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Logging In To Learning Analytics, Edna J. Pressler

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

According to the most recent Higher Education Editions of the Horizon Report (Johnson et al., 2013; Johnson, Adams, & Cummins, 2012; Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine, & Haywood, 2011), learning analytics (LA) is an emerging technology that will be widely adopted within the next few years. In this article, I use the McKinsey 7S Model (Waterman, Peters, & Phillips, 1980) as a way to organize a review of the learning analytics (LA) literature, in order to help organizational leaders assess and increase an organization’s readiness for LA. More specifically, I identify the 7 areas of an organization that need to be …

Diversification Of A University Faculty: Women Faculty In The Mit Schools Of Science And Engineering, Nancy Hopkins

New England Journal of Public Policy

A broadly diverse faculty is critical to MIT’s educational mission, and significant efforts have been made to achieve a faculty whose diversity reflects that of the students we train. To assess the success of some of these efforts, I examined the percentage of women faculty in the Schools of Science and Engineering over time. In Science, the increased number (and percentage) of women faculty today is the consequence of: pressures associated with the civil rights movement in the early 1970s; unusual efforts between 1996 and 2000 by former Dean of Science Bob Birgeneau in response to the 1996 Report on …

Women In Power, Margaret A. Mckenna

New England Journal of Public Policy

The country is filled with powerful women, but women in power remain significantly underrepresented across a variety of professional fields, in business, academe, politics, and the media. With more women enrolled in colleges today than men, continued underrepresentation of women in leadership roles throughout society is not just morally unacceptable, it is economically damaging. The nation needs to maximize all human capital, in order to meet our own challenges and stay competitive in this global economy. Young women need to be supported in developing the knowledge and skills necessary for being leaders and catalysts for change. Reflecting on a career …

Numbers Are Not Enough: Women In Higher Education In The 21st Century, Sherry H. Penney, Jennifer Brown, Laura Mcphie Oliveria

New England Journal of Public Policy

Women are now the majority of students in institutions of higher education in the United States, and in many ways women as students and faculty have seen significant progress. But numbers do not tell the whole story. Subtle forms of discrimination continue to exist, and the higher up the pyramid you go, the fewer women are to be found, whether among tenured faculty, as presidents and provosts or as board members and board chairs. Many steps can be taken to improve the situation. Some institutions are recognizing that. We note some positive changes and discuss areas where improvement is needed. …

Future Promise For Women In Science, Christine Armett-Kibel

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article examines possible reasons why women are still not making it to the top in the hard sciences in academia. It considers two major difficulties that women face. The first concerns the psychological nature of women, which is alleged to be unsuited to the competitive and aggressive mindset considered necessary for scientific achievement. The second concerns the childbearing and child-nurturing roles of women, which make it difficult for them to conform to the intense, time-consuming demands of an academic career in science. The article argues that many of the qualities associated with the female stereotype are actually human characteristics …

Thwarted Ambition: The Role Of Public Policy In University Development, Michael N. Bastedo

New England Journal of Public Policy

Paradoxically, Massachusetts is the home of a world-class system of private higher education and a struggling system of public higher education. The influence of private higher education and persistent indifference by state government repeatedly thwarted UMass’s ambition to increase its stature on the national scene. The result was a “boom or bust” cycle of financial support that made rational planning and institutional expansion extremely difficult, exacerbating the university’s late start toward world-class status.

Higher Education And The Promise Of Opportunity, Robert L. Woodbury

New England Journal of Public Policy

The article portrays the passage of the Higher Education Act of 1965 as a watershed event, much like the Morrill Land Grant Act and the G.I. Bill, in the history of opening higher education to a broader range of citizens. What had once been a largely private enterprise for the elite became an increasingly public commitment to make a college and university education accessible to anyone qualified to take advantage of the opportunity. In the last two decades, however, that promise has faded as costs have escalated, financial aid has become less available to the needy, federal and state support …

Leadership For Diversity: Effectively Managing For A Transformation, Adrian K. Haugabrook

Trotter Review

Diversity has become a contentious theme woven throughout many different aspects of higher education. Multiculturalism, ethnic studies, women's studies, curriculum reform, strategies for increasing access and opportunity to the under-represented and under-served and improving campus climate have all been vehicles to promote and further diversity initiatives. Diversity stands to challenge much of what has been the traditional views of higher education. The efforts to promote multiculturalism and diversity have caused the academy and the enterprise of higher learning to introspectively examine and reexamine its values, beliefs and relationships to a much larger society. American higher education now sees itself in …

Enhancing Multicultural Education Through Higher Education Initiatives, Porter L. Troutman Jr.

Trotter Review

This paper describes a comprehensive initiative intended to increase multicultural education and the amount of ethnic diversity among college of education faculty and undergraduate teacher education students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). The paper details six components of the on-going initiative: 1) staff development: to enhance the sensitivity of college of education faculty regarding cultural issues, 2) a minority mentoring program: to provide a stronger support system for under-represented populations enrolled in the teacher education program, 3) the multicultural education project (MCE): a collaborative effort with the public school district in multicultural education, 4) the College of …

Retaining Students Of Color: The Office Of Ahana Student Programs At Boston College, Donald Brown

Trotter Review

On September 1, 1978, I assumed responsibility for what was then known as the Office of Minority Student Programs at Boston College. The charge given to me was to alter an embarrassingly high attrition rate of 83 percent for a target group of black and Latino students who had been identified by the university's Admissions Office as having high levels of motivation and potential, but who would require assistance if they were to succeed at the university.

Over the course of the past sixteen years, a great deal has transpired at Boston College. An important change was made in the …

Notes On Higher Education In The 1990s, Zelda F. Gamson

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article consists of a series of essays written for The Academic Workplace, the newsletter of the New England Resource Center for Higher Education, since 1990. The backdrop for the essays is the increasing inequality in higher education caused by changes in the political economy of higher education, especially in New England. The first essay analyzes the roots of contemporary faculty dissatisfaction with their work lives by tracing the impacts of the expansion of higher education, changes in the student body, and greater government involvement in higher education. Subsequent essays discuss multicultural education, faculty shortages, political correctness, responses to …

The Changing Nature Of Universities, Ernest A. Lynton

New England Journal of Public Policy

Excessive emphasis on research as the dominant measure of institutional as well as individual prestige and values has created a critical mismatch between the activities of American universities and societal expectations. This article traces the origins of the resulting crisis of purpose to the post-World War II surge in federal research support and articulates the urgent need for basic changes in university priorities at a time teaching and professional services have acquired both new importance and new complexity. It further describes current efforts toward a more balanced view of the components of university missions and a resulting shift in faculty …

Introduction, James Jennings

Trotter Review

This issue of the Trotter Institute Review is devoted to a two-part proposition. The first is that institutions, agencies, businesses, and schools must begin to reflect the increasingly diverse ethnic and racial characteristics of American society. America is in the midst of a demographic revolution. It is unfortunate that some educators have chosen to ignore the social, economic, and intellectual implications of this change and that others have even become angry and attacked efforts to create an appreciation of multiculturalism.

This unfortunate resistance to the implications of America's unfolding demography leads to the second proposition reflected in this issue of …

Are Today's Teachers Being Prepared For Diversity? An Analysis Of School Catalogues, James Jennings, Illene Carver

Trotter Review

A recent content analysis study shows that while leading educators in Massachusetts stress the importance of preparing teachers for an increasingly diverse world, most teacher preparation schools virtually ignore the issue of racial and ethnic diversity in catalogues recruiting new students. This not only discourages people from diverse backgrounds from becoming teachers, but could also create a lack of understanding in the classroom of the black, Latino, and Asian students being taught.

A summary of A Content Analysis of Racial and Ethnic Themes in Catalogues Distributed by Teacher Preparation Schools in Massachusetts, 1989 and 1990, a report issued by …

Thoughts On Black Conservativism: A Review Essay, Martin Kilson

Trotter Review

In Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, Stephen L. Carter, an Afro-American law professor at Yale University, has written a wide-ranging book on affirmative action policy. Like numerous other books on the subject, Carter covers the issues of its legitimacy as policy, white opposition, impact on black mobility, and contradictions faced by universities in administering affirmative action. Carter also offers a new area of discussion — namely, the evolving division among Afro-Americans regarding affirmative action, allocating six of eleven chapters to facets of this issue. Carter uses his own experiences to frame these discussions — a mode of discourse …

Searching For A Umass President: Transitions And Leaderships, 1970-1991, Richard A. Hogarty

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article traces the history of the five presidential successions that have taken place at the University of Massachusetts since 1970. No manual or campus report will reveal the one best way to conduct a presidential search. How to do so is not easy to prescribe. Suitably fleshed out, the events surrounding these five searches tell us a great deal about what works and what doesn't. It is one thing to offer case illustrations of past events, another to say how they might be put to use by other people in another era with quite different situations and concerns. In …

The Impact Of The State Constitutional Convention Of 1917 On State Aid To Higher Education In Massachusetts, John P. Whittaker

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Massachusetts State Constitutional Convention of 1917 marked a turning point in the development of higher education in the state. An amendment adopted at the convention put an end to a long tradition of direct state appropriations to support the development of private colleges and to proposals for cooperative efforts between various state agencies and private institutions. After that time, only state institutions would receive state support. This decision resulted from an attempt to resolve an intense debate over the use of public funding for sectarian and other private institutions, which reflected the intense religious and class conflict inherent in …

The Faculty Of The Sixties: A Reappraisal, Monroe H. Little

Trotter Review

Between 1967 and 1969 the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education initiated and substantially funded several national surveys of U.S. higher education. One such study of faculty employed a questionnaire that was mailed to approximately 100,000 full-time college and university faculty at 303 schools nationwide. The results of this survey, which solicited more than 300 items of information from each respondent and enjoyed an unusually high response rate of over 60%, contain a wealth of data on a variety of political and social issues that has rarely been subjected to careful analysis by scholars.

This is especially unfortunate in retrospect. The …

Providing Access To Power: The Role Of Higher Education In Empowering Women Students, Margaret A. Mckenna

New England Journal of Public Policy

Access to education opens the doors to future economic power — but are opportunities for women limited by the very way that institutions of higher education think about women students? Women comprise the majority of college students today, but the institutions they attend may not be serving their educational needs. This article explains that women's needs are different from those of men and illustrates how educators can respond to that difference, offering a "feminist environment" in which female students can meet their own educational goals.

The Academic Workplace: Perception Versus Reality, Sandra E. Elman

New England Journal of Public Policy

Why are faculty becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the academic workplace? What accounts for burnout and low morale among so many college and university faculty? Is work life for professionals any more satisfying in the business world? What can academic leaders learn from business executives who work vigorously to reenergize their enterprises? Are corporate strategies aimed at enhancing the quality of work life applicable to improving satisfaction and productivity in our colleges and universities?

These concerns were addressed by a number of education leaders at a conference on faculty work life jointly sponsored by the New England Resource …

The Hand That Pushes The Rock, Paula Rothenberg

Trotter Review

Only a very few schools in this country actually require all students to spend an entire semester thinking about issues of race and gender. Many more have found a way to incorporate these issues in required courses in “social problems” where racism and sexism get their two weeks along with environmental pollution and other current issues. I think this approach is dead wrong. Racism and sexism are not “problems” or “topics.” They are ways of defining reality and living our lives that most of us have learned along with learning how to tie our shoes and how to drink from …

The Search For A Massachusetts Chancellor: Autonomy And Politics In Higher Education, Richard A. Hogarty

New England Journal of Public Policy

Political scientists have not devoted much attention to the politics of higher education. Their reluctance is hard to explain since the material for study is close at hand and the subject offers ample research opportunities. The search for a chancellor conducted by the Massachusetts Board of Regents in 1986 aroused considerable public attention and controversy. This case study examines that controversy along with the tensions that arise when academic and political forces collide. Few searches in academia are perfect and none is a morality play. This one proved to be no exception. This article is an attempt to reconstruct the …

The Public-Private Forum: Good Intentions Randomize Behavior, Robert Wood

New England Journal of Public Policy

Public and private institutions of higher learning coexist throughout the United States in a pattern of diversity that is unknown in any other postindustrial society — and Massachusetts is a prime example of U.S. pluralism in education. In an era of scarce resources and mounting costs, the contrary instincts for cooperation and competition are at work. This article is an account ofa voluntary attempt among private and public colleges and universities between 1973 and 1976 to forge a fragile partnership — the Massachusetts Public-Private Forum — which first flourished, then foundered. Tracing the course of its early successes and final …

A Public Manager Looks Back: What I Wish I'D Been Taught, Dan H. Fenn

New England Journal of Public Policy

The author, a practitioner-teacher of public administration, writes that the special context of government in the United States, whether federal, state, or local, needs to be specifically explored by schools for would-be public managers. The constitutionally established system of fractionated power at once makes government jobs extraordinarily difficult and provides great opportunities for those who see themselves as partners in the policy-making process and want to put their stamp on the events of their times. Despite the view of the general public, government is made to order for entrepreneurs who are adept at accreting and maintaining power regardless of the …

A Second Chance: Meeting The Needs Of Adult Learners, Elizabeth F. Fideler

New England Journal of Public Policy

Changing demographics and economic factors are focusing national attention on adult learning as a major resource for solving many of the nation 's social and economic dilemmas. However, adult learners, the poor especially, face obstacles to educational advancement even where tuition is waived or incentive grants are given. Despite the considerable recent growth of adult education, the vast number of those who need it the most are not as yet participating. This article examines adult-education practices and participation in general — in the areas of literacy, occupational education, and higher learning — and conditions in Massachusetts in particular. It explains …