Like a lot of undergraduate-focused, smaller institutions, historically black colleges and universities typically went online selectively, sporadically – or not at all. But that’s beginning to change, thanks to significant multi-college collaborations and help from funders increasingly recognizing the value and importance of these underresourced institutions.

This week’s episode of The Key examines several major initiatives in which major philanthropies, corporations and nonprofit organizations are helping groups of HBCUs strengthen their ability to reach and serve students by improving their digital infrastructures, training their faculty and launching a joint platform for virtual courses.

Featured on today’s episode is Ed Smith-Lewis, vice president for strategic partnerships and institutional programs at the United Negro College Fund, which is at the fulcrum of these efforts. He discusses how HBCUs have historically approached online and digital education, why those institutions are drawing so much attention (and funding) now, and the opportunities and challenges of getting numerous colleges to collaborate rather than compete.

This episode is sponsored by Pearson Inclusive Access. Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman. 

It only took a few decades, but colleges and universities are hiring more Black and brown presidents to lead their institutions. 

This week's episode digs into data Inside Higher Ed published last month showing a big upturn in the proportion of minority presidents and chancellors that colleges hired in the year and a half after the death of George Floyd. Better than one in three presidents hired from June 2020 through November 2021 were people of color, a full quarter were Black, and the proportion of Latinx presidents who were appointed roughly doubled from the previous 18 months. 

Two guests join to dissect the data, what they mean and how much they matter. 

Lorelle L. Espinosa is program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, where she focuses on grantmaking that drives evidence-based change around diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM education. She formerly oversaw research on the college presidency and other topics at the American Council on Education. 

Eddie R. Cole, associate professor of higher education and history at the University of California, Los Angeles, offers some context about the current moment based on his study of the civil rights era, when colleges also sought to diversify their leadership (for a while).

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Doug Lederman

The Carnegie Classifications are an enduring institution in higher education – but they’re about to undergo a facelift that could be dramatic.

This week’s episode of The Key explores the recent news that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching -- which created the main system we use to differentiate among types of colleges and universities about 50 years ago – had chosen the American Council on Education, the largest and most diverse association of college presidents, to remake and run the classifications going forward.

Tim Knowles of Carnegie and Ted Mitchell of ACE discuss the new partnership and why the time is right to refresh the classifications. They emphasize their plan to add a significant focus on whether and how much colleges and universities contribute to social mobility and racial equity, potentially by adding an entirely new classification that would sort institutions by the degree to which they are engines of mobility and equity.

The episode includes a conversation with Brendan Cantwell, an associate professor and coordinator of the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education program at Michigan State University, who discusses the potential unintended consequences of focusing too much on social mobility in college rankings.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Editor Doug Lederman

College students almost certainly lost ground academically during the pandemic. But do we know how much? And what should colleges do about it?

This week’s episode explores a free report Inside Higher Ed published in December, “Back on Track: Helping Students Recover From COVID-19 Learning Disruption.”

It examines the available evidence about how the pandemic affected students’ educational paths, and finds, somewhat unsurprisingly, that most colleges really don’t know whether their students suffered what in the K-12 context is often called “learning loss” or “learning disruption.” But that doesn’t mean they aren’t adapting their practices and policies in areas such as placement, instruction, grading and assessment to help students make up whatever ground they’ve lost.

Participating in this discussion are Natasha Jankowski, a higher education and assessment consultant and former executive director of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment; Matthew Gunkel, chief online learning and technology officer for the University of Missouri System; and Michael Hale, vice president of education at VitalSource. Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman.

Colleges tend to compete rather than collaborate. That’s why a new five-college cooperative in New Mexico is so unusual.

This week’s episode explores the Collaborative for Higher Education Shared Services, or CHESS. It’s made up, so far, of five independent community colleges in New Mexico that have teamed up because they think they’re stronger together than apart.

They’ve started by agreeing to create a common enterprise resource planning structure to share resources and information in areas such as accounting, student records, human resources and payroll, but the vision ultimately includes many of the features you might see in a formal college system, including smoother student mobility and more efficient and cost-effective campus operations.

In the conversation, the presidents of two of the colleges, Becky Rowley of Santa Fe Community College and Tracy Hartzler of Central New Mexico Community College, discuss the combination of trust, subjugation of institutional ego, and internal culture change required to bring about a massive cross-institutional collaboration like this. They acknowledge the help they’ve gotten from the external partners guiding their work, CampusWorks and Workday.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman.

The era of flexible work in higher education has begun.

In the last month, California enacted a law that could greatly expand the number of bachelor’s degree programs being offered by the state’s 116 community colleges. And Arizona approving legislation allowing massive systems like the Maricopa Community Colleges to award their own four-year degrees for the first time.

Half of all states now enable their community colleges to offer baccalaureate degrees, but how many, and in what fields, remain a source of contention in many places. Advocates for the programs say they fill essential gaps left by four-year institutions in their states in providing educational opportunities to adults and other underrepresented students and meeting essential needs in health care and other industries. Efforts to create or expand community college bachelor’s programs are often opposed by four-year colleges and universities concerned about the quality of the programs and, let’s be honest, lower-cost competition.

There’s a lot we don’t know about these emerging programs, and in this week’s episode of The Key, Debra Bragg of New America describes a report mapping the community college baccalaureate landscape. In the interview, she describes what we already know – and have yet to learn – about these programs, how we might gauge their effectiveness, and what they tell us about why so many students struggle along the traditional path of transferring from two-year to four-year institutions.

Are politicians and the public losing faith in higher education?

Last week delivered unwelcome news to colleges and universities. New data from the National Student Clearinghouse showed that college enrollments tumbled again this fall, with hundreds of thousands fewer students opting to start or continue their educations than even during the heart of the pandemic last fall.

And a scaled-back version of President Biden’s Build Back Better Act contained about $40 billion in new funds for colleges and their students -- barely a third of the previous iteration and missing key initiatives such as much-touted tuition-free community college.

This week’s episode features three thoughtful observers of the higher ed landscape on what these developments mean and why they matter. Tamara Hiler is director of education at Third Way, a center-left think tank in Washington. Robert Kelchen is professor and chair of education at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. And Teresa Valerio Parrot is a principal at TVP Communications.

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman.

Federal data now allow anyone who wishes to identify academic programs whose graduates on average earn more than enough to repay their student debt -- or don’t. As journalists and think tank analysts dissect the data, many of the programs whose graduates don’t earn enough to repay their debt prepare people for industries that don’t pay very well but that society values, such as teaching or the clergy.

Degrees in the arts are a particular target. In this week’s episode of The Key, New America’s Kevin Carey and Doug Dempster, former dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, debate the wisdom of pursuing degrees in the arts and other low-paying fields, whether economic outcomes are the best way to judge the value of those programs, and the prospects for driving down the costs of those programs.

“Time is growing short.” That’s how Bloomfield College’s president, Marcheta P. Evans, described the struggling private college’s situation this week in an atypical plea for help.

Bloomfield, whose students are overwhelmingly black, Hispanic and from low-income backgrounds, acknowledged that it won’t make it through the 2022-23 academic year in its current condition, and asked for help from potential philanthropists and partner institutions to keep its mission alive.

In this week’s episode, Marcheta Evans discusses the New Jersey college’s unexpected approach to an increasingly common plight. She explains why it chose to go public about a situation many institutions hide, and it’s options for surviving and even thriving.

This week’s other guest is Barbara Brittingham, president emerita of the New England Commission of Higher Education, who as leader of the accrediting body in the demographically challenged Northeast encountered more than her fair share of financially ailing institutions.

This episode is hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman.

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