As Congress and President Obama continue to seek ways to improve the post-secondary degree attainment of our population, I suggest adding to or modifying the classifications commonly used in higher education reports, regulations, and statistics.

My first suggestion is that, in the case of most classifications, the term “for-profit” be removed as a separate distinction. This term refers to corporate structure and institutional governance, neither of which is of particular relevance in describing contemporary American higher education. Also, and unfortunately, the pejorative innuendo and labeling associated with the term are not warranted or representative of the academic quality and educational impact associated with many for-profit institutions; moreover, the term does not provide a meaningful form of differentiation between institutional types.
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I recently received an email that was quite touching and I thought worth sharing here (see below).  SSgt Darrell “Shifty” Powers served with the 101st Airborne Infantry Easy Company.  Anyone who has read Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers or seen the HBO hit series by the same name will recognize Shifty’s name.  Actor Peter Youngblood Hills portrays Shifty’s character on the HBO series.

SSgt Powers died at his home in Dickenson County, Virginia on June 17 at the age of 86 after losing a prolonged battle with cancer.  While the story was covered by several local news outlets in and around Shifty’s hometown in rural Virginia, the story and Shifty’s significance to American history seems to have been lost on the national media. 

The email I received was written by an individual who met Powers in a Philadelphia airport a couple of years before Shifty’s death.  After helping Powers confirm that he was waiting at the correct gate, the email’s author engaged in some small talk with the elderly man that led the author to discover that he was chit-chatting with a true American hero.  After recognizing the emblem of the 101st Airborne on Powers’ hat, the author quickly discovered that Powers was not only a World War II veteran, he was in fact a man of notable military experience and distinction. 

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In last week’s The Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott Carlson reported on a speech given by George Pernsteiner, Chancellor of the Oregon University System.  In addressing attendees at the annual meeting of the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), Pernsteiner was quoted as saying “If [the crisis] is all we look at, we will have failed.  Our institutions will have failed.”

Mr. Pernsteiner believes that all the solutions generated so far out of the current crisis are “Band-Aids.”  He talked about the slipping position of college educated Americans versus other nations, the cutback in funding to public institutions by the states, and the growing percentage of Latinos who have been a traditionally underserved group in higher education. “More students, different students, fewer dollars, more control, and more accountability,” Mr. Pernsteiner said. “If you lay those things down end to end, you have a series of puzzles.”

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Last week President Obama announced the American Graduation Initiative, a 10-year, $12 billion plan focused on community colleges.  Community colleges play an integral role in the American higher education system and will play an even bigger role as America works toward President Obama’s goals of regaining America’s place as the world’s leader in college completion rates and establishing an American workforce that is able to compete with that of other nations. 

According to a May 2009 report published by the Brookings Institute, enrollments in community colleges increased between 2000-2001 and 2005-2006 by 2.3 million students.  In total, community colleges enroll approximately 45 percent of the nation’s college students.  Community college populations represent far greater diversity than is found on traditional four-year campuses.  According to the Brookings Institute, in 2004, 67 percent of Latino and 47 percent of African-American students entering college were enrolling in community colleges.  Given the large volume of community colleges in the nation, they provide affordable and convenient options for many groups otherwise underrepresented in other higher education institutions.  Community colleges are also appealing for non-traditional-aged college students, many of whom are juggling families and full time jobs. 

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While I have listed the gapingvoid blog as one of the websites that I visit, I doubt that many readers have visited the site.  Hugh MacLeod, the author of that site, is a marketer.  He has a hobby/profession as a cartoonist and usually illustrates those cartoons on the back of business cards, publishing them on his blog.

MacLeod has taken excerpts from some of his pithiest writings and illustrations from his blog and published a book, Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity, with his thoughts about creativity.  The concepts are MacLeod’s and expressed in his direct, earthy style.  The book is easy to read, totaling 40 chapters and 159 pages.  While I read the entire book, the chapters that I liked the most were:

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The Delta Cost Project recently released a report titled, “Trends in College Spending: Where Does the Money Come From? Where Does it Go?” The report is enlightening given the well-documented increases in college costs combined with the current financial crisis. 

The Forward to the report, written by Delta Cost Project’s Executive Director, Jane Wellman, notes that “Our country needs to increase capacity and improve performance in higher education.  We can’t allow the funding crisis to justify rollbacks in access or quality.”  The report utilizes the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data provided by all institutions of higher education to the U.S. Department of Education, but the authors admit that “private for-profit institutions, an important and growing sector in American higher education, are excluded from the fiscal analyses because of the poor quality of trend data for these institutions.” 

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