TUFTS UNIVERSITY, like many elite private colleges and universities in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and its aftermath of protests and related soul searching about racism in America, jumped on to the Juneteenth celebration bandwagon. To mark what is a new holiday for many at Tufts, the university decided to host a […]
Higher Education and Adult Learning
Posted inOpinion
Online ed key to closing racial, class gaps
EVEN BEFORE THE PANDEMIC, racial and class inequality was a pervasive characteristic of the American economy. Whether measured by earnings, wealth, job quality, educational attainment, or virtually any other marker of financial and occupational well-being, minorities and immigrants have been on the receiving end of social and economic disadvantage. As COVID-19 has spread, inequities in […]
Posted inOpinion
We must hold on to hope
WHEN WE THINK about our own personal lives — or the life of our nation — hope is an essential ingredient. With it, everything seems possible. Without it, bumps in the road loom like mountains. Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu told us that, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite […]
Posted inOpinion
Here’s what I believe
The following is an email sent by Harvard president Lawrence Bacow to the university community on Saturday. THE LAST SEVERAL MONTHS have been disorienting for all of us. COVID-19 has profoundly disrupted the lives of people worldwide. It has caused more than 365,000 deaths around the globe and more than 100,000 in the United States […]
Posted inOpinion
We’re supporting our students during this crisis
HOLYOKE COMMUNITY COLLEGE was founded on the belief that everyone deserves the opportunity to receive an affordable and quality college education.Everyone. From the college’s earliest days following World War II, George Frost, the college’s first president, put that principle into practice, signing up students who were, in the eyes of others, “not college material” – […]
Posted inEducation
College life, interrupted
WE’VE ALL SEEN the headlines – campuses closing down, students forced to move out, college classes go online. In Boston alone there are 35 colleges and universities, meaning that over the past month, as schools have been shutting their doors, thousands of students have migrated from the city to places all across the country and globe. […]
Posted inOpinion
How are community college students different?
An open letter to the president of the United States, members of Congress, the US Secretary of Education, all 50 state governors, state legislators, state education secretaries, and commissioners. THANK YOU for your public service. The work you do is both important and complicated. I recognize that the vast majority of you want to do […]
Posted inEducation
UMass’s Collins lists $67,743 in expenses for one year
THE CHANCELLOR of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester racked up $67,743 in expenses over the course of a year, much of it for air travel for himself and his wife to destinations all over the world. Michael Collins, whose $1.1 million-a-year salary makes him the state’s highest-paid employee, took 33 airline business […]
Posted inEducation
Making college more affordable sounds good…
AMERICA’S HIGHER EDUCATION system is mired in crisis. Colleges are increasingly unaffordable for lower- and middle-class students, and student debt is now at record levels. As Massachusetts prepares to vote in next month’s Democratic presidential primary, potential solutions to this crisis are at the center of the debate. Democratic presidential candidates, including the current frontrunner, […]
Posted inEducation
Suárez-Orozco named UMass Boston chancellor
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE WITH A UNANIMOUS VOTE of the University of Massachusetts trustees, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco on Monday became the new chancellor of UMass Boston. UMass President Marty Meehan said the vote, through one lens, marked “the completion of a journey that began more than four decades ago, when two parents, in what must have […]