Many people in higher education recoil at the idea of merging institutions, and it’s little wonder: in most such arrangements, one institution swallows the other, which virtually disappears. But that doesn’t mean the alternative is for every college to remain an island unto itself.

Recent events – last month’s merger between Saint Joseph’s University and University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, and last week’s news that Antioch University and Otterbein University are teaming up to create a new national system of nonprofit colleges and universities – make this an opportune time to revisit an April 2021 discussion about transformative cross-college collaborations at a time of constrained resources.

The conversation includes John MacIntosh of SeaChange Capital Partners, a driving force behind the Transformational Partnerships Fund; Art Dunning, former president of Albany State University, who oversaw that institution’s merger with Darton State College; and Sister Margaret Carney, president emerita of St. Bonaventure University, who offers a cautionary tale about a merger that didn’t happen – and what went awry.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman.

College and university enrollments – particularly at community colleges – continue to plummet. Have they bottomed out? Will they recover if the economy cools off as expected? Has enrollment dropped to a new lower plateau that’s likely to be the baseline going forward?

This week’s episode of The Key explores the 7.5 percent decline that college enrollments have suffered since the pandemic, with a focus on community colleges that enroll working learners and first-generation students, which have been especially hard hit.

Digging into the reasons behind the enrollment declines and offering some insights into what’s ahead are Joe Garcia, chancellor of the Colorado Community College System, and Nate Johnson, a researcher and policy analyst whose firm, Postsecondary Analytics, advises states, foundations and businesses on education and workforce policy.

They surmise that some of the enrollment losses of the last two years may represent a new lower baseline going forward, and discuss the implications for institutions and students.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman. Sponsored by Anthology.

How are colleges and universities going about rethinking their teaching and learning strategies in the wake of widescale experimentation with digital instruction?

This week’s episode is the last of a three-part series on digital teaching and learning, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The first two episodes explored how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped what researchers and practitioners know about the role of technology in learning, and how well the hundreds of ed-tech companies that work with colleges, professors and students meet the needs of the institutions and their people and what they can do better.

In this week’s episode, we look more closely at how individual colleges and universities are rethinking the role of digital learning. Dhanfu E. Elston, chief of staff and senior vice president for strategy at Complete College America, discusses an effort involving six historically black colleges and universities.

Then we hear administrators from Arizona State, DeVry and Yale Universities describe the work they’re doing to evolve their strategies for using digital tools and approaches in instruction.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman.  This episode was made possible by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The last two years disrupted many aspects of higher education, and the educational technology market -- and the relationship between colleges and companies – are no exception.

This week’s episode of The Key explores how well the many hundreds of ed-tech companies that work with colleges, professors and students actually meet the needs of the institutions and their people, where they fall short, and how they can do better.

The discussion includes two guests who’ve sat at the intersection of where technology meets teaching and learning. Kara Monroe is the founder of Monarch Strategies, a consulting firm she founded early this year after 25 years as an academic administrator at Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana. Kelvin Bentley is a senior consultant at WGU Labs, where he works with companies that want to help colleges and universities educate students at scale. Over 25 years, he has worked with a range of public two-year and four-year colleges and multiple ed-tech companies.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed  Editor Doug Lederman.  This episode was made possible by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This week’s episode of The Key explores whether and how the landscape of digital teaching and learning has been changed by the last two years of global pandemic, recession, upheaval over racial justice, and more.

Participants in the conversation are Shanna Smith Jaggars, assistant vice provost of research and program assessment in Ohio State University’s Office of Student Academic Success, and Jessica Rowland Williams, director of Every Learner Everywhere, which pursues equitable outcomes in higher education through advances in digital learning.

In our discussion, they explore such topics as whether student expectations have changed about when, where and how they learn, if most faculty members are likelier to incorporate technology into their pedagogy than they were before, and what institutional leaders need to do to ensure that whatever role digital learning plays in their future strategies, they do it well.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman. This episode was made possible by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Student loan debt forgiveness. Free community college. Pell Grants for short-term programs. Those are just some of the higher education issues occupying the federal policy landscape in Washington.

This week’s episode of The Key features a conversation with Under Secretary James Kvaal, the Education Department’s senior official on higher education. He discusses the administration’s current thinking about those and other issues, including the challenges of operating in a highly partisan era.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman.

Has higher education’s forced experimentation with remote learning changed how students, professors, colleges and the public view online education? And will it make them more or less likely to participate in it? 

This week's episode of The Key explores Inside Higher Ed’s recent report, The Evolving Conversation About Quality in Online Learning.” The report examines a wide range of issues around the current and future state of technology-enabled learning to try to help administrators and faculty members prepare to deliver high-quality virtual instruction, however it fits into their institutional missions. 

Lori Williams, president and CEO of the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA), joins The Key this week to discuss the report and its implications for colleges, professors and policy makers. NC-SARA. Williams discusses how the pandemic has changed perceptions and practices around online education and how to judge quality in virtual learning, among other topics. 

This week's episode of The Key explores why some institutions use those policies and why consumer advocates think they're pernicious, even though they're only a small fraction of the $1.7 trillion student debt problem in American higher education.

Martin Kurzweil, director of the institutional transformation program at Ithaka S+R, discusses research on what it calls “stranded credits” that colleges sometimes hold hostage from former students and a promising experiment that could offer a way out for students and colleges alike.

Melanie Gottlieb, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, explains why many higher ed officials oppose potential federal regulation to ban such policies, but acknowledges the need for colleges to limit the kinds of debt they try to collect from students.

Last month the State of Maryland announced that it would no longer require a bachelor’s degree in the hiring process for nearly half of its jobs, joining a growing number of companies and other employers.

Some people in higher education might view steps like that as a slight, since Maryland and other employers are responding in part to questions about the value of degrees and growing concerns about the cost – and opportunity cost – of earning one.

But in this week’s episode of The Key, Bridgette Gray of the nonprofit group Opportunity@Work, which is helping Maryland identify non-degreed workers to fill jobs in technology, administration and customer service, describes the market conditions that prompted the state’s decision and why equity was a primary factor behind its move.

And Brandon Busteed of Kaplan explains how colleges and universities can respond in ways that not only sustain their relevance but position them better for the coming changes in how learning is likely to happen.

Employers of all kinds are struggling to hold on to their employees in the wake of the pandemic and amid a white-hot job market. Data recently released by the University of North Carolina system, for instance, shows that faculty and staff turnover in the first half of this academic year was about 40 percent higher than the average of the last four years.

Are colleges and universities just dealing with the same issues other industries are facing? Or are there unique problems in higher ed that campus leaders need to acknowledge?

This week’s episode of The Key features a discussion with Kevin McClure, associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, who’s been writing about these issues and this summer will begin a three-year research project examining working conditions at public institutions in his state.

In our conversation, he explores some of the reasons for the turnover, assesses the impact of the pandemic, and explains the difference between burnout and demoralization, both of which are probably playing a role.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Doug Lederman.