The Key with Inside Higher Ed

Earlier this month the University of Arizona announced a deal to acquire Ashford University, a fully online, for-profit institution enrolling roughly 35,000 students. The arrangement, which in some ways resembles Purdue University's 2017 acquisition of Kaplan University, quickly drew lots of attention, and controversy. To help make sense of the news, we spoke with Kelly McManus, director of higher education for Arnold Ventures and formerly director of government affairs for the Education Trust. We also spoke with Trace Urdan, a managing director at Tyton Partners and an expert on for-profit colleges and online education.

Michael Yarbrough, an assistant professor of law and society at the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and his students in a senior colloquium this spring documented the pandemic's impact on CUNY, students in the class and their families. Marjorie Valbrun, a senior editor at Inside Higher Ed, wrote about the group project. And Yarbough wrote about it in a powerful opinion piece in the New York Daily News. For this episode, Valbrun spoke with Yarbrough and Paula-Camila Caceres, a student in the class who helped lead the project, about that experience and how it affected their views about CUNY and higher education.

Many colleges were facing financial pressure before the pandemic. But the crisis has exacerbated those challenges and stoked more questions about the sustainability of colleges with shaky finances.   Nick Ducoff is cofounder and CEO of Edmit, a college financial education company. He has weighed in on this issue with projections of when private colleges are likely to run out of money. We spoke with Nick about those analyses and the gaps he sees in what students and their parents can find out about the financial health of colleges.   We also spoke with Barbara Brittingham, who just stepped down as president of the New England Commission of Higher Education, a regional accreditor. Brittingham has been a well-placed observer of the financial woes of struggling colleges, and is an expert on the U.S. regulatory system's role in overseeing higher education finance.    

Many questions loom about remote learning in coming months. Will online offerings from colleges be more sophisticated? What steps need to be taken to ensure academic quality in online learning? And will short-term credentials be more popular?   To get some answers to these tricky questions, we spoke with Lori Williams, president and CEO of NC-SARA. Williams discussed ideas from an opinion piece she wrote for Inside Higher Ed on the role for states in quality assurance in online education.   We also spoke with Marni Baker Stein, provost and chief academic officer for Western Governors University. Stein spoke about how the large, online and competency-based university has worked to help its students cope with disruptions, as well as her outlook for the fall and the potential for short-term programs.

In roughly a month, many colleges and universities are planning to welcome back students to campus-based learning. But surging COVID-19 cases across much of the country have kept college administrators busy adjusting their plans. The University of Kentucky this spring brought together more than 500 people to create its 187-page "Playbook for Reinvented Operations." The flagship public university also has been particularly open about how it's dealing with the pandemic. We spoke with Eli Capilouto, UK's president and an expert on public health policy, about how the university developed the playbook, and how it's continuing to prepare for the looming fall term. Also featured in this episode is Erin Hennessy, vice president of TVP Communications, who wrote a recent opinion piece for Inside Higher Ed about how circumstances may force colleges to change their fall plans. Hennessy, who is based in D.C., also spoke about how institutions should communicate about those plans.

The pandemic has exposed and worsened equity gaps in higher education, as its impacts have been felt most by Black, Latino and lower-income Americans. What policies and incentives could help close those gaps? To help grasp the scope of the challenge, we spoke with Michelle Asha Cooper, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a nonpartisan research and policy group. Cooper talked about why higher education needs to change, and how. We also spoke with Kim Cook, executive director of the National College Attainment Network, which has been tracking federal data that suggest some lower-income students may leave higher education. Cook spoke about doubling federal Pell Grant awards and other policies she'd like to see enacted. This episode is sponsored by the ECMC Foundation, which supports building a postsecondary education system that works for all learners through its grant making focus areas of college success and career readiness.

A steep decline in enrollments of international students is among the wide range of possible disruptions U.S. colleges face this fall. To get an entrepreneurial take on what to watch in coming months, we spoke with two experts with global perspectives on higher education and ed tech. John Fillmore is chief strategy officer for Chegg, a learning platform company formerly focused on textbook rentals, which now offers credentials, online tutoring and more. Our conversation with Fillmore also drew from his background as a former planning and research official for California. We also spoke with Doug Becker, the founder and former CEO of Laureate Education, a large higher-education provider with a global footprint. Becker now leads Cintana, a partnership with Arizona State University to create an international network of universities. This episode is sponsored by the ECMC Foundation, which supports building a postsecondary education system that works for all learners through its grant making focus areas of college success and career readiness.

The pandemic and unrest over racism in society have further exposed existing inequity in higher education and the workforce. For example, survey data from the Strada Education Network show that black and Latino Americans are more likely than white Americans to have been laid off during the crisis, and to have changed or canceled their postsecondary education plans. To get a broad perspective on these problems, we spoke with Johnny Taylor, president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management. Taylor is the former president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and was appointed by President Trump to chair the White House advisory board on historically black colleges and universities. We also spoke with Lorelle Espinosa, vice president for research at the American Council on Education. Espinosa has researched how minority-serving institutions serve as engines of upward mobility, and she's an expert on equity in higher education. This episode is sponsored by the ECMC Foundation, which supports building a postsecondary education system that works for all learners through its grant making focus areas of college success and career readiness.

Several colleges and universities have eliminated intercollegiate sports teams in recent weeks, just as big-time college football gears up for a season filled with uncertainty amid a time of great unrest over racism in society. Welch Suggs, a professor at the University of Georgia, former journalist and university administrator, talked with us about what's happening with revenue-generating college sports, team cuts and efforts to protect the health of football players in coming weeks. Suggs discusses whether this moment could provoke reflection about the purpose of college athletics. This episode is sponsored by the ECMC Foundation, which supports building a postsecondary education system that works for all learners through its grant making focus areas of college success and career readiness.

The University of Alaska, Anchorage, in recent years has experienced its share of tight budgets and other crises, including an earthquake and merger proposals. Cathy Sandeen, chancellor of the multi-campus institution, talked with us about how the university remains focused on its open-access mission and trying to prevent the creation of education deserts amid the budget turmoil and other challenges. For a national view of the murky revenue and policy outlooks for public colleges, we spoke with Brian Sponsler, vice president of policy at the Education Commission of the States. This episode is sponsored by the ECMC Foundation, which supports building a postsecondary education system that works for all learners through its grant making focus areas of college success and career readiness.