Does the possible sale of the University of Phoenix to a public university system signal the demise of the for-profit higher education sector that Phoenix once epitomized?

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman. 

In 2010, a book called DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education envisioned a wholesale shift in how people learned. More than a decade later, how has that panned out?

This week’s episode features a conversation with Anya Kamenetz, the author and journalist who in 2010 tapped into an emerging set of issues around student debt, rapid technological change and political upheaval to lay out a portrait of a world in which individuals could learn when and how they wanted and be far less dependent on instructors and institutions.

She discusses the current landscape and what she got right and wrong 12 years ago.

During the pandemic, many colleges and universities embraced a form of blended learning called HyFlex, to mixed reviews. Is it likely to be part of colleges’ instructional strategy going forward?

This week’s episode of The Key explores HyFlex, in which students in a classroom learn synchronously alongside a cohort of peers studying remotely. HyFlex moved from a fringe phenomenon to the mainstream during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the experience was imperfect at best, for professors and students alike.

This conversation about the teaching modality features two professors who have both taught in the HyFlex format and done research on its impact. Enilda Romero-Hall is an associate professor in the learning, design and technology program at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville who got her doctorate in a HyFlex program and taught using it pre-pandemic. Alanna Gillis, an assistant professor of sociology at St Lawrence University, had her first Hyflex experiences during COVID-19.

Colleges are under growing pressure to prove their “value” to students, parents, legislators and others. The scrutiny can be uncomfortable, but more institutions are responding with serious efforts to measure and explain their value.

This week’s episode of The Key, the last in a three-part series on value in higher education, examines the data and metrics we’re using now – and those we might use going forward – to gauge the value colleges and universities are providing to their students and other constituents.

The conversations include Michael Itzkowitz, senior fellow in higher education at the center-left think tank Third Way; José Luis Cruz Rivera, president of Northern Arizona University and a member of the Postsecondary Value Commission; and Pamela Brown, vice president for institutional research and academic planning for the University of California president’s office.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman

As recently as a decade ago, the concept of “value” rarely found its way into discussions about federal and state policymaking about higher education. Now it’s unusual to hear a meaningful conversation that doesn’t raise the issue.

This week’s episode of The Key, the second in a three-part series on the value of higher education, examines how politicians and policy makers are responding to growing public doubt about the value of colleges and credentials by defining and trying to measure whether individual institutions and academic programs are benefiting consumers. 

Guests include Clare McCann, who until last month was a key member of the Biden administration’s higher education policy team, and is now higher education fellow at Arnold Ventures; Will Doyle, a professor of higher education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, who studies the government’s role in higher education; and Ernest Ezeugo, a federal policy strategy officer at Lumina Foundation who previously worked at Young Invincibles and the State Higher Education Executive Officers association.

They discuss how the concept of value is factoring into state and federal policy, what’s driving that trend, and whether an overdependence on economic outcomes can lead to unintended consequences.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman

For decades, colleges and universities enjoyed almost unquestioned public support as some of America’s most important institutions. Like most institutions, they’ve been knocked off that pedestal in recent years, amid growing questions not about whether higher education remains important but whether it’s available, affordable and valuable enough.

This week’s episode of The Key is the first in a three-part series on the concept of “value” in higher education, made possible by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The topic has gotten increasing attention as college prices and student debt continue to rise and policy makers develop data showing the return on investment for specific academic programs.

Today’s episode looks at several recent surveys of public attitudes about higher education. Participants include Sophie Nguyen, senior policy analyst with New America’s Education Program, which publishes Varying Degrees and numerous other surveys about higher education; David Schleifer, vice president and director of research at Public Agenda, a national research organization; and Natasha Quadlin, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-author of Who Should Pay? Higher Education, Responsibility, and the Public, published this year by the Russell Sage Foundation.  

Most business officers are upbeat about their colleges’ financial future. Why is that so, and are they right to be so optimistic?

This week's episode of The Key features a discussion about Inside Higher Ed’s 2022 Survey of College and University Business Officers, which generally found college chief financial officers feeling pretty good about how their institutions are faring and how they’re positioned for the future.

The episode explores the survey’s results, but also digs into whether financial and other leaders in higher education think their institutions need to make meaningful changes in how they operate to be financially sustainable and stable down the road – and whether their pretty rosy view might make them less inclined to see the need for significant changes on their campuses.

The conversation features three business officers: Diane Snyder, vice chancellor of finance and administration at the Alamo Colleges District in Texas; Cynthia Vizcaino Villa, senior vice president for administration and finance at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and Mark Volpatti, vice president for finance and chief financial officer at Indiana’s Valparaiso University.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman. Sponsored by EY-Parthenon.

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.