By Barbara Fister. Meredith Farkas wrote a terrific post on her move to a non-tenure-track position and why she thinks tenure for librarians is counterproductive. The stimulating Twitter conversations that followed (some of them Storified by Meredith) made me want to unpack what I think about this issue. Read more...
04 août 2014
Honoree: Illinois Institute of Technology
By Thomas W. Durso. Streamlining the awarding and processing of student loans—Federal Perkins as well as institutional loans—began at the Illinois Institute of Technology with a simple question and a frustrating answer.
“It started because I asked, ‘What is the process?’” recalls Jackie Anderson, associate director of student accounting. “No one really knew.”
So Anderson rolled up her sleeves and dove in. More...
Drexel Business Services OneCenter
By Thomas W. Durso. No one disputes that the management of the seven units housed under the Drexel Business Services (DBS) department worked hard. The units generate $68 million in revenue, $38 million in expenses and $5 million in expense recovery annually for the Philadelphia-based institutions. The units’ respective managers were responsible for their own budgets, purchasing, accounts payable, reconciliation, cash handling, forecasting, HR and quarterly reporting. More...
Driving college loan defaults down
By Kylie Lacey. Outsourcing loan default prevention management to remove institutional burden and improve student services.
The coming change in how student loan default rates are calculated may mean bad news for some colleges and universities. More...
Getting the loan default message across
By Kylie Lacey. Creative ways that default prevention providers connect with borrowers.
“We include in our emails a link to a brief video that explains that we are counselors, not collectors, working on behalf of the college the borrower attended, and that we work with borrowers and their loan servicers to resolve their loan payment issues. The video invites the borrower to call us.” More...
UBTech 2014: Innovation Everywhere
By Melissa Ezarik. Highlights from UB’s higher ed leadership conference.
And based on the feedback from our 1,273 attendees, the “Technology Changes Everything” tagline will be put into practice as administrators and educators from the more than 500 institutions represented at the event share information and propose projects and programs back on their own campuses. More...
Playing the Odds
By . The idea that higher education makes you a better person in some respect has long been its soft underbelly. The proposition makes most current faculty and administrators uncomfortable, especially at the smaller teaching-centered colleges that are prone to invoke tropes about community and ethics. The discomfort comes both from how “improvement” necessarily invokes an older conception of college as a finishing school for a small, genteel elite and from how genuinely indispensible it seems for most definitions of “liberal arts”. More...
Should Academic Librarians Have Tenure May Be the Wrong Question
Why no MOOCs on Gaza?
By Kris Olds. I don't know about you, but my sense is global politics seems to be on the up this summer regarding turmoil and debate. And, consequently, there is a lot of debate about conflicts in places like the Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Gaza, and so on. In this context I watched some fascinating, if depressing, documentaries last night on PBS' Frontline. They focused on Syria and Iraq and were relatively well done, helping me to learn more about these complex countries and their associated conflicts. Read more...Home and away
By G. Rendell. If your institution has signed the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment (or, perhaps,even if it hasn't), somebody on your campus periodically inventories greenhouse gas emissions. Technically, there are six "Kyoto gases" that should be inventoried, but for most campuses only three really matter -- carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. So the short answer to "what gases do you inventory?" is a three-item list. But the longer answer, and the more complex one, is more important. Read more...
Getting the Most from a MOOC
By Nate Sleeter - Higher Ed Beta. When MOOCs are contrasted with traditional residential courses, such comparisons are often based on individual components (video vs. live lectures, online forums vs. classroom discussion, multiple-choice tests vs. graded papers, etc.). While such comparative analyses are worthwhile, they may miss the most important element of learning success: the motivation level of a student. Read more...
