “high school” education. The rise of high school education began with the Committee of Ten in the late 19th Century, and high schools became ubiquitous during the early 20th Century. This has been a great success as we are able to reach the entire population. The high school systems have become built up, standardized and, now unfortunately, too often exist in discipline silos and divorced from 21st Century workforce requirements. To confront our new challenges, we need to partner, collaborate and adapt. Where we all have fallen short is that our high schools, community technical education, community colleges and industry do not collaborate enough in the areas of high employment need.

The mental model is nothing new but it’s essentially a dual-education system that combines theory and practice (which happens to be the motto of Jeremy’s alma mater, the Worcester Polytechnic Institute).

NHTI (Concord’s community college) and Manchester Community College IT graduates comprise over 10% of the workforce for Dyn Inc, the fastest-growing IT company in New Hampshire. GBCC and River Valley Community College in Claremont and Lebanon are partnering with Exeter Hospital and Dartmouth-Hitchcock, respectively, on training medical technicians. All these programs provide guided pathways from general education, to job-specific employment skills in occupations that pay greater than average wages for associate degree holders and have promotion and career opportunities. All these programs provide work-based learning opportunities such as internships and job placement And students can enter all these programs while still in high school through dual-enrollment (Running Start) courses that the Community College System of New Hampshire has with virtually every high school (over 90) in the state.

These programs are not educating professional engineers or doctors but rather  professionals, desperately needed by employers as evidenced by the thousands of openings in these fields. In essence, we expanded the high-skilled talent pool by bridging the education to economy divide by establishing educational pathways to regional employment and, in doing this, we are addressing the opportunity and skills gaps in New Hampshire.

What is required is that community college and other educators work alongside employers from industry in the design and delivery of the guided-pathway programs and that these programs are focused on 21st Century skills—those with high future need and strong career prospects. We in workforce development and higher education need to do what hockey great Wayne Gretzky attributed his success to: skating “to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

Industry and community college leaders have to work together to build bridges and guided pathways that support economic opportunity, employment and income growth, and a strong future for the New England regional economy. We can help to address the opportunity and skill gaps by building stronger connections of E-to-E: education-to-employment.

Ross Gittell is chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire. Jeremy Hitchcock is the founder of Dyn, a New Hampshire-based Internet performance management company.

This piece first ran on the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

Sophie Lampard Dennis: The sad decline of face-to-face encounters

Via the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

Remember the faculty lounge? When I began at my current institution back in 1999, there was one in every building—sometimes two! This public space—complete with industrial furniture, coffee pots smoldering on burners, and a mini-fridge with sticky notes all over it reminding people to clean out their stinky sandwiches—was higher education’s version of the office water cooler.

Faculty and staff connected, people in different departments shared ideas, jokes and snacks, and mainly people let off a bit of steam while taking a much-needed mental break during the day—often while they also made photocopies (remember those?). Many a problem or conundrum was vented, birthday cards signed (and cake shared), and aha moments with students were exulted over in the faculty lounge. NPR stories were re-told. Most importantly, this simple, open and welcoming space engendered a sense of community. I miss it.

Lately, I have been lamenting the increasing loss of face-to-face interaction. The prevailing attitude of taking care of business without having to actually get together has taken hold across all realms of society. Despite the also-growing trend toward “open workspaces,” there seems to be less and less contact with other human beings as a matter of course in life these days. “No need to meet; we can take care of that with email” has become a consistent mantra- and my nemesis—even as I imagine with dread the numbers of “reply all” to come.

Recently, “I’ll set up a Google Docs account and we can use that to upload information rather than getting together” has taken hold. I am beginning to wonder whether I should, perhaps, begin sending my avatar to teach, thereby staying in my office for the entire working day. Or more to the millennial point—perhaps a class conducted entirely in Facebook Messenger? Class attendance would probably be greatly increased!

The “mail room” where the painted wood faculty mailboxes hang on the wall in alphabetical order—seems mostly a tribute now to a time long gone wherein actual business took place in this room and people converged, if briefly. Now, those mailboxes only occasionally hold a paper phone bill—and surely, these could be generated electronically. The room is no longer a help for those looking for human contact. Even the bulletin board in this room (for those millennials reading this article, that’s a location for actual paper announcements to be posted using thumb-tacks), which at one time held a plethora of messy communications, has been left in the dust as the electronic version has prevailed (so neat! So tidy! No trees killed!).

Campus projects over the years have caused the old lounges, one-by-one, to be converted into other types of spaces. As student programming has expanded and entered the 21st Century, so has the need, for example, for enhanced labs for computer gaming courses as well as for offerings in video production and electronic music. Computers have taken hold where, once, faculty congregated. So here I am, in the comfort of my own lonely office, on a hallway of offices, in a building of offices, with nowhere to wander to. Am I more productive? Maybe. I eat my lunch at my standing desk (don’t get me started about what happened to a common lunchtime!) as I grade papers, while simultaneously receiving and responding to all mail, as well as perusing the electronic faculty bulletin and checking Google Docs for new uploads from my current task force or committee.

 The actual faces of my colleagues and friends as seen at one time in person, have now been replaced by a “profile picture”—a tiny square with a face in it- which pops up with their email. At least when I have something funny to share with a colleague, or an aha moment with students to report (I haven’t figured out how to share cake this way yet)—there is an emoji for that: ☺ .

Sophie Lampard Dennis is associate professor of education at Landmark College, in Putney, Vt.

John O. Harney: June update on the condition of New England

BOSTON

New England’s unemployment rate stood at 4.4% in April, compared with 5% nationwide, according to the spring 2016 outlook delivered last week by the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) to 50 or so economists and others gathered at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

New Hampshire posted the second lowest unemployment rate in the U.S., at 2.6%. But all New England states are projected to have lower annual employment growth than the U.S. average through 2018, partly due to the region’s aging population.

Economist Barry Bluestone, of Northeastern University's School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, projected that New England’s population will grow by only 5.5% from 14.7 million in 2015 to 15.5 million in 2025.

Turning to the spring 2016 NEEP theme of New England’s special relationship with Canada, Bluestone noted that 6% of jobs in New England depend on trade with Canada. New England’s No. 1 export to Canada is aircraft and aircraft parts, partly from GE and Pratt & Whitney. In some instances, the interdependence is striking: One growing export from New England to Canada is live Maine lobsters.

One major import from Canada back to New England is processed and frozen lobster, much of it for casinos and cruise ships.

The conference was sponsored by Brandeis International Business School’s Perlmutter Institute, the Canadian Consulate General and TD Bank—the Toronto bank that now markets itself as America's Most Convenient Bank and has naming rights to the arena that is home of the Boston Bruins, NHL archrival of the Montreal Canadians.

Bluestone added that New England output is forecast to grow nearly 13% by 2025. At the same time, ISO New England reports that the region’s power-generating capacity will decline by at least 13%, due to nuclear, coal and oil plants going offline. That means more natural gas, including via controversial means such as pipelines carrying fracked gas from Pennsylvania and ships carrying LNG from Yemen. Wind and solar power can supplement that, but cannot provide reliable, 24/7 energy for New England. And there is the question of how to get energy from the hydropower resources of Canada to the markets of New England. People in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont don’t want to see big power lines. One solution is the power lines currently approved to run under Lake Champlain in Vermont.

Bluestone added that as international flights to Boston's Logan Airport have grown considerably, it may be time for New Englanders to think of Halifax, Nova Scotia, as another viable international airport. It’s closer to Europe than Boston is.

In one of the surprisingly rare references to education and talent at the NEEP conference, Bluestone warned that New England needs more engineers to innovates in areas such as harnessing the region’s high tides for energy and desalinizing seawater for drinking.

State of the states

The Canadian theme is engaging, for sure. But for me, NEEP’s gold comes in its colorful state-specific forecasts, this time down to four state forecasters from the usual six or more. (NEEP mourned the death of stalwart New Hampshire forecaster Dennis Delay, who died in December; Fairfield University professor emeritus Edward Deak, who historically watched ups and downs in Connecticut, retired from NEEP. Ross Gittell, the NEEP vice president who usually delivers the New England regional forecast, could not attend the spring conference because of his duties as chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire.)

Independent economist Jeff Carr of Vermont reminded the audience that his last forecast was clouded by Keurig’s launch of its cold-beverage line (which the coffee-brewing company ultimately discontinued) and Global Foundries buying IBM microelectronics facilities in the Northeast (which changed the company’s semiconductor export picture).

In January 2015, Vermont reached full recovery from the Great Recession—a benchmark whose significance is still lost on some who didn’t understand the full trauma of that downturn. Carr noted that, for the first time in years, the decrease in Vermont unemployment is actually due to increasing employment, not declining labor force. He added that the craft food industry (as he said, everything you need for vacation: Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Cabot cheese and craft beers) has been a key part of Vermont economic resilience, despite hits in overall manufacturing..

Most Vermont exports are integrated circuits from the former IBM plant in Essex Junction and engine blades from Rutland. On the Canada theme, Vermont approved the transmission under Lake Champlain to bring in electricity from Quebec. Carr pointed out that Canadian hydro initially was not considered “renewable” because of an existing large carbon footprint and environmental implications for the Cree Indian Nation.

In a tribute to Delay, who gave a regular “Segway report” based on the motorized scooter invented by New Hampshire’s Dean Kamen, Carr noted the irony that Segway tours have become a top tourist activity in Burlington, Vt.

Charles Colgan, professor emeritus at the University of Southern Maine, who also spends much of the year at the Center for the Blue Economy in Monterey, Calif., returned to NEEP for the Maine forecast. Portland unemployment is extremely low, he said, yet it does not increase in-migration.

Also five paper mills in Maine have closed since 2008, claiming 7,500 total jobs.

On the conference theme, Colgan noted that Canada is Maine’s #1 trading partner, followed by China and Malaysia. Also, Maine still attracts many Canadian tourists to Old Orchard Beach and other coastal spots on the “Quebec Riviera.”

Maine also has led New England in renewable electricity. Colgan told of how a shortage of oil power threatened the Great Northern Paper mill in Millinocket, Maine. Then-Maine Gov. Ken Curtis contacted New Brunswick Premier Richard Hatfleld to nudge Irving Oil of St. John to help keep the mill running. New England governors began meeting with Eastern Canadian premiers to discuss energy issues at that time, and Irving remains a major presence in Northern New England.

Now, many Mainers and others worry about tar sands being transported through a Maine pipeline for later redistribution.

Maine has installed significant wind power and has more planned for Aroostook County, which historically has been connected only to the Canadian grid. Meanwhile, offshore wind may help solidify Maine’s potential in the middle of a rapidly developing energy market from Maine to the ”Boston States.”

Bryant University economist Edinaldo Tebaldi displayed a slide, showing the Rhode Island economy is improving but not as fast as New England or U.S. The Ocean State suffers from very little population growth, and its labor force is actually shrinking. Rhode Island’s unemployment rate is almost back to pre-recession levels, but not quite, partly because of sluggish job growth in manufacturing and construction.

Economist Adam Clayton-Matthews of Northeastern University spoke about high confidence in Massachusetts. Unemployment is now below pre-recession levels, but demography is making it impossible for many employers to replace workers.

Asked about the crisis in creating homes for middle-income households, Carr of Vermont noted that it’s not as cool for millennials to live in Burlington, Vt., as it is to live in booming Boston. People go to Vermont to get educated, then move away, then come back with three kids, Carr quipped. He add that the milestones people used to reach in their twenties—marrying, having kids and buying a home—they now do in their thirties, partly because of the pressure of student loan debt. In Maine, the state with the highest median age in the U.S., the housing problem is a lack of affordable senior housing.

A TD Bank official pointed out that not wanting to lose that enormous body of aging talent, the bank has no mandatory retirement. Many older workers can work one or two days a week. If other companies would do it, she noted, that would help an aging New England.

If the trade data weren't enough to convince the audience of the "special relationship,"  panelists on Canadian innovation may have drove the point home.  TD senior economist Michael Dolega pointed out that no banking crises has occurred in Canada since 1840, compared with 12 in the U.S. (though housing markets are overheating in cities like Toronto and Vancouver and oil-producing regions of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland & Labrador are in recession). François-Philippe Champagne, a member of parliament from Québec, and parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance, told the audience that looming Canadian infrastructure investment will emphasize public transportation, water and wastewater treatment, and affordable housing—priorities that perhaps should, but may not, straddle the border.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education, where this piece originated. It is part of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

Al DeCiccio: A new look at the purposes of education

BOSTON I was able to hear Stanley Fish speak at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in January 2004. Fish, a literary critic, had become dean of arts and sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)—a position he has now vacated. Fish has published widely, usually upholding the ideals of our nation’s colleges and universities in his writing. His stated aims for educators were that: educators should do their job (and only their job) well; that educators should not attempt to do the jobs of others for which they are not qualified; and that educators should not let others do their job.

Here’s a provocative passage from Fish:

"You can reasonably set out to put your students in possession of a set of materials and equip them with a set of skills (interpretive, computational, laboratory, archival), and even perhaps (although this one is really iffy) install in them the same love of the subject that inspires your pedagogical efforts. You won’t always succeed in accomplishing these things—even with the best of intentions and lesson plans, there will always be inattentive or distracted students, frequently absent students, unprepared students and on-another-planet students—but at least you will have a fighting chance given the fact that you’ve got them locked in a room with you for a few hours every week for four months.

"You have little chance, however (and that’s entirely a matter of serendipity), of determining what they will make of what you have offered them once the room is unlocked for the last time and they escape first into the space of someone else’s obsession and then into the space of the wide world.

"And you have no chance at all (short of discipleship that is itself suspect and dangerous) of determining what their behavior and values will be in those aspects of their lives that are not, in the strict sense of the word, academic. You might just make them into good researchers. You can’t make them into good people, and you shouldn’t try.''

Unless he is being playfully ironic, which is possible, I think Fish has it wrong, because I think these are the aims of education: that educators should assist students in waking eager from dreams to return to the conversations of their classes, clinicals and internships; that educators should encourage their students to share their social and cognitive gifts in those classes, clinicals and internships; that in those classes, clinicals and internships, educators should model for students how to have respect for the other; and that in those classes, clinicals and internships, educators should prepare students for transformative action.

What I want to emphasize is that educators can nurture what John Henry Newman described as “good members of society” through their teaching and the courses they develop, thereby preparing a generation of people who can help to mend a broken, post-9/11 world.

Such development can occur only if colleges and universities hold mature conversations, informed and robust dialogues that will lead to an abundance of ideas, strategies and solutions for repairing our globe. I believe in the abundance of talents or gifts that reside in our students and that we will all enjoy the fruits of that abundance on the campuses and in the communities we will all enter, refusing to acquiesce to the illusion that a scarcity of ideas, vision, ideals and character is the inevitable condition of human existence.

Engaging faculty and students

These mature conversations that educators orchestrate in their classrooms will be the preparation their students will need to engage in the public debates about the important questions of the day. How do we prepare students and faculty to hold these mature conversations? I have spent hours with the faculty members asking the following eight questions—questions that, when addressed with students, I think will be crucial to initiating these conversations in higher education institutions These questions are based on the work of Russell J. Quaglia, who has founded centers on student aspirations:

1. How do I create a culture of belonging in my classroom?
2. How do I try to be a role model in my classroom?
3. How do I inspire accomplishment in my classroom?
4. How do I build excitement in my classroom?
5. How do I promote curiosity and creativity in my classroom?
6. How do I promote adventure and risk taking in my classroom?
7. How do I prepare those in my classroom for leadership?
8. How do I prepare those in my classroom for taking responsible actions?

Attempting to answer questions like these will certainly help the faculty prepare students of character who may enter, with confidence and conviction, the various discourse communities to which they will be invited in their lifetimes.

Fish out of water?

To be fair, Fish may have a point in asking educators to do best what they have been prepared to do: teach, research, create, produce and disseminate. Sometimes, when educators allow their political ideologies and social programs to take precedence in their classrooms, they risk losing their hold on teaching the content for which they are credentialed and risk dismissing the educational needs of their students. Fish may also be following a tradition in offering his own perspective to the so-called culture of suspicion to which 19^th-century thinkers such as Marx, Freud and Nietzsche contributed. In such a culture, the idea of character formation cannot thrive and will not be accepted.

Fish’s critique of character-building efforts by educators becomes less biting when one recognizes that his own theories about making meaning of texts are predicated upon a notion—social constructionism—which advances collaborative learning (i.e., dialogue among peers leading to understanding) as its pedagogical practice. In some ways, Fish wants it both ways. Fish asks faculty to nurture the intellectual life, in a community of knowledgeable peers, ultimately, teasing tender minds into thought—what he attempted to do at UIC after his tenure on the faculty at Duke. Fish surely must recognize that passionate engagement is the hallmark of the college or university. It is this passionate engagement which leads thinkers (Fish’s knowledgeable peers as well as those who wish to become known as knowledgeable peers—their students) through conversation toward community and the quest for truth and, ultimately, against that narrow perspective which curtails conversation and debate.

Roughly 2000 years ago, Quintilian recognized the importance of three disciplines—grammar, or the study of texts; rhetoric, or the production of texts; and logic, or the critical thinking ability to discern and to formulate a rational qualitative or quantitative argument—as he tried to assemble good men to carry on the ideals of Roman culture in his Institutes of Oratory. Today, in colleges and universities, we may return to these ideas and Quintilain’s trivium, even as we acknowledge new literacies brought about by technological advances, new genre studies that prepare young men and women for the public discourses that await them, debates about the environment, stem-cell research, human reproductive health and so forth.

General education and core curricula, at colleges and universities address the“greater expectations” advanced by the Association of American Colleges and Universities by preparing students for living in and contributing to a world in which individuality—human dignity, individual rights, personal choice—is more and more interconnected with global systems of commerce and telecommunications.

At colleges and universities, the curriculum can initiate this process by using reading, oral and written communication, critical and analytical reasoning, and reflection to explore the interaction among individuals and the various communities within which personal identity is cultivated. And they might advance these skills in multicontextual teaching and learning communities, both inside and outside the classroom. Educators have always accepted a responsibility to manifest hope and love in their teaching. These virtues, embodied by the professor and passed on to be embraced by the student, will help to heal our broken world.

Can education create from the outset conditions for students and faculty to engage in mature conversations about values and beliefs, maturity and self-understanding? Can it lend itself to being collaborative, multicontextual and transformative?

The engaged classroom within the “rooted” campus

National Urban Alliance President Eric Cooper points out that America practices a pedagogy of despair, particularly for persons of color and for lots of others too. Scholar Lisa Delpit writes, “When one ‘we’ gets to determine standards of learning for all ‘wes,’ then some ‘wes’ are in trouble!” Such a debilitating stance is very much like the oppressive banking approach to education that Brazilian educator Paolo Freire described and denounced almost 40 years ago: Its process involves “P”rofessors, with a capital P, depositing information into “s”tudents, with a lower case s, and withdrawing from the students the dividends of their deposits in exams and papers.

Fortunately, Cooper also advocates a pedagogy of hope, a problem-posing pedagogy in which learners become teachers and teachers become learners—face to face and virtually in educative communities of which the classroom is but one to which everyone contributes and in which everyone participates. By practicing such a pedagogy, argues Freire, people “develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.” Surely, it will take transformative thinking to show us all how to use our abundant talents to confront the racial, social, political, ideological and cognitive challenges of our post-9/11 world.

It should now seem abundantly apparent that a college rooted in mature conversations is a community in which those in it see how much everyone has to offer to it. In such a rooted environment, educators will neither be isolated nor sullen nor downtrodden, seeking sustenance elsewhere—at professional meetings, away from their campuses, away from the persons they should be bringing inside their disciplinary circles and teaching their particular habits of mind. The current practice for encouraging faculty to revitalize themselves is to send them away to professional meetings or to provide them sabbatical leaves of absence. And these are fine and necessary benefits to provide the faculty. But a complementary course of action might be to offer faculty strategies to fashion a sustaining community through transdisciplinary programming that aims at extending to all the academy’s constituencies an opportunity to be contemplative and then to take action that will effect positive societal change.

Parker Palmer, founder of the Center for Courage & Renewal, in Seattle, has noted that when we allow ourselves to be brought down by a perceived scarcity of resources, the end result will be isolation. As Palmer asserts, if we can be buoyed by the abundance that results from the sharing of resources, then the happier result is hope. The rooted academy is that place where people share—through dialogue, conversation and engagement—what gifts they have and are willing to receive these gifts, adding to what they already possess cognitively and socially, constructing a hopeful future.

Al DeCiccio is vice president for academic affairs at Labouré College, in Boston. This piece is based on a talk he prepared for the opening of the 2015-2016 academic year and was first published  on the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

Those deans of women

Deans of Women and the Feminist Movement, by Kelly C. Sartorius, Palgrave MacMillan Press (Historical Studies in Education) St. Martin’s Press, 2014. Remember when every coeducational college or university had a “Dean of Women”? It was a powerful and influential position, at least for the “coeds” under her charge (and it was always “her”). The dean of women was expected to provide guidance, protection and support for “coeds,” when women were a minority among undergraduates. How things have changed.

The position no longer really exists and perhaps with reason. Now that the majority of undergraduate students are women, unplanned pregnancy no longer is as big an impediment for women to completing college, marriage is less an expectation, and women have many more educational and professional opportunities than previously, one might consider the position of “Dean of Women” an anachronism, an historical artifact no longer needed.

Indeed, women are now university presidents, academic deans and widely integrated into post-secondary education at all levels. But not so long ago, that was far from the case.

Until the 1970s, a dean of women was one of the very few professional roles for women in administration in post-secondary education, indeed in nearly all aspects of higher education. To get there and make any sort of difference in the lives of her charges, she had to be fierce. And foresighted.

As Kelly C. Sartorius writes in Deans of Women and the Feminist Movement, this (woman’s) position sometimes challenged itself and its charges. Until the feminist movement began on coeducational college campuses in the 1970s, female college students had, in many respects, only deans of women to shelter and protect them, to act in loco parentis, and if they were lucky, help them become strong individuals.

While some of these deans provided career counseling aimed at making their charges able to support themselves financially, should the often-anticipated “Mrs.” degree not materialize, much of their work was directed at caretaking and maintenance of female college students. But there were deans of women who looked out rather than in, and this is where Sartorius focuses her book.

By taking a close look at the life and career of a very activist dean of women at Kansas State University, Emily Taylor, the author presents the case that this “women’s profession” foreshadowed, indeed shaped, contemporary circumstances in higher education for women. It’s an interesting perspective. Could a dean of women who was something of an early if unspoken feminist—along with her dean colleagues at other colleges and universities—prepare, even shape themselves, their institutions and their students for the enormous social and political changes, feminism and changing expectations of and for women in particular, that many now take for granted?

Kelly Sartorius is herself a good example of the influence of those activist deans of women such as Emily Taylor—women who worked within the establishment toward and with the deep and broad social changes that started only four decades ago. While working as a university administrator (in development), Sartorius earned a doctorate in history; this book is based on her dissertation.

The book itself is a nice combination of well-researched, thoughtful historical perspective, and interesting reading. (For example, how did public universities and their female students shape antiwar activism, racial issues and radical feminism?) More importantly, it is documentation of how the then-few professional women in higher education accommodated or, as Sartorius argues, enabled changes in higher education that expanded the personal, social and professional development of young women in college.

Times have changed. It remains important to be aware of how much that is the case and how it happened. This book is a good reminder.

Reviewed by Jane Sjogren O’Neil, an educator, economist and consultant. This piece originated on the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

Dennis Berkey/Jay Halfond: Cheating in online courses

BOSTON

“Without having to miss out on fun, just outsource your test to us, an expert will take it and you will get the awesome grade that you deserve. All at prices you will not believe. How does that sound?”

—Excerpt from one of many results of googling “take my test”

This pitch is more than incredibly crass. It is really just outright pimping of hired poseurs to online students willing to “pay for performance.” With the massive growth of online education, such parasitic companies have sprung up like weeds, presenting a serious threat to program integrity.

In a famous 1993 New Yorker cartoon, a dog at a computer quipped, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” We are still haunted by concerns about whether remote learning can ever be conducted fairly. Of course, the Internet didn’t invent dishonesty. For years, students have been reporting anonymously having cheated and plagiarized – more than 70 percent in most studies. The public believes, along with many faculty, that cheating is easier to do, and likely even more common, in online courses than on campus. While many online leaders agree, they do not see cheating as a major challenge or barrier to program success.

What’s harder – and even more important – than deterring and detecting cheating in online education? Certainly designing interesting course formats that catch and hold the attention of students halfway around the world through all hours of day and night. Distractions abound, and the convenience of asynchronous learning makes it all the more tempting to put off work until the last minute (thus making the siren’s call from cheating companies doubly tempting). Distance creates the illusion of anonymity. Behavioral ethicists have long noted that context matters: In situations where dishonesty is easy to conduct and rationalize, we are far more prone to caving in to temptation.

Thus, designing effective assessments is a critical part of the task of creating distance-learning programs of high integrity. An online program cannot claim to be truly worthy of academic recognition without strong assurance that students are being fairly and effectively assessed in their learning.

Student honesty is a prerequisite for the credibility of online programs. That made it worthwhile for us to better understand its nature. To that end, we designed a survey to learn more about what was being done about cheating in online programs, and how technology itself is being used in solutions. The results were interesting, even somewhat surprising.

Who is actually participating in my course?

From both the survey results and our direct conversations with online program leaders, a frequently stated concern is the lack of face-to-face contact with students. Aside from the concern about cheating, faculty and students miss the experience of direct involvement with one another. One instructor commented, “We feel a professional obligation to know who our students are, and the degree to which they are engaged in our courses, whether or not there is cause for concern about cheating.”

Academic sentimentality aside, what about ringers—can we be certain that the student doing the work is actually the one registered in the course? The federal government weighed in on this, requiring in the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 that online programs must have stronger procedures to ensure this than just the use of usernames and passwords, which can be too easily shared.

This is where a legitimate industry has emerged: commercial “test proctoring.” For many years, there have been commercial bricks-and-mortar “testing centers” (Pearson and Prometric centers being the most prevalent) where individuals needing professional certification complete exams under the scrutiny of professional proctors. Customers verify their identities using government photo IDs, drivers’ licenses, passports, etc., before sitting for proctored tests. Online programs began using these centers or otherwise requiring online students to come onto campus to take exams. While commercial testing centers can be expensive, the real cost was in student travel time and inconvenience.

The changing landscape

In the rise of online education with its flexible features (learning anytime, anywhere), entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to provide less expensive, more convenient means of student authentication and test proctoring. An early and still-dominant approach is to use a computer’s webcam and the Internet to enable trained human proctors either to monitor students’ test-taking in real time or to review video recordings of the test session after the fact. In either case, the proctors look for evidence of cheating as well as authenticating the test-taker (typically by comparing the image of the test-taker seen by the webcam with a previously recorded image from the student’s photo ID). Major vendors include ProctorU, Examity and Software Secure.

More recently, a new generation of vendors has introduced fully automated systems making use of “recognition” technologies (facial, voice, fingerprint biometrics, even typing styles) to achieve the same results at considerably lower cost, due primarily to the absence of the human factor. These fully automated solutions are generally more convenient, as there is no need to schedule a proctor, and more scalable as human labor is replaced by algorithms. They typically establish a biometric profile when the student initially enrolls, and then use the computer’s webcam, microphone or keyboard to authenticate (via biometric comparison) the student at later times.

These technologies are also capable of identifying behaviors suggestive of cheating, typically reporting these to course instructors on convenient dashboards, along with the relevant evidence from video recording or screen captures made during the test. Current such vendors include Verificient (ProctorTrack), ProctorFree, Proctorio and BIOMIDS.

Where it all stands now: the survey

In order to reach a broad audience of online leaders, this survey was executed in different ways, through emails and blog links, during its fielding period from January 2015 to May 2015. Participants fromUPCEA and WCET member institutions were asked to give indications, ranging from strong disagreement to strong agreement with statements in six general areas of online education. From the strong participation, including thoughtful responses to open-ended questions, it was clear that the online programs in these membership organizations are under strong, engaged leadership with high ambitions for growth in size and quality. The matters of integrity, cost and convenience to students are of great interest and concern, and programs leaders are open and committed to emerging solutions.

We saw strong appreciation for the challenges of student dishonesty and program integrity, with clear confidence that the problems are manageable. Eight-four percent of the 141 respondents concurred that student dishonesty is a significant issue. Half of all who responded believed that the public thinks dishonesty is more likely to occur in distance learning. But 79 percent did not see this as a difficult barrier, as effective solutions are available.

By far the most frequently cited means of ensuring program integrity, specifically the deterrence of cheating, was reliance on honor codes or clearly articulated institutional policies. Three-quarters of these online leaders felt that establishing, articulating and enforcing such policies provided the essential foundation for online integrity, if not fully satisfactory solutions.

Slightly less than half of the 141 respondents currently use test proctoring, and an additional quarter are considering it. Our impression is, however, that even among users, actual use is erratic and infrequent (such as only for final examinations or other high-stakes assessments). In its formats, the field itself seems not yet to have progressed much beyond the video stage, either as real-time monitoring via webcam or by record and review. We noted that over two-thirds of the respondents indicated being open to considering the newer fully automated solutions for student authentication and test proctoring.

Almost half of those surveyed thought that the major concerns about cheating involved browsing or otherwise using unauthorized notes or other sources during tests. 38 percent thought having another person pose as the student during a test was problematic, and 42 percent were concerned about those who consult others for help during an examination.

When asked to name the most desirable features in a remote proctoring system, a large majority–not surprisingly–cited simplicity and ease of use, a high degree of integrity and reliability and low cost. Cost is a particularly vexing problem, as the addition of an authentication or proctoring system represents an added expense, either to the institution or individually to students. News media  recently reported strong objections from students surprised by new requirements to pay outside vendors to proctor their tests.

Our impression is that low cost, automated solutions funded by institutions are far preferable to having students pay separate test-proctoring fees.

The most interesting results speak to the distinction between video-monitoring and newer fully automated solutions. More than half of the respondents rated as “very desirable” or “desirable” the features of freedom from having to schedule live proctors, student authentication via intelligent software that persists throughout the session and fully automated proctoring with results summarized for the instructor immediately following the test.

Relatively less desirable features included remote monitoring by live proctors who could intervene during a test, automation running locally on the student’s computer, and video-recording for post-test review by live proctors. Anecdotal information gained from direct conversations with online students shows a much greater comfort level with automated (i.e., biometric, AI) proctoring than with having another live person monitoring their test-taking remotely.

In short, instructors, students, and administrators want solutions that are neither distractions nor intrusions–that simply address the concerns effectively, at low cost and without compromising the focus on teaching, learning and assessment.

The future

The roles and nature of online authentication and proctoring continue to evolve. Leaders in online education appreciate the very real concerns about student honesty and want to provide effective, affordable solutions that are respectful of all concerns. The costs are not only financial, but also matters of time, convenience, integrity and preservation of educational priorities. We see an increasing demand by accreditors and public officials for greater accountability for ensuring the identity, active participation and demonstrated achievement by students in online programs. There is also important concern about fraud in programs whose students are eligible for federal financial aid. Recent auditshave revealed huge amounts of federal financial aid awarded to students registered for online courses in which they never actually participated.

Fortunately, there is growing awareness of the tools available for addressing these issues—especially as we evolve from human to automated authentication and proctoring. Greater use of these tools, however, will require the attributes of lower cost, ease of use and demonstrated integrity of the proposed solutions. We see the further development of fully automated systems as a powerful next-generation response, becoming a ubiquitous, nearly transparent part of remote authentication and proctoring.

To achieve this, we will need to help students–even more in online courses than on-campus–to understand that the integrity of their academic credits, certificates and degrees might very well depend on automated measures to confirm their participation and ensure the validity of their assessment. We are not so much replacing Mr. Chips’ personal touch with Big Brother’s remote scrutiny—as ensuring a level playing field for all students, and demonstrating our respect and responsibility for their certified achievements.

Dennis Berkey is the former president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and former provost of Boston University and is currently the president of BIOMIDS Inc. Jay Halfond is a former dean and currently a professor of the practice at Boston University. The authors thank UPCEA’s Center for Research and Marketing Strategy and WCET for invaluable help in conducting this research. For further information on this study, contact Mr. Berkey at dennis.berkey@biomids.com.

This piece originated on the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

John O. Harney: Powering a slow recovery

The economic recovery  from the Great Recession is not jobless as economists once warned, but it is slow and uneven. Every month, the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution reports on the number of jobs the U.S. economy will have to create to return employment levels to where they were when the Great Recession began in December 2007, while absorbing people who enter the potential labor force. At the end of May, this jobs gap was 3.6 million. If the economy adds about 191,000 jobs a month—the average monthly growth rates since the jobs recovery began in March 2010 — the gap will not close until August 2017.

Meanwhile, in a recent study by the Federal Reserve, nearly half of Americans say they either could not cover an emergency expense costing $400, or would cover it by selling something or borrowing money.

The jobs recovery has been one of the measures that has preoccupied the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) in recent years.

NEEP is a member-supported nonprofit that provides economic analyses and forecasts. Historically, NEEP published macroeconomic forecasts of the New England region and its six individual states and held semi-annual “Outlook” meetings packed with colorful content about the economy in our backyard: which industries and occupations are expanding, which are shrinking and so forth.

The meetings used to begin with a national context set by big economists such as Moody’s. This was typically followed by state-specific forecasts from New England academic and corporate economists who volunteer to offer a report focused on each state’s economy, but tied to the particular conference theme: in the case of spring 2015, energy. The forecasts always rated a short report in the big daily New England newspapers and AM radio news—mainstays of taking the region’s economic pulse.

But these are somewhat leaner times for the economists' organization that always was a bit unsung. Last year, NEEP decided to do only one forecast per year, though forecast managers offered to do their own updates for this special conference focused on "Building the Backbone of Energy Efficiency" and held in June at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The spring 2015 conference was co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Business Roundtable and Brandeis International Business School, the latter of which has become something like NEEP’s guardian since the New England Council (NEC) ended a short-lived sponsorship in 2013, and Brandeis Prof.  John Ballantine became NEEP president. (The NEC, meanwhile, in partnership with Deloitte Consulting LLP, published a study on the promise of New England’s advanced manufacturing sector to provide jobs to middle-class workers.)

This year, NEEP broke with tradition, skipping the usual national forecast and going straight to the energy theme and the always-informative state forecasts—but this time without one of the six states: Rhode Island.

The energy discussion featured talk of a perceived abundance of oil and gas, much of it drawn from shale, as well as ambivalence about fracking, interest but underachievement on renewable resources and dreams of more pipelines.

New England’s energy prices have long been among the highest in the U.S. All six states rank in the top 10 nationally in terms of highest electric rates. Kevin Lindemer, managing director of IHS Global Insight/Cambridge Energy Research Associates, pointed out that despite so much talk about wind and solar, the region is reliant on gas, which we don’t have enough of, and nuclear, which we have a love-hate relationship with. Indeed, Maine and Vermont each closed nuclear power plants in recent years.

The spring 2015 state gigs were done by: Fairfield University  Prof.-Emeritus Edward Deak (Connecticut); Ryan Wallace of the University of Southern Maine (Maine) in place of his colleague Charlie Colgan (the canny Maine economist whose department's dismissal from the struggling university a year ago was an ominous sign of New England economic uncertainty); Northeastern University Prof. Alan Clayton-Matthews (Massachusetts); New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies economist Dennis Delay; and Vermont economist Jeff Carr.

Deak noted that Connecticut has 1.1 percent of the U.S. population, but contributes lower proportions of greenhouse gases. Spurred by fears of climate change, the Connecticut legislature has mandated that 27 percent of the state’s energy be supplied by renewable sources (including solar, wind, hydro, fuel cells and biomass) by 2020. Right now, the renewables portion is less than 5 percent, Deak said.

Deak added that Connecticut’s housing market is still suffering from the distresses of the Great Recession. (Nationally, the Labor Department reported that builders broke ground on new homes in April at a faster rate than at any time since November 2007.)

Wallace reminded the audience that Maine is the nation's oldest state in terms of residents' age and observed that the state is energy-intensive because of its traditional industries of paper (which is in free-fall) and shipbuilding. Fully half of Maine’s electricity comes from renewable sources—hydro, biofuels and wind. The big issue in Maine, Wallace said, is transmission: pipelines and high-voltage power lines to carry energy to and from Maine.

Clayton-Matthews said that while the Massachusetts economy has been outperforming the U.S., youth unemployment is disturbing—nearly 12 percent for people under age 25. And the number of people who want full-time work but have only part-time is more than twice what it was in 2007. Also labor force growth will decline to almost zero by 2018.

Delay reported that the Granite State added jobs, but the problem is job quality: two of three added jobs pay below state average wage. Moreover, Delay pointed out, the Market Basket worker protests of 2014 hit New Hampshire especially hard.

Energy prices in New Hampshire are very volatile, Delay said, noting that what used to be Public Service of New Hampshire is now Eversource. And in an effort to contain energy costs, proposals have surfaced that would pull New Hampshire from the nine-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative designed to reduce carbon emissions.

Carr said that Vermont has very energy-intensive industries form computer chips to famous food businesses including cheese, ice cream, craft beer and coffee. Vermont’s Comprehensive Energy Plan would have 90 percent of the state’s energy use coming from renewables by 2050.

TDI New England wants to build a 1,000-megawatt transmission line to carry electricity generated by Hydro Quebec in Canada to markets in southern New England. The so-called “New England Clean Power Link” would pass under nearly 100 miles of Lake Champlain, and the developer promises to include phosphorus cleanup, habitat restoration and recreational improvements.

“To be competitive in the future, New England must find ways to invest in a flexible grid and a mix of less expensive energy sources—gas, hydro, wind,” said Ballantine. “This requires a coordinated energy policy across the six New England states and investment of billions of dollars to modernize our infrastructure."

Lindemer observed that 60 percent of oil goes into transportation worldwide. Despite all those gas guzzlers you see out there, Lindemar claimed oil and gas are not “exhaustible” like fish and trees, especially with the cost of fracking going down as people learn how to improve the environmentally controversial practice—even pursuing so-called superfracking to crack more and deeper fissures in the earth to release more oil and gas. Talk about cracked.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education (nebhe.org), on whose Web site this piece originated.

Mary-Pat Cormier: Avoiding the perils of off-campus housing

Liability of higher-education institutions (HEIs) for off-campus housing risks is tricky, focusing on the institution’s role in off-campus-housing arrangements.

If an HEI “assumes a duty” to its students who rely on that duty, it must fulfill the duty with due care. This general rule applies to off-campus safety: For example, if the college offered a limited shuttle bus service to or from off-campus events where it was aware of drinking, it can be liable for injuries to its student struck off campus by a car driven by an intoxicated student returning from an off-campus party. By offering the shuttle service, the HEI assumed duties to students for safety while traveling between the campus and the parties.

In the off-campus housing context, the “assumed duty” theory was determinative in a 2006 Delaware Supreme Court case. A student was assaulted by the boyfriend of another student in the parking lot of off-campus housing. The housing was “offered” by the defendant university to the plaintiff who did not get into a residence. The case went forward on negligence and detrimental reliance claims, because the university “assumed” the duty to exercise reasonable care when it undertook to provide off-campus housing.

Likewise, in 2014, a New Jersey case involved a student injured by a broken window in off-campus housing that the defendant college “arranged.” The plaintiff relied on the duty of care owed by the HEI with respect to the off-campus housing it “arranged.” Therefore, it had a duty to warn the student of the defective window in the off-campus housing unit.

Where a court may “extend” a duty

Courts seem willing to “extend” duties to an HEI, related to off-campus housing, even where the institution has not “assumed” a duty.

In Massachusetts, a landlord near Boston College complained of slander and tortious interference by BC arising from alleged statements by BC to students. The court observed BC could have a duty regarding safety to a student living off campus, because it acted like it had a duty: 1) the college had an off-campus housing office (OCHO); 2) it had a Community Assistance Patrol between students and surrounding communities; 3) BC police responded to off-campus housing disturbances involving BC students; 4) the BC student handbook referred to students’ “responsible citizenship ... in local neighborhoods.”

A 2014 New Jersey case involved the liability of a private school for the violation of fire codes in off-campus housing. The school spun-off its dorms into a separate entity that the court concluded was little more than a legal fiction, and it found the school liable for the violations. The court suggested that a school may be responsible for statutory violations in off-campus housing, where there is a “mandate to liberally construe an Act to achieve the goal of fire safety.” A school may be liable for fire code violations off campus: 1) where there is some affiliation or relationship between the landlord and the school and 2) due to the nature of violated laws—i.e. fire/safety violations.

Risk management concerns

These cases demonstrate a continuum or spectrum of liability exposures for off-campus housing (Fig. 1). Risk management strategies for the liability spectrum, include:

• Language where the student waives any legal claims that they may have against the HEI arising out of off-campus housing issues, assumption of risk or limitation of liability to gross negligence in written information provided to students by an OCHO.
• Remove properties on OCHO list after written complaints—with or without investigation of complaints by the OCHO or other office of the HEI to determine whether the complaints are valid;
• Allow students to rate off-campus housing and landlords in OCHO database.
• Where a college is “arranging” or “offering” off-campus housing pursuant to a written agreement with a landlord, include indemnification, limitation of liability to gross negligence language in the contract, and “Additional Insured” status on landlord’s liability policies.
• Educate/empower students on basic landlord-tenant rights and code violations, including fire safety.

Regarding insurance, if a college or university has potential liability for off-campus housing (“assumed duty,” “offered” or “arranged”):

• Liability policies should contemplate losses taking place at those locations.
• Liability policies should respond to negligence claims, subject to exclusions, terms and conditions whereas a breach of contract claim or a claim arising out of fire-code, housing-code, or building-code violation would likely not be covered by a liability insurance policy.
• If a school has reason to know of pre-existing hazardous conditions in off-campus housing, coverage could be barred.
• If the claim is related to a prior claim or act, there may be no coverage at all, depending on whether the insured knew of the prior matter or provided notice to the insurer.

For an HEI that owns or manages off-campus housing, these same concerns apply to liability policies. Plus, those properties are susceptible to “increase in hazard” theories, which could limit property coverage. (Generally, “increase in hazard” means that where there is an increase in hazard to insured property in the knowledge or control of the insured, insurance coverage will be suspended. If a loss occurs while that coverage is suspended, an insurance claim may be denied.

If the hazard is cured, a loss after the reinstatement is covered. An increase in hazard will generally not be found if there has been merely a casual or temporary change in character of the premises.

An insured’s negligence is not an increase in the hazard, unless it results in a change to the property, use, or occupancy.) Where there is an increase in hazard to insured property, which effects the safety of property–like increase in occupancy in the knowledge or control of the insured, coverage will be jeopardized.

Understanding where an HEI falls on the spectrum of liability exposures is essential to a risk-management strategy.

Mary-Pat Cormier is a partner in the Massachusetts law firm Bowditch & Dewey. This piece originated on the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org), on whose editorial board Robert Whitcomb, the overseer of New England Diary, used to sit.

Sophie Lampard Dennis: The college homework challenge

PUTNEY, Vt. "How do we get them to do the homework?''

This is the most common question I hear at conferences. Inevitably, upon the conclusion of my presentation, which focuses on working with college students who may experience barriers to learning—who are “at risk” in some way—somebody raises his or her hand and asks with a sense of frustration, “Yes, but, how do I get them to do the homework?”

It seems that instructors and professors—from community college to the Ivy League—are concerned by the lack of work completion in their courses, and therefore by student level of preparedness for class, or indeed, college.

It is interesting that nobody considers teaching students how to do homework, yet it is universally expected (or hoped?) that all students are adept at these skills and will have become experts by the time they arrive at college. Work completion is typically a very large portion of course expectations—often beginning on day one—and it is generally understood that for every hour of class time a successful student should put in an hour or more of study time. We all assign out-of-class work. In fact, it is a hallmark of the college experience. But what does it mean when students don’t do it? And, importantly, should we have a role in supporting those struggling with work completion?

You will notice that I used the term “skills”—plural—when describing the process of completing a homework assignment. Work completion is not a single skill that all students “get” simply by being in a learning environment and attending class. The simple act of turning in an assignment on-time is the culmination of a series of steps, any of which could be challenging.

As a freshman seminar professor, I introduce this as a topic of conversation early in the term with the question: Why might a student neglect to turn in a homework assignment? We fill the board with explanations, and we run out of space. (Ran out-of-time, didn’t record the assignment properly, forgot, didn’t understand the assignment, wasn’t sure how to begin, wasn’t sure what the teacher wanted, couldn’t find the assignment on the course website, lost the book, didn’t realize when it was due, wasn’t interested in the topic, never learned how to take notes/write a summary/highlight, didn’t save it and lost all the work, finished it but don’t consider it good enough to turn in …)

This list may sound like a litany of excuses, but each actually represents very real and authentic explanations for why a student may be unprepared to turn in the homework. As teachers, we can view this language as excuse language (thereby making it not our problem), or we can choose to see it for what it usually is: a student needing guidance on some element of the process.

As faculty, we need to understand that very rarely does a student neglect to complete an assignment on purpose. They would rather be able to do it. When instructors allow ourselves to contemplate this, only then will we respond with compassion rather than frustration, and get back to what archeologists call “first principles” and teach. Homework completion skills can, and should be, taught explicitly. Consider now the multiple sets of skills a student must have adequate control over to complete an assignment well.

First, the student must have an effective method for recording the assignment; she must also understand it fully and be able to predict how much time it is going to take, and how this fits into the time she needs for her other assignments from other classes. Managing her time effectively will be critical for completing several different types of assignments in the evening. She will need to be able to prioritize assignments depending on how big or important some are as compared to others. She must find relevance in the work in order to consider it interesting enough to engage in. Next, she will need to be able to self-activate in order to begin working, and her focusing skills will then need to kick in in order to sustain momentum. She must also have good enough technology skills for the task, and a working file-management system for keeping organized for all of her classes. The student must understand the systems for electronically locating assignments and submitting work (these vary instructor-to-instructor.)

Other areas that the student must adequately manage for work completion include making sure to eat well for sustained energy, and knowing how and when to take breaks in order to recharge. She will have needed to get enough sleep the night before, and she must understand and have strategies for managing stress. While working, she must not allow herself to become distracted too much by friends or Facebook. Also, she must not have perfectionist tendencies in order to feel that the work is good enough to turn in. It would be helpful if she does not have personal baggage around the subject at hand or it will be emotionally charged and more difficult (math anxiety, for example). If the assignment needs to be turned in as hard-copy, she must be able to organize her time in order to plan to get to the library before class to print.

All this assumes that she actually holds the academic skills required—notetaking, highlighting and finding key words, for example—to do the academic task assigned. And most important of all, she must know when and how to ask for help.

So, how do we get them to do the homework?

It begins with understanding the complexities involved in actually doing the work. We can discuss this with our students to help them realize how multifaceted a process homework completion really is—especially at the first-year level. When students begin to see work completion as a series of steps, the skills for which can be learned and practiced, it will demystify the task, and particularly for those who struggle, this will support fewer feelings of being “lazy” or “stupid’ as they work to address the skills they realize may be holding them back.

Instructors can frontload support by directly supporting students in learning and practicing these important skills, beginning with asking them on day one what their assignment book or planner system is, and subsequently reminding them to use it each time they get an assignment. Ask them to predict how much time the assignment will take as they write it down and consider it, and to think about when they plan to work on it; they can write this information next to the assignment. Help them in the beginning of the term by chunking up the assignments into parts to be completed one step at a time. Additionally, we can help them make, and systematically use, a visual schedule for organizing their work time. Actively setting goals for the week during class—perhaps in their planner or by journaling—can be helpful. Some students may need to re-verbalize the assignment to the instructor before they leave the room, or have a quick back-and-forth about it for full comprehension.

This is a good time to ask students questions about homework timing and priorities; do they, for example, know where the learning center is, whether they have used a class website effectively to locate the assignments, and a reminder about where and when office hours are held.

Instructors can also backload support—when students do not turn in the homework—by asking the right questions to help them hone in on the point in the chain that is weak. Instructors can say: Let’s talk about why the assignment was not completed. They can ask questions such as: Did you write it down and understand it when it was assigned? Did you have a hard time sitting down and starting it? Did you lose focus after a while? Were you lacking the academic skills needed for this assignment? Should you have asked for help? Had you underestimated the amount of time this would take? Were you too tired/too hungry?

A positive response to any of these questions can be followed up with support: suggested strategies, templates that can be used, articles offered (helpful articles on the topics of procrastination, motivation, perfectionism, for example), and in-class activities designed. This form of non-judgmental questioning can help students, and the instructor, pinpoint where the breakdowns may be occurring and very importantly, what the student may actually be doing well. For example, she may be diligently writing the assignment down and starting it, but tending to get stuck in the middle when focus wanes as she gets tired; a suggestion to start her homework earlier in the day may help!

Many students only perceive failure when they do not turn in work, but pointing out what she is doing right in this complex process can be empowering and a catalyst for positive change.

I would suggest reserving some class time early in the term for homework-completion skills practice. Have students in small groups share homework strategies that work for them. Put together and make accessible throughout the term a list of class resources for various kinds of homework help; some tech-savvy students may be willing to be available for help with tech questions, others may be willing to be involved in a study group, for example.

The next time a student says “I didn’t feel like it” or “I didn’t get it” or “it was a stupid assignment,” ask them to talk a bit about why; I have found that this language is always covering a real, teachable issue. “I didn’t get it” often suggests the student would benefit from a comprehension check before leaving the room, and a skills-check during an office-hour appointment. “It was stupid” is usually code for the existence of some level of an emotional component that may be unrecognized, perhaps related to a past school experience with the subject or task. “I didn’t feel like it” implies difficulty in finding relevance in the task; helping the student tap into goals they have for themselves, which the course fits, can begin to solve this issue (perhaps it is a requirement in their major.)

Finally, it is incumbent upon instructors and professors to meet the students wherever they are in the learning process, and with so many of them today struggling with the skills associated with independent out-of-class work, why not view this issue as a teachable moment rather than the elephant in the room that we may not choose to address? Acknowledging the great complexity of the skill-set associated with completing an assignment, giving language to what is working and naming the challenging areas, and then offering methods of support has the power to move students from being stuck to taking action, and will support all students in being more prepared for class. Faculty, too, have the opportunity to step away from feeling frustrated and helpless and into a place of empowerment as they get back to their roots and teach.

Sophie Lampard Dennis is an associate professor in Landmark College's First-Year Studies Department. This piece originated on the online news site of the New England  Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

Maurits van Rooijen: A way out for struggling small colleges

Times are tough for institutions that do not have access to substantial endowment funds or benefit from a top-ranking position. Whether with a rural or metropolitan setting, a large number of colleges are discovering that there is a limit to raising tuition prices. Prospective students no longer automatically queue up. And once the “at risk” notice is up, the perceived deficiency becomes self-fulfilling.

The popular strategy of spending one's way out of a crisis by major investments in the campus or star professors has proven not to be the answer. It looks like the fate of many small colleges is closure, “merger” (meaning effectively being swallowed up by a stronger institution) or even—subject to regulatory complexities—acquisition. And that is not good news for the colleges, their staff, students, alumni, surrounding communities—nor for the higher education sector as a whole.

Small-sized colleges—many enrolling just a few-hundred up to a few-thousand students—really enrich the overall education ecosystem. They offer a perfect option for a certain category of student, have an important social-economic function locally, and mostly represent a high-quality provision with an outstanding student experience and often a valuable focus on personal development to match.

A mere survival of the fittest will result in a seriously impoverished sector. But one does not need to be a defeatist; there is an alternative.

The Pavlovian reaction to external pressures—such as ruthlessly cutting costs, increasing steeply marketing and fundraising budgets and/or bringing in new senior management—is unlikely to resolve the underlying issues.

My alternative option: Create what I call “co-operatives.”

I have argued the case for setting up "systems" of boutique universities, whereby institutions start sharing—and hence substantially reducing—costs for administrative and academic operations, while sharing the bigger investments such as in promotion, international marketing and online delivery. Such cooperatives are not only more cost-effective; they also gain strength by size when it comes to contract negotiations with third parties. Moreover, these consortia can make themselves much more visible in the crowded market, nationally and even internationally.

The idea of various colleges working in a cooperative manner also underpins my own organization Global University Systems, which brings together, at a global level, more than 10 institutions (from vocational colleges to leading business schools), each with a different target group of students or specific portfolio of activities or different physical locations. The group shares marketing, recruitment channels, academic expertise and real estate in major cities globally. This enables us to deliver courses internationally, help our university partners to tap into new markets and meet the demand of students globally via online and on campus courses. This cooperative structure can, in principle, be created anywhere. In fact, institutions united in a co-operative system would in many ways become more cost-effective and hence more attractive to invest in than a lone college struggling to survive.

There is a risk associated with creating co-operatives  that  needs to be carefully mitigated: the issue of organizational complexity. My suggestion is that it would be worth designing a cooperative structure for boutique universities, creating a system that could work for everyone, while explicitly making sure one avoids ineffective decision-making processes. When designing a cooperative, it is essential to create governance and management systems that focus on the need for efficient operations rather than safeguarding vested interests.

Some institutions, whether at governance or managerial level, will have problems understanding the difference between narrow and broad interests, but of course those colleges will not join, nor should they. They will continue their own battle and one can only wish them luck, though I am not necessarily optimistic about their chances. For the interest of the sector as a whole, I hope many institutions will prosper, possibly within the alternative of a co-operative framework.

One way of dealing with the governance and management issue is to create a separate legal entity for defined shared services and operations, possibly together with a third (investment) partner. This will help to keep some of the politics away from the business side of shared activities. But of course with some level of creativity one could develop some further options; I am not pretending this is the only way forward. In any case, as always, one should adjust a basic model to local circumstances.

Maurits van Rooijen is chief academic officer of Global University Systems, CEO and rector of the London School of Business and Finance, and acting rector of Hannover-based GISMA Business School. This originated  on the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education.

Frankfort, Maslin, O’Hara: Altering behaviors to boost student success

nebhe.org

Across the U.S., an estimated 60% of incoming community college students require developmental courses to be ready for college-level work, according to estimates by experts. As these courses act as a gateway to further studies, those who fail are most often lost to higher education: Less than a quarter will earn a degree or certificate within eight years.

Connecticut’s Middlesex Community College, an institution serving approximately 3,000 students at locations in Middletown and Meriden, is using new approaches based on behavioral science to improve retention among all students, with a particular focus on students who have historically struggled to earn a degree. In the following Q&A with the New England Board of Higher Education, Jill Frankfort, co-founder of Boston-based Persistence Plus, talks to Adrienne Maslin, dean of students at Middlesex, and Ross O’Hara, behavioral researcher at Persistence Plus, about issues facing community colleges in retaining underprepared college students and the potential offered by interventions that target psychosocial factors related to student success.

What are the challenges facing Middlesex Community College with regard to students being underprepared for college?

Maslin: Our experiences parallel those at other community colleges across the country. At Middlesex, approximately 55% of new students enroll in developmental education courses each year. Of these students, 60% successfully complete those courses, with about 40% moving on to college-level courses within one semester and about 60% within two. Many students, however, are never able to move into college-level courses, with the exception of those courses that do not require college-level reading, writing or math skills. And those are pretty few in number. Of course, the ways in which students are underprepared vary, particularly when you’re talking about the diverse students at a community college. Although our population of traditional, straight-from-high-school students has grown, we have many students who are older and have been away from the learning environment for quite some time. These students tend to have weak math skills and sometimes weak writing skills as well.

Many state legislatures have passed or are considering bills that reform or eliminate developmental education. How has Middlesex responded to legislation passed in Connecticut in 2012 that sought to streamline developmental education?

Maslin: The main objective of the 2012 legislation is to prevent students from languishing in developmental education with no clear path out, which is consistent with the goals of most community colleges, Middlesex included. The challenge, however, which we have begun to remedy, is that students who place into developmental courses frequently need more time on task to master the concepts of the course. To better help these students at Middlesex, we now offer developmental education in a variety of ways for both English and math. First, students can opt to take introductory courses that have developmental education embedded into them.

These students are expected to put more time into the course, but are also provided with the extra assistance necessary to succeed. This allows students to catch-up on key skills while still engaging in college-level work. Second, students can enter into the “Accelerated Learning Program,” which pairs a developmental education and a college-level course. Students take these classes concurrently and earn credit for both, again allowing students to move seamlessly into college-level work while improving in any areas of concern. Finally, students can still enroll in a more traditional developmental education course, as has been the model in the past.

What has Middlesex done to increase retention, particularly among students who historically have low persistence rates, such as those in developmental education courses?

Maslin: Certainly we’re optimistic that offering students more options for transitioning into college-level courses will boost retention among these students. In addition, we now have a full-time retention specialist who’s available to help students with any issues—academic, financial or personal—that may cause them to withdraw. We’ve also put into place a variety of initiatives to support students through the use of technology. One example is our partnership with Persistence Plus—a service that can help support students who may be unable or initially unwilling to take advantage of student services offered in-person.

What is Persistence Plus and how does it work?

O’Hara: Persistence Plus leverages mobile technology to motivate, engage and support more students to degrees. We provide daily, low-touch interventions, known as nudges, to students via their cell phones. These nudges are based on research that tells us that psychosocial factors often play as large a role, if not larger, than academic and financial difficulties in students’ decisions to withdraw from college.

What kinds of psychosocial factors?

O’Hara: Much of this work centers on normalizing the college experience for new students. When many college students struggle, they often assume that everybody else is doing fine and that they simply don’t have what it takes. This attitude tends to be more pervasive among first-generation students and students from low-income backgrounds who have fewer opportunities to discuss college with their families and mentors. Changing these attitudes, therefore, is often the first step to changing students’ performance. For example, students who believe that they can improve their academic abilities, instead of believing that intelligence is set in stone, tend to work harder when struggling and ultimately perform better in college.

Some nudges, therefore, share stories about other students who struggled at first but then did exceptionally well in college. Other nudges let students know that many people go to their professors or the tutoring center for help and that it’s not only normal, but it’s expected of them. Ultimately, we want students to realize that being confused or getting a bad grade is not a sign that they should quit.

Is Persistence Plus the first intervention to target psychosocial factors among college students—or, more specifically, students in developmental education courses?

O’Hara: Certainly not. Many researchers in psychology and education have demonstrated that psychosocial factors can be successfully changed in college students and doing so can lead to better academic outcomes. With regard to developmental education, one of the most noted applications of this research to date is a program called Pathways—two developmental math courses developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This program, like Persistence Plus, targets psychosocial factors that can lead students to quit when they don’t understand math, such as the belief that one is simply “not a math person.”

The goal of Pathways is for students to develop strategies for persevering in the face of adversity, a concept they call “productive persistence.” Early results from Pathways were very exciting, with completion rates rising from 6% to 51% in the first year. It’s findings like these that have informed the ways in which Persistence Plus aims to support student success.

What have results been like for students using Persistence Plus at Middlesex?

O’Hara: In fall 2013, we had just over 300 Middlesex students using Persistence Plus. After the first semester, we saw a seven-percentage point higher retention rate among students using Persistence Plus versus those in the general population. We’re particularly excited, though, about our results with developmental education students. Of our cohort of 300 students, approximately 30% were enrolled in at least one developmental education course, and 60% of those students returned to Middlesex for fall 2014, a rate six-percentage points higher than the general population. Also exciting, this advantage in retention was consistent for developmental education students enrolled both full-time and part-time.

How have Middlesex students reacted to the service?

Maslin: Students have had many positive reactions to Persistence Plus. One student commented how “it’s like you can’t really fail” because the nudges help motivate you. Students in developmental education, specifically, have mentioned the sense of community that nudges foster. One student said that nudges were a reminder that they were not “the only one having a crisis in the middle of the semester or worrying about finals.” Another student remarked that “knowing what other students had to say in regards to getting help and reaching out to professors made me want to push harder.”

Nudges, therefore, seem to be effective in normalizing the challenges of college for these students. Also, when we asked another Middlesex student what was most helpful about nudges, they replied “The fact that they were right there on my phone!” It appears then that students enjoy the accessibility of having supportive and personalized messages delivered to them on their cell phones.

What’s next for Middlesex in terms of supporting underprepared students?

Maslin: As we adapt to new models of developmental education, making sure that the students who struggle most are given a chance at success is critical to our mission. With President Obama’s proposal to fund two years of community college, the potential influx of students further underscores the need to find innovative ways to support students with a range of academic and personal backgrounds. Our work with Persistence Plus adds to burgeoning evidence that psychosocial factors play a key role in student success, especially among those underprepared for college and most in need of additional academic support.

We’ve been excited to see that low-touch mobile support is welcomed by students and seems effective at moving the needle on persistence, and we look forward to continuing to support our students to degree achievement in-person, on their phones, and by other means that we haven’t thought of yet.

 This comes via our friends at the New England Board of Higher Education, where New England Diary's overseer, Robert Whitcomb, used to be on the editorial advisory board.

Nicholas Corvino: Push innovation in psychologists' training

NEWTON, Mass.

We’ve heard the term “innovation” a lot lately. Boston’s Innovation District is booming. Life sciences and biotechnology companies throughout New England are creating innovative approaches to solve some of medicine’s most challenging problems. Companies across New England have “Chief Innovation Officers.”

The universities and colleges around New England are innovating daily. The tools, technology and research developed by these institutions will impact the world for generations to come. At the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology (which is changing its name to William James College in May 2015) our faculty and staff also know of the importance of innovation. We practice a craft with more than 125 years of success, but our future will be bleak if we do not constantly think of new ways to prevent and treat mental illness.

Mental illness is a problem  that many people don’t want to discuss, yet it affects all of us. Today, one in four adults and one in five children have a diagnosable mental illness, and one of two Americans will suffer from mental illness at some point in their lives. Suicide will claim one American every 13 minutes, and 12 times that number will make an attempt each day. When this problem strikes your family, and it is highly likely to, you might be among the 70% of parents in this country who cannot obtain care for your child.

These statistics are shocking, yet mental illness is a subject we talk about only after a terrible tragedy, or an act of violence. This should not be the case, as talking about and treating mental illness leads to tangible results. A good deal of research supports the efficacy of #psychotherapy. Up to 80 percent of the time, people who avail themselves of treatment will improve. That’s why our students spend about half of their time at William James College working in the field, learning their discipline from experienced professionals and encouraging people to open up about something that society has subtly suggested they should not talk about. However, with 50 percent of Americans likely to develop a mental illness in their lifetimes, we need to do more to start this conversation.

Mental-health professionals need to deliver information and care through electronic means. This involves embracing the latest tools and technologies available to them, and supplementing these technologies with the development of meaningful relationships with each patient. Technology alone cannot end the stigma associated with mental illness, but it can help to abate it.

At the same time, psychologists cannot be the only ones addressing mental illness. They are part of a multifaceted system. Teachers, medical practitioners and attorneys whose work touches the psychosocial lives of their students, patients and clients need to be educated to both attend to and intervene properly around emotional and behavioral issues that they see.

The future of mental-health care is not just in educating mental-health practitioners, but allied professionals to improve the quality of life of those affected by mental illness. These professionals are often the “first-responders” in a mental-health emergency. If they spot signs of mental illness early on, they can help the person suffering from mental illness to address the problems they face before they get out of control.

Conversations about mental illness should also be sensitive to our increasingly multicultural world. Students must be culturally informed and sensitive. Our role as innovators involves thinking about ways to meet the prevention and treatment needs of diverse populations. At William James College, faculty lead immersion trips to Haiti, Costa Rica and Ecuador each year to help students understand the mores, culture and health care system of diverse people. To talk about mental illness effectively, it is imperative to keep the diversity of the target audience in mind at all times.

Embracing experiential learning, having constant conversations about mental illness, educating colleagues in other professions, engaging technology, and encouraging a diverse approach to psychology education are concepts that our field has been slow to embrace. As innovators, we must champion these ideas, while also activating them.

I hope we can embrace the spirit of innovation and practical psychology that William James championed. William James was the founder of American psychology. He was an educator's educator, one of the century's greatest philosophers whose prolific writings and prodigious mentorship profoundly influenced the practice of applied psychology, experiential education, sociology and race relations in this country.

I think James would agree that psychology is about analyzing the past in order to look forward to a brighter future. If we all focus on innovating our field, our future conversations will revolve less around problems, and more on solutions.

Nicholas Covino is president of the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology,  in Newton, Mass., which will be renamed William James College in May 2015. This piece originated on the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (#nebhe.org).

Sarah Savage/Erin M. Graves: 'Financial capabilities' for college

BOSTON

Community colleges have traditionally responded to the financial needs of their students by removing or minimizing financial barriers to attending. Efforts to make community college tuition free fit with this philosophy. But where efforts to minimize or remove financial barriers to attending community college fall short is in empowering students to navigate the next financial crossroads they encounter, to make well-informed financial decisions that will decrease their vulnerability as students and to position them with the tools for achieving financial wellness as they progress through life.

Empowerment work that helps students manage their financial lives can be described as building their "financial capabilities." The intention of this work is to teach students effective money management, savings and planning techniques but also to provide opportunities to apply what students learn, which is critical to developing positive financial habits. More commonly referenced "financial literacy" remains relevant but is more often associated with knowledge transfer and skill development than application and behavior change. Empowerment work is intended to build students’ capacity.

While engaging with students in this way is new territory for most community colleges, it is an emerging area in which some institutions have already developed expertise and observed significant benefits. To illustrate, the Boston Fed’s Financial Capabilities Group describes the experiences and insights of eight community colleges from around the country in its new Community College Handbook, released as part of the group’s Community College Initiative.

The need to help students develop skills and confidence to manage their financial lives effectively, to provide real ways of doing this and to deliver services when students are most likely to have opportunities to put what they learn into practice is evident from the institutions’ experiences.

In one example, a financial aid staff member at a community college in Florida helped pilot a peer-to-peer effort over concern that while financial aid was relatively easy to come by, students lacked clear guidance on how the aid could best be utilized. The pilot began on a small scale, with three work-study students approaching peers leaving the financial aid office with their refunds, engaging them in discussions about plans for their refunds, and encouraging them to divide purchase decisions into “needs” versus “wants.”

This pilot grew to include a multicampus, well-funded Financial Learning Ambassador Program that delivered timely and tailored guidance on money management techniques through a peer-to-peer model. By identifying times when students are most likely to make financial decisions, staff and students implementing the program could ensure the relevancy and timeliness of content (e.g., demonstrating “shopping on a budget” and setting up resource tables around the time when financial aid refunds are dispersed).

Motivated by similar concerns for financial well-being, community colleges based in New Mexico and Baltimore County sought to address students’ financial needs beyond educational costs and identified comprehensive financial coaching as part of the solution. Staff at one institution observed that in addition to academic challenges, students were already struggling with day-to-day financial needs and therefore less able to plan for the future.

Likewise, many students attending community college in Baltimore County not only live below the poverty level but also lack tools to manage their finances. While one institution offers financial coaching as part of a comprehensive financial stability center model that bundles education and employment services, work and income supports, and financial and asset-building services, the other offers coaching only. The Handbook’s case studies go into depth on how the respective institutions decided which services to offer.

Two community colleges in Oregon and Arizona took a different approach. In an effort to address their students’ unmet financial needs and to help them develop positive financial habits, these institutions offer educational matched savings programs that match student savings at an established rate (e.g., 1 to 1 or greater). After meeting program milestones such as making a specified number of consecutive savings deposits and completing a certain number of hours of financial education classes or workshops, students can use their savings and matching funds to cover approved educational expenses such as tuition, fees, books, and supplies.

These programs have required concerted efforts by external partners, funders and institutional staff. In these cases, administrators and staff members committed to this level of collaboration because they saw the value in not only helping students pay for educational expenses but also to complete the program with much higher quality financial decision-making abilities than when they started.

These case studies along with others featured in the Boston Fed’s Handbook provide examples of new ways of responding to the financial challenges community college students face. The studies demonstrate how previous approaches to minimizing challenges—while well-intended—have not historically enhanced a student’s ability to independently overcome the next challenge they are likely to face.

The case studies describe just a handful of models for building students’ capacity for managing their financial lives. While we hope this might generate discussion and ideas among institutional personnel and potential partners, we also want to emphasize the need for more research to determine additional best practices. This is why the Boston Fed is evaluating a two-year multi-institutional pilot that combines educational matched savings programming, financial coaching and support systems to help students navigate the financial aid process.

We want to know if students who receive services demonstrate stronger educational outcomes, such as higher rates of persistence; and financial outcomes, such as improved decision-making surrounding paying for school and managing their financial lives, versus those who do not receive any services at all. We also want to understand the interplay of these outcomes and the extent to which a model of this kind could be scaled up.

In the meantime, we continue to advocate that community colleges commit to helping their students to manage their financial lives effectively. We have hosted a series of events that brought together expertsin-person and online, and we will be actively engaging community colleges in discussions tailored to their unique institutional contexts and student needs through on-site visits. One of our recent visits to an institution in Massachusetts, for instance, included a broad cross-section of institutional staff, faculty and students, and resulted in a rich discussion of possibilities for applying what we have learned to this institution’s unique context.

Institutions and the students they serve will be better positioned when students are knowledgeable, well-informed stewards of their financial lives and able to navigate financial systems as students, workforce participants, and members of society. The Resource Handbook is intended to make this case, demonstrate actual examples and observed benefits, provide insights into how to achieve effective delivery, and ultimately, to foster a shared belief of how working with students in this way is integral to their educational progress and future financial wellness.

Sarah Savage is community-affairs manager and Erin M. Graves is senior policy analyst in the Financial Capabilities Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. This piece originated on the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

Karen Gross: Truth, transparency, trust and the nearby gorilla

 

In the space of a few weeks in February, we lost the well-regarded journalists Bob Simon, David Carr and Ned Colt, while NBC’s Brian Williams was dethroned amid scandal. In all these cases, the words “truth” and “trust” and less commonly “transparency” have taken center stage. Quality media professionals succeed because they are truthful, and there is transparency in verifying that truth; together, this breeds trust. Trust is the one value central to anyone involved with reporting news.

The words “truth,” “transparency” and “trust” recently have taken on renewed importance in higher education. The reporting and handling of sexual assaults, athletic cheating scandals, Muslim student deaths, the intrusion into the admissions process by college/university presidents forcing acceptance of new students who are politically connected, and fraternity hazing among other inappropriate activities have run headlong into efforts to determine the truth, demonstrate institutional transparency and establish and maintain trust among the wide range of stakeholders.

One example: The “facts” that appeared in a Rolling Stone article related to an alleged rape at a fraternity at the University of Virginia were later retracted. Before this occurred, actions were taken by the university against that fraternity. When the implicated fraternity challenged the factual assertions, a different version of the “facts” emerged, then challenged by the rape victim and some of her friends. The university changed its stand. Then and not without controversy, sorority women on the UVA campus were directed by their national organization not go to frat parties because of safety risks.

The problem with the three “t” words is their complexity—within and outside higher education. Determining “truth” is not easy. Consider the Rashomon effect; different people witnessing an event perceive and describe that event differently. This may be because of faulty memory or unconscious personal bias or unspoken leanings toward a desired outcome and other reasons. Usually, witnesses do not self-perceive as liars. Evidence of challenges of fact-finding abounds in the handling of disciplinary matters on campuses across the nation, raising the need for independent investigators in Title IX cases.

Another distortion of truth can come from “not seeing” all that is there. In the oft-seen film clip showing the students throwing a basketball to each other, a gorilla crosses the room. Because the viewers have been asked to focus on and count the number of throws, many never see the gorilla in the room. Really.

Our capacity to “see” and “share” the truth also depends on what “truth” we are addressing. The truth of some facts—like the world is round—are easy to establish. Other perceived facts like “there is a God” are surely debatable. In classrooms early on, students often seek to identify “the” answer only to learn there is no answer, a frustrating reality for many students.

Transparency, a term that is oft used to refer to the need for government openness, is equally complex. When information reflects badly on a college or university, there is often an effort to bury that truth, lest parents or new students learn of it. But with the Internet, failure to disclose is fraught with risk, as the negative information will be found, worsening the absence of transparency. It is vastly better that institutions, rather than outsiders, control their own bad news.

There are times when telling the truth will produce serious adverse consequences. In the movie The Imitation Game, even with its adaptations of history, there is proof positive of the devastating consequences of “truths” contained in the decoded messages, knowledge that forced individuals to make choices to protect the larger good. On a campus, too, disclosing information like the identity of a victim of rape can have serious consequences, particularly if the rapist is a popular figure on campus.

Establishing trust, animated by both truth and transparency, is hard. It takes time and we test its limits. We know a child’s development is impaired if a parent cannot be trusted. But losing trust is easier. One or two false steps can erode trust, and rebuilding it is not always possible—despite a myriad of past positive decisions. In a relationship, for example, trust undermined by infidelity can sometimes be overcome depending on the individuals, the circumstances and the gravity of the offenses.

Education leaders and campuses must build trust. College presidents know that if they lose the trust of their boards, their faculty, government officials and sometimes their students, their jobs are at risk. Of late, too many presidents have lost their positions because the trust others held in them was eroded beyond repair. No one is suggesting that university and college presidents be flawless. But, they must ferret out—and often quickly—what is fact and what is fiction. They must spend the time to think through the words they use to describe volatile situations. Above all else, they need to own the truth, whether it is good or bad.

In education circles, we often talk about truth-seeking. The word appears in college insignias. Consider Veritas. We use the phrase: And the truth shall set you free. But, perhaps genuine “trust” (which rests on truth and transparency) better embodies what we need to develop on campuses today. Some students have trusted their sexual partners only to then experience harassment and assault. Students have trusted that they and their colleagues can truly imbibe ad infinitum, only to later realize the deadly impact of alcohol poisoning and drunk driving. We trust that the academic community will protect us from killings and discrimination, a trust that is eroded by events like the shooting of Muslim students.

Judging from current events, trust on our campuses is eroding, including in our leaders and within the student population. Without trust, the connectivity so central to the creation of community and the capacity to learn and take risks diminishes. We need to spend more time rebuilding and valuing trust, not just divining and sharing truth.

Maybe the lessons from the three trustworthy media giants who died contrasted with the Shakespearean fall of now less than trustworthy Brian Williams will help education leaders and their communities refocus on the value of trust in its many dimensions. That, in a world of bad news, would be good.

Karen Gross is former president of Southern Vermont College and former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Department of Education. This originated in the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

Yves Salomon-Fernandez: Obama college plan in Mass.

FRAMINGHAM

President Obama started off the year with a proposal to make a community college education as “universal” as high school by making the associate degree or first two years of a bachelor’s degree tuition-free. The details of how this would be funded are still emerging. Should the proposal successfully move through Congress, Massachusetts, for one, stands to gain much from it. Here’s why:

1. Community colleges prepare students for “middle-skills” jobs. New England’s available pool of middle-skills workers has been historically low and continues to decline, as documented recently by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Coupled with declining high school enrollments and a projected 15 percent reduction in the region’s labor force by 2020 due primarily to retirements, an increase in middle-skills talent would help employers in our knowledge-driven economy fill open positions.

2. Since the Boston Foundation report in 2011 that highlighted the low graduation rate of the state’s community colleges—a report that precipitated the community college reform passed by the Massachusetts legislature that established performance across multiple metrics as funding criteria—there has been little evidence that outcomes of community college students have significantly increased. Nationally, the Gates Foundation, and locally the Boston Fed, have documented the barriers to completion and transfer for community college students. Not surprisingly, they are largely economic with students balancing work and family obligations.

3. The Obama proposal would positively affect the taxpayer base in Massachusetts and elsewhere. Moving the traditional community college students into a higher income level has the potential of increasing the tax base for the state and reducing existing or potential burden on government.

For the president’s proposal to work, there will have to be some accountability and alignment of policies at both the federal and state levels. Accountability should vary by state. Massachusetts is not Tennessee, Utah, California or Florida. There are significant variations among states in how community colleges are funded, how they are structured, how well they are aligned with business and industry, and how well integrated they are within the state’s public higher education system.

For the proposal to work, necessary provisions will have to be made to current welfare policies. Current policies do not always favor students returning to school, especially single mothers. The existing research shows that in households where the mother holds a college degree, children are more likely to attend and succeed in college.

A uniform proposal at the federal level that does not reduce benefits for students receiving public assistance as they increase their income because of their college attendance would also need to be in place to maximize returns on this $60 billion investment over the next decade for current taxpayers who will be footing the bill. Appropriate policies at the state and federal levels that encourage long-term economic independence and reduce the burden on government should accompany the free community college proposal.

On average, the community college population represents a vulnerable segment of students. Thus, their upward movement on the socioeconomic ladder on a large scale will strengthen the country’s overall competitiveness and reduce costs for the public in the long-run. The tuition-free proposal’s success will depend on community colleges being able to improve outcomes for students—meaning completion or transfer into a bachelor’s degree program and job placement.

To maximize outcomes for regional industry under this proposal, local businesses, policymakers and colleges will need to be intentional about working together. Increases in community college graduates may not automatically translate into increases in the available talent pool for local businesses. At the end of last year, a joint study published by Accenture, Burning Glass and Harvard University advocated taking a supply-chain approach to closing the middle-skills gap in Massachusetts.

Its basic premise was that the middle-skills problem needs to be viewed from an economic competitiveness perspective. Among its recommendations was that policymakers and higher-education administrators act as facilitators for greater collaboration between businesses and community colleges. Intentional and effective public-private partnerships can maximize the returns for states should the president’s proposal move forward.

The president’s proposal is not as radical as it may appear to those outside higher education. Subsidizing higher education costs for students is rampant among private colleges and universities under the practice known as “tuition-discounting.” A 2006 study by the College Board found that private colleges and universities included in its sample discounted as much as 33 percent of their tuition to attract students. These took the form of need-based as well as non-need-based aid. While most tuition discounts are used as a means to provide access to students who would otherwise not be able to attend those schools, those students are not the sole recipients. Tuition discounts are also extended to students whose family incomes indicate that they can afford the full price of tuition and fees.

A more recent study by the National Association of College and University Business Officers in 2013 found that 88 percent of freshmen received an institutional grant or discount during the 2012-13 academic year, with the average grant covering over 50 percent of tuition and fees. These discounts come at a financial loss to the institution.

The details of the president’s proposal have yet to emerge, but the concept itself holds much promise for the country. As many have already pointed out, it would not solve the student loan crisis, but it would significantly slow it down and reduce the magnitude of its scale for students who opt to start at a community college and major in the fields targeted by the president’s proposal, since tuition and fees at community colleges tend to be a fraction of most colleges and universities. A community college education presents value for both low-income and middle-income students and families.

In Massachusetts, for example, a student who completes a bachelor’s degree through the community college to a state university or University of Massachusetts pathway can complete a degree for as little as $30,000, compared with the state median of $120,000 for a bachelor’s degree. With community colleges enrolling 36 percent  of the state’s high school graduates and nine out of 10 of those graduates remaining in the state, an investment in community college completion can ensure that local business can fill jobs that do not require an advanced degree and keep those jobs here rather than moving to other states or offshore.

Yves Salomon-Fernandez is vice president for strategic planning at MassBay Community College and campus executive officer for its Framingham location. This originated on the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

Joseph W. Ambash: A stunning opening for union-organizing of private colleges

Editor's Note: New England, with its many private colleges and universities, could be much affected by this case. This came via the New England Journal of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

BOSTON

In a stunning and far-reaching decision, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) opened the door to union organizing among faculty at thousands of private-sector institutions, both secular and religious. The board’s majority decision in Pacific Lutheran University (12/16/14), issued in the face of powerful dissents, will inevitably spark controversy and ongoing litigation both about the legality of NLRB intrusion into the operation of religious institutions and the proper interpretation of the “managerial” status of faculty under the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic Yeshiva University decision.

Pacific Lutheran University case

The question before the NLRB in Pacific Lutheran University was whether a local of the Service Employees International Union could represent a unit of nontenure-eligible contingent faculty members employed by the university in Tacoma, WA. The university argued that, as a church-operated institution, it was exempt from NLRB jurisdiction and that its full-time contingent faculty were managerial employees excluded from representation under the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision in Yeshiva University.

In reviewing the decision of its regional director, the NLRB took the opportunity to solicit amicus briefs about the broad issues of jurisdiction over all religious institutions and the proper analysis of managerial status of all faculty at private higher education institutions. In its decision, the board articulated new, more stringent, standards that will make it difficult for religious institutions to claim exemption from the National Labor Relations Act and for all private institutions to claim that their faculty are exempt from union organizing. It held that the contingent faculty in question were entitled to organize.

Difficult new test

In Yeshiva, the Supreme Court ruled that the faculty of that institution were “managerial employees” excluded from collective bargaining because they “formulate and effectuate management policies by expressing and making operative the decisions of their employer.” Controversy had existed in applying the Yeshiva standards in the 34 years since that case was decided. Reviewing courts and others had criticized the NLRB for creating confusing standards that gave poor guidance to litigants. Despite these concerns, the overwhelming majority of private-sector institutions in the country have relied on the principles of this case to maintain union-free status among their faculty.

In the Pacific Lutheran case, the board stated its new rule as follows:

1. Where a party asserts that university faculty are managerial employees, the board will examine the faculty’s participation in the following areas of decision-making: academic programs, enrollment management, finances, academic policy, and personnel policies and decisions, giving greater weight to the first three areas than the last two areas.

2. The board will then determine, in the context of the university’s decision-making structure and the nature of the faculty’s employment relationship with the university, whether the faculty actually control or make effective recommendations over those areas. If they do, the board will find that they are managerial employees and, therefore, excluded from the act’s protections.

3. The board interpreted the term “effective recommendations” to mean that those recommendations “must almost always be followed by the [college or university’s] administration,” and that they must “routinely become operative without independent review by the administration.”

In his thoughtful dissent, NLRB member Harry I. Johnson III pointed out the virtual impossibility of satisfying this new standard:

… by increasing the burden of proof for what the board considers to be “effective” recommendations, and by failing to consider the actual, diverse processes of university business operations and governance, the board has raised the bar for establishing managerial status of faculty to an unattainable height, one beyond the reach even of Arete̕̕̕.

Johnson pointed out that the new requirement, that to be effective, recommendations “must almost always be followed by the administration,” is an “overly onerous standard,” which will result in fewer board decisions conferring managerial status on faculty.” In addition, Johnson criticized the board majority’s holding that faculty recommendations are not effective if they are subject to independent review. He pointed out that discounting internal review “seems to utterly disregard the realities of decision- and policymaking in complex organizations.”

The dissent’s observations underscore the uphill battle nearly any college or university will have in demonstrating that its faculty are “managerial” and therefore not subject to collective bargaining.

Jurisdiction over religious institutions

The board also ruled that it will exercise jurisdiction over religious institutions–and hence allow faculty organizing—except where:

1. The college or university first demonstrates that it holds itself out as providing a religious educational environment.

2. Once that threshold requirement is met, the college or university must then show that it holds out the faculty members it seeks to organize as performing a religious function. This requires a showing by the college or university that it holds out those faculty as performing a specific role in creating or maintaining the university’s religious educational environment.

As Johnson pointed out in his dissent, the board’s new standard, which requires a religious university to prove that it “holds out” its faculty “as performing a specific role in creating and maintaining” its religious educational environment, necessarily involves the government in the process of evaluating religious beliefs and practices, thereby improperly intruding into the Religious Clauses of the First Amendment. This is particularly true because the majority decision requires a showing that faculty are required to serve a specific “religious function”—something that, of course, can vary widely from religion to religion. In Johnson’s view, if the Pacific Lutheran standard is eventually appealed to the D.C. Court of Appeals, it will be overturned.

Take-away for all private higher ed institutions

The NLRB’s decision—unless and until it is reversed or modified—will force nearly all private-sector institutions to reevaluate their vulnerability to union organizing among their faculty. For institutions that view their faculty as truly “managerial” and not subject to organizing, the decision injects a new era of uncertainty about the fundamental relationship between faculty and administration.

Institutions should audit their administrative structure to determine the extent to which their faculty (whether regular or contingent) make “effective recommendations” which are “almost always” followed by the administration, without review. This standard may be unattainable in the era of modern higher education. Institutions who wish to maintain union-free status among their faculty should also train their administrators how to respond to organizing activities by understanding how union organizing works under the National Labor Relations Act, recognizing organizing activities, and educating faculty to the pro’s and con’s of collective bargaining.

Religious universities likewise should audit their administrative structure to determine whether they “hold out” their faculty as serving specific religious functions.

All institutions should carefully monitor ongoing developments in this critical area.

Joseph W. Ambash is managing partner of the Boston office of Fisher & Phillips LLP, a national labor and employment firm representing management. He has extensive experience representing colleges and universities. He wrote this for the New England Journal of Higher Education, part of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org), on whose advisory board the overseer of New England Diary, Robert Whitcomb, once sat.

John O. Harney/Carolyn Morwick: Taking stock of N.E. mid-terms

  This comes courtesy of our friends at the New England Board of Higher Education.

BOSTON

The recent midterm elections brought New England two new governors. Rhode Island elected its first woman chief exec in Gina Raimondo (D). Massachusetts elected Charlie Baker (R), a former Harvard Pilgrim CEO and official in the Weld and Cellucci administrations. Otherwise, the New England corner offices cautiously welcomed back incumbents: Democrats Dannel Malloy in Connecticut, Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire and Peter Shumlin in Vermont, and Republican Paul LePage in Maine.

In higher education, a national pickup in Republican governorships and legislative chambers “will result in lawmakers placing an enhanced focus on state-provided inputs (funding) and the institutionally generated outcomes of public colleges and universities (degree production, graduation rates, etc.),” according to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). “Fiscally conservative lawmakers will ask what the state is receiving back from its investment in higher education, and how students, graduates and employers are benefitting in the process. Performance-based funding and other metric-driven accountability systems will receive continued attention.”

The national newspaper Education Week offered a poppier rundown of the midterms and education policy, noting for example, that "the teacher unions had a really tough night," and "Arne Duncan and the Obama team at the U.S. Department of Education are in for a rough ride."

Ultimately, New England's winners may envy their vanquished opponents who will be spared the tasks of governing in an age of sneaky budget gaps, job market mismatches, an aging population and growing uncertainty in the region’s once-untouchable industries: the so-called “eds and meds.”

Connecticut. Connecticut voters re-elected Malloy over Republican Tom Foley in a rerun of the 2010 election. Nancy Wyman (D) was re-elected lieutenant governor. Before becoming governor, Malloy was mayor of Stamford for 14 years—the longest serving mayor in the city’s history. Before that, he was assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, New York.

In the Connecticut General Assembly, the House and Senate stayed Democratic, although Republicans picked up 10 seats in the House. Senate President Don Williams retired and joined Connecticut’s largest teachers union. Current Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney is expected to succeed Williams as Senate president. In the House, Speaker Brendan Sharkey was re-elected for another term, For the first time, GOP lawmakers chose a woman to be minority leader with Rep. Themis Klarides replacing former Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, who did not seek re-election.

Following his reelection, Malloy ordered nearly $48 million in emergency budget cuts, including about $7 million to public colleges and universities to help close a projected $100 million deficit.

In his first term as governor, Malloy reorganized the public higher-education system, making massive cuts to the system. He subsequently restored most of the cuts to the system’s state universities and community colleges by funding Transform CSCU for more than $125 million, which was later cut.

Malloy also succeeded in passing additional initiatives in his first term, including "Go Back to Get Ahead,'' a program designed to help students who left college without finishing their degree, to return to the classroom. In an effort to make higher education accessible to all Connecticut residents, the state was among the first to pass a version of the DREAM Act, which provides that undocumented students will have access to an affordable higher education.

Malloy also secured $1.5 billion to expand educational opportunities, research and innovation in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines over the next decade at the University of Connecticut. He received the support of state lawmakers to subsidize a genomic medical research institute on the campus of the UConn’s Health Center. The institute, which recently opened, will be operated by the Bar Harbor, Maine-based Jackson Laboratory to transform medicine by improving healthcare, lowering costs and increasing lifespans. The partnership between Jackson Laboratory and UConn’s Health Center and the research institute is the basis for a statewide plan to build a bioscience industry cluster. Malloy has predicted that the bioscience cluster will create some 4,000 bioscience jobs alone while spinning off 2,000 more jobs in related fields.

Malloy has been a strong supporter of precision manufacturing vocational programs at three community colleges to better equip workers and businesses for success in the manufacturing industry.

To reduce student debt, he has proposed creating a student loan tax credit to allow residents to take up to a $2,500 tax credit on student loan interest, allowing students to refinance student loans at lower rates and increasing the Governor’s Scholarship Program to give high-achieving students additional student aid.

Voters made no changes in Connecticut’s congressional delegation.

Maine. Maine voters reelected LePage to a second term. LePage, the former mayor of Waterville, Maine, and a former member of the Waterville City Council, also worked as general manager of a discount store, Marden’s Surplus and Salvage.

Asked at a debate about deep cuts at the University of Southern Maine, LePage said the University of Maine System “needs to reinvent itself.” He suggested looking at the University of Maine at Fort Kent for its outreach to high-school students as a model. He also said he thinks the state’s community colleges should focus on trades as opposed to liberal arts.

On student debt, LePage has expressed interest in the “Pay it Forward” model which originated in the state of Oregon. However, the plan has never been implemented in Oregon due to a lack of funding. On remedial education, LePage noted that 55 percent of students who enter community colleges need remedial education in math and English. He supports a proficiency-based diploma.

LePage’s midterm challenger, U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud (D), proposed “Maine Made” which would build Maine’s economy partly by making the sophomore year at any school in the University of Maine system tuition-free. It would cost $15 million a year, which Michaud suggested, would help address the college debt issue. He also proposed lowering in-state tuition by 25 percent.

Challenger Eliot Cutler, an Independent candidate for governor, proposed a “Pay it Forward, Pay it Back” plan. Students would attend a public two-year or four-year college tuition-free and pay a small portion of their income for approximately 20 years into a state fund. The state would have to borrow money initially but eventually, the plan would become self-sustaining.

Democrats maintain control of the Maine House of Representatives while Republicans control the Senate. Maine is the only state where the Legislature elects the constitutional officers of attorney general, secretary of state and the treasurer (though a rejected 2013 bill called for the statewide election of the secretary of state and treasurer every two years and the attorney general every four years). Legislators elected former state Rep. Terry Hayes, a Democrat-turned independent, state treasurer. Democrats re-elected Secretary of State Matt Dunlap and Atty. Gen. Janet Mills.

Michaud’s old Maine 2nd district congressional seat will now be held by Bruce Poliquin (R), who defeated New England Board of Higher Education chairwoman, and former state  senator,  Emily Cain (D). Poliquin will serve on the House Financial Services Committee.

Massachusetts. Bay State voters elected Baker (R) to be governor over Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley (D) in the narrowest race for Massachusetts governor in the past half century.

Baker appointed Steven Kadish to be his chief of staff. Kadish was senior vice president and chief operating officer of Northeastern University and executive vice president and chief financial officer at Dartmouth College.

Karyn Polito (R) was elected lieutenant governor and ran Baker’s transition team. Baker also appointed education reformer and charter school advocate Jim Peyser to lead his transition team. Peyser is managing director of New Schools City Funds in Boston and former chair of the state Board of Education. Baker appointed University of Massachusetts Lowell Chancellor Marty Meehan and Phoenix Charter Academy Network founder Beth Anderson to chair the transition committee on schools.

Baker wants to pursue more online learning, three-year degree programs and expanded co-op programs as part of a larger plan to reduce the cost of higher education while increasing access for students. He said he would direct the state Board of Higher Education to establish a competitive grant program for public colleges and high schools to set up or expand co-op programs where students can earn academic credits through courses and work experiences with local employers which he says would produce a cost savings of 25 percent.

Less than a month after the election, The Boston Globe called on Baker to “not only protect the Commonwealth’s competitive advantage in tech, but address regulatory roadblocks and cultural issues that could limit the sector’s future job-creation potential.”

Baker will succeed two-term Gov. Deval Patrick, who did not run, and according to reports in the Globe, is considering an offer to be a scholar at MIT. (The path from New England governors'  offices to academia is well-worn by Michael Dukakis (Mass.), Walter Peterson (N.H.), Bruce Sundlun (R.I.)  and others.)

In another highlight of the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, Evan Falchuk, who ran as the United Independent Party candidate, earned nearly 72,000 votes—more than the 3 percent needed to be recognized as an official party in terms of election and fundraising laws.

In the Massachusetts legislature, Democrats continue to control the House and Senate. Republicans added seven new lawmakers in the House, increasing the number of Republicans to 34. The Massachusetts Senate added two Republicans, increasing their ranks to six. Senators will elect a new chamber president to replace Sen. Therese Murray (D) who did not seek re-election. The favorite is Sen. Stan Rosenberg (D), whose district includes the college-rich Pioneer Valley.

Massachusetts 6th congressional District will now be represented by Seth Moulton (D), replacing fellow Democrat John Tierney who served for 18 years, including a stretch as New England’s only member of the House Education and Workforce Committee.

New Hampshire. Granite State voters re-elected Hassan for a second term. Hassan’s late father, Robert C. Wood, was a president of UMass and U.S. secretary of housing and urban development. Her husband is the principal of Phillips Exeter Academy. She will face the challenge of working with a legislature controlled by Republicans. The House elected Shawn Jasper as speaker. A coalition of Democrats and Republicans came together to reject the choice of the Republican caucus, former speaker Will O’Brien after a series of votes.

When the legislative session gets underway in January, Hassan will face an uphill climb in funding public higher education. Funding for the University System of New Hampshire was cut by 50 percent in fiscal years 2012 and 2013. In September 2014, University System Trustees voted unanimously to submit a funding request to the governor and state legislators that restores state support to 2009 levels. In exchange, the System would freeze tuition for two more years. The system is requesting $100 million in 2016 and $105 million in 2017.

Hassan also restored funding to the New Hampshire Community Colleges, which allowed tuition to be cut by 5 percent. Hassan said the state needs to focus on keeping New Hampshire students in the state in the face of students opting for less expensive higher education options out-of-state.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen defeated challenger Scott Brown, who had earlier beat Coakley to represent Massachusetts in the Senate, but then lost to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D). New Hampshire’s 1st congressional district will be represented by Frank Guinta (R), who defeated incumbent Carol Shea-Porter (D).

Rhode Island. Former State Treasurer Raimondo was elected to be the state’s first woman governor. A Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Raimondo clerked for U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood and served as senior vice president of fund development at Village Ventures before co-founding Point Judith Capita. In 2010, she was elected general treasurer of Rhode Island, where she implemented comprehensive pension reform.

During the campaign, Raimondo proposed:

• Creating a new scholarship fund for any academically qualified student who lacks financial resources and wants to pursue a post-secondary degree at one of Rhode Island’s public colleges. To be eligible, a student must have a grade point average of 3.0 or higher. The scholarship would cover all tuition and fee expenses after all other financial aid is applied. The scholarship fund is based on The Tennessee Promise, which offers “last dollar” scholarships that are intended to bridge the gap after all financial resources are exhausted. The cost is estimated to be between $10 million and $15 million a year. The new funds would come from the Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance Authority’s reserves.
• Creating a loan-forgiveness program for Rhode Island students who have graduated from one of the state’s colleges or universities with student debt and continue to live in the state. Business will have access to a talent pool in exchange for paying off some of the students' debt. The program is based on New Hampshire’s “Stay Work Play” initiative.
• Opening an office at the Community College of Rhode (CCRI) dedicated to bringing businesses to the table to identify the needs of employers and design curricula that reflect those needs, while equipping the college with programs, equipment and facilities needed to put students on a pathway to a job in a high-demand industry.
• Doubling the graduation rate at CCRI by working with administrators, counselors and educators to identify why the school’s graduation rate is so low. A model initiative to accomplish the latter is the Accelerated Study in Associates Programs (ASAP) at the City University of New York (CUNY).

Raimondo has also proposed establishing an innovation institute that would translate ideas from Rhode Island colleges and universities into products manufactured in the state.

Daniel McKee (D) was elected lieutenant governor, succeeding  Elizabeth Roberts (D), who was term-limited. In the Rhode Island General Assembly, Democrats maintain control of the House and Senate. Republicans picked up six seats in the House, while the Senate remained unchanged.

Vermont. While Shumlin won the governor's race over Republican Scott Milne, he did not receive 50 percent of the vote. The Vermont constitution provides that in such instances where no candidate achieves 50 percent the election is decided by the Vermont General Assembly, which is overwhelmingly Democratic. The formal election of governor will be the first order of business as lawmakers begin a new session.

Lawmakers and the governor will have to tackle an unanticipated shortfall of $17 million. This follows a previous shortfall during the past summer of $31 million. State agencies will have to reduce their budgets by an additional $15.5 million. Revenues are off by approximately $12 million, according to Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding, who coincidentally was tapped to become the next chancellor of Vermont State Colleges (VSC).

There is little doubt that Shumlin will have to rework his agenda for the coming year. In higher education, the governor initially proposed a $2.5 million increase in the allocation to the University of Vermont, VSC and the Vermont Student Assistance Corp—a move which would have kept tuition rates at Vermont public institutions frozen for the current academic year and expanded of dual-enrollment and early-college programs. However, in August of this year, the funding increase was eliminated due to a budget shortfall, and appropriations for VSC and UVM will be level-funded.

Plans to address student debt are likely to be put on hold. Previously, Shumlin suggested the possibility of students getting two tuition free years of college. The savings would come from two areas: college dual enrollment and a scholars program that provides for reimbursement of tuition for students going into STEM fields.

Ballot questions. Among New England ballot questions, Massachusetts voters chose not to repeal the casino law. They also approved guaranteed paid sick days for workers, echoing national election trends that saw large Republican wins coupled awkwardly with victories for populist causes such as minimum wage hikes.

Rhode Island voters OK’d bond issues for a new engineering building at URI, while Maine voters OK’d $50 million in state borrowing included in six bond questions—one to build a research facility devoted to research on genetic solutions to cancer and age-related diseases. LePage, however, has delayed release of voter-approved bonds in the past.

In D.C.: Nationally, Republicans won a majority in the U.S. Senate. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a former governor of Tennessee and U.S. secretary of education in the George H. W. Bush administration, is expected to chair the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Rep. John Kline (R-MN) is expected to continue chairing the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. He has proposed reducing the number of questions on the FAFSA to two and prioritizing deregulation of higher education. Republicans are likely to fight the administration’s plans to create a “college ratings system” and use a “gainful employment rule” to target the for-profit sector.

The Education Dive newsletter recently posted a piece on "10 ways a Republican-led Congress could impact higher ed in 2015."

The National Association of State Boards of Education offered a state-by-state analysis of changes in membership of state boards of education, noting, among other things, Connecticut Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor’s August announcement that he wouldn’t seek a second term.

The messaging and spinning is partly done. The fat lady has sung. Now it's time to govern.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education. Carolyn Morwick handles government and community relations at the New England Board of Higher Education and is former director of the Caucus of New England State Legislatures.

Carolyn Morwick: The Mid-Terms in New England

BOSTON

The mid-term elections brought New England two new governors. Rhode Island elected its first woman governor, Democrat Gina Raimondo. Massachusetts elected Republican Charlie Baker, a former Harvard Pilgrim CEO and official in the Weld and Cellucci administrations, including a time as secretary of administration and finance. The other four New England states reelected incumbent governors (though Vermont's race is still unofficial). The rundown:

Connecticut voters re-elected Democratic incumbent Gov. Dannel Malloy and Democratic Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman. Democrats maintained control of the Connecticut General Assembly. Ted Kennedy Jr., a Democrat, was elected to the Connecticut state Senate.

Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage won re-election for a second term. In the Maine Legislature, Democrats lost control of the Senate, but maintained the majority in the House. Republican Bruce Poliquin was elected to represent Maine's 2^nd congressional district, besting former state Sen. Emily Cain, a Democrat and chairwoman of the New England Board of Higher Education.

Massachusetts voters elected Baker and Republican Karyn Polito as lieutenant governor. Democrats maintained control of the House and Senate. In the 6^th Congressional District voters elected Seth Moulton to fill the seat formerly held by another Democrat, John Tierney. Bay Staters also voted against repealing the casino law.

New Hampshire voters re-elected Democrats Gov. Maggie Hassan and U.S. Sen. Jean Shaheen. Republicans took back control of the Legislature with majorities in the House and the Senate. In the 1^stCongressional District, former Congressman Frank Guinta beat Democrat Carol Shea-Porter.

Rhode Island voters elected former Democratic State Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Democrat Daniel McKee as lieutenant governor. In the Rhode Island General Assembly, Democrats kept control of the House and Senate.

Vermont's governor’s race has yet to be decided. Neither Democratic incumbent Gov. Peter Shumlin nor his opponent , Republican Scott Milne, received 50 percent of the vote. Shumlin had 46.3 percent of the vote and Milne had 45.34 percent. Lawmakers will determine the outcome in January. Democrats maintain control of the House and Senate.

Carolyn Morwick handles government and community relations at  the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org) and is former director of the Caucus of New England State Legislatures.

John O. Harney: New England vs. demographics

  BOSTON

“The Great Recession and not-so-great recovery applies to all of us.”

That was University of Southern Maine professor Charlie Colgan’s  remark at at the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) conference Oct. 13 as he noted that Maine was just two-thirds of the way back to pre-recession employment levels.

The  New England forecasts at the Fall Economic Outlook conference were  generally cautiously optimistic, sprinkled with the expressed and implied NEEP mantra: “Having said that, I could be wrong.”

It may be the dismal science, but it’s an experiment you're part of every time you go to work or buy anything.

“What is relatively unique in New England is the region’s demographics—with a rapidly aging population and steep declines in young adult population threatening the region’s workforce skills and education advantage,” said New England Forecast Manager Ross Gittell, chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire.

In Maine, for example, Baby Boomers and their children simply had fewer babies, so all of Maine’s added population in the next 40 years will come from in-migration, but the big sources of that in-migration—Vermont and New Hampshire—are also shrinking, said Colgan. Will productivity increase enough to keep Maine and New England competitive?

Gittell and others joked that given the demography, the region should have focused on under-18 housing instead of over-65 housing.

Colgan noted that ship and boatbuilding have returned to Maine as a major industry (thanks to more destroyers  being built at Bath Iron Works) and natural-resource industries have returned, in a sense, with Lincoln Logs coming back to Maine from China.

Colgan, by the way, is one of the professors let go recently by the University of Southern Maine—part of a higher-education disinvestment story that may say more about the future of the New England economy than any other layoff tracked by NEEP.

He warned that people in Maine see the loss of old-economy jobs such as the impending closure of the Verso paper mill in Bucksport as a tragedy, while they view the laying off of intellectuals at USM, who may be “from away” (though Colgan’s not) as a win for taxpayers.

Among tidbits from the other NEEP forecast managers:

Fairfield University professor emeritus Edward Deak noted that just 60 percent of Connecticut jobs lost during the recession have been regained in the Land of Steady Habits. No one knows whether they are as good as the jobs they’re replacing. What is clear in Connecticut, said Deak, is that “the well-to-do are doing very well.”

Connecticut has the sixth-oldest population in the U.S., though many people over age 65 are leaving the state after retiring. In retail, more purchases are being made via the Internet by working women with young children; fewer at the malls, Deak said, adding that when you look at Connecticut skylines, you don’t see any cranes. It’s all work on old buildings.

Bryant University assistant professor Edinaldo Tebaldi seemed relieved that Rhode Island is no longer first in unemployment; now it’s third. But this “gain” is associated with shrinking of the labor force, and the number of jobs is still below pre-recession levels.

New Hampshire has gone the other direction. Center for Public Policy Studies economist Dennis Delay said New Hampshire had been outperforming New England and U.S. job growth especially in early '80s, but is no longer the superstar. He showed 2012 migrants by higher educational attainments: lots of graduate or professional degrees among the foreign-born, but also many without a high school diploma. Delay noted that New Hampshire ranks high in indicators of home ownership, voter turnout and low welfare costs, but also high in student debt and low in growth of people ages 25-44—so-called wealth-building years.

Vermont economist Jeff Carr noted that about 90 percent of jobs  there lost during the recession had been recovered—second in New England to Massachusetts, which has fully recovered jobs. Vermont is difficult to analyze because the job totals in each sector are small. But that small size adds to anxiety about the loss of a few-hundred highly paid jobs at the closing Vermont Yankee nuke; as well as perpetual concern about IBM because its decisions are made in Armonk, N.Y. Carr also cited the importance of Vermont’s food industry, including craft brewers. (The  same day, the Vermont Foodbank reported that one-quarter of Vermont's citizens don't know where their next meal is coming from.)

Carr joked that he is in favor of financial-services bonuses in New York City and Boston because they boost Vermont's sizable second-home economy.

According to the New England regional forecast, prepared by Gittell, the regional economy will continue to see growth rates below the national average. The NEEP forecast is that total employment growth will average 1.3 percent a  year—and all the New England states are projected to have employment growth below the national average over the forecast period out to 2018.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, opened the conference with a presentation on the U.S. Economic Outlook. In a year or so, growth in gross regional product could go from 3% to 4 percent fueled partly by more housing, including pent-up demand among millennials who have been renting. The economist, and increasingly visible TV pundit, contended that financial aspects of economy are in great shape, especially high-income households. Middle-incomes households are still encumbered by debt, he said, but the high end does most of the spending, “though I’m not arguing economy can flourish without everyone participating,” said Zandi.

Phew. He told of his son majoring in philosophy. (Reminded me of the founder of one of the nation’s leading career-oriented online providers confiding that his child was majoring in sociology on a traditional campus.)

Despite Zandi’s general optimism, the risks include interest rates and a mélange of global issues, Zandi noted, adding that even Ebola could undermine traveling and spending (may not be rational to be so concerned about it, but people are). In response to a question, Zandi said he doesn’t think income and wealth inequality is a big issue in a given year, compared with the lack of labor. No one’s going to be writing a book about income inequality soon, he said. Really?

In his keynote address, former Maine Gov. John E. Baldacci, now at the law firm of Pierce Atwood, cited the importance of energy and exports in the region’s economic future. He hailed natural gas as the foundation fuel, while the region works toward renewables, including solar, tidal and wood.

He tied exports to tourism, noting that the owner of New Balance sneakers was introduced to Maine via ski vacations, where he was treated well, then announced plans to open plants in the state.

In a concluding panel, William Guenther, chair and CEO of Mass Insight, boasted: “Massachusetts has benefited for years from the talent cluster that we have offered business.” He noted, however, that technology-focused jobs are growing in such areas as big data analytics, cybersecurity, and computer sciences, but the state is not producing enough college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) to keep up with demand from business. "Jobs will always come to where the talent is,” said Guenther.

Jobs also go where there’s energy work. The state and Canadian province with the most explosive job sectors are oil- and gas-rich North Dakota and Alberta.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education, the online publication of the New  England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org), where this column originated.