Media

It’s U.S. News rankings time again

Posted on by Don Heller

U.S. News & WoCover of U.S. News College Rankings guiderld Report released its annual compendium of rankings of undergraduate colleges and universities across the nation last week.  This is usually an eagerly-awaited event at many institutions around the country, and one with which most of us in leadership positions have a love-hate relationship.  On the one hand, we all decry how the process attempts to reduce what are in most cases large, complex, and multi-mission institutions into a single number.  On the other, we all recognize the attention it generates and the potential impact it can have on the decisions of millions of college-going students.

I’ll cut to the chase and the news everyone is most interested in – USF maintained its top 100 position from the prior year, dropping just one spot from tied for #96 last year to tied for #97.  But like the proverbial duck on the surface of the water, this small change masks a lot what is happening below the surface.

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Senator Warren’s college financing proposals

Posted on by Don Heller

The 2020 campaign for president is already heating up, and the Democratic field includes almost two dozen candidates.  One of them, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, recently unleashed a widely-covered proposal offering “free college” and elimination of student debt for millions of Americans.  In an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, I analyzed why Warren’s proposal is not in the best interests of the nation.

On Charlottesville, and Squirrel Hill, and . . .

Posted on by Don Heller
Grave of Rose Mallinger, may her memory be a blessing (NY Times)
Grave of Rose Mallinger, may her memory be a blessing (NY Times)

As so often happens in the digital age, the news came first via an alert on my cell phone. “Shooting at Pittsburgh synagogue, fatalities reported.” I was in Connecticut that Saturday morning, sitting in a hotel room with my wife, getting ready to celebrate my mother’s 97th birthday with my family. The name Tree of Life Synagogue sounded familiar, so I asked my wife if she remembered if that was the synagogue where we had attended the Bat Mitzvahs of the daughters of very close friends of ours some years earlier.
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Public support for higher education is in trouble again (part 1)

Posted on by Don Heller

This week the Pew Research Center issued a report on the public’s view of higher education in the United States, and the news is not good. The Pew report builds on a similar survey conducted last year, which also found a lack of support for the nation’s colleges and universities.
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More on the Sandusky and Nassar scandals

Posted on by Don Heller

As a follow-up to my piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, I was recently a guest on the Navigating Change podcast, where I talked more lessons for college and university leaders from the Sandusky scandal at Penn State University and the Nassar scandal at Michigan State University.

Sandusky, Nassar, and our responsibility as university leaders

Posted on by Don Heller

I spent much time the last couple of weeks following the sentencing hearing of former Michigan State University professor and doctor Larry Nassar.  I was watching from the perspective of having been associated with now a second university embroiled in a sexual abuse scandal, having worked at Michigan State before coming to USF, and before that, at Penn State University when the Sandusky scandal broke there.  This week I wrote an op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education about my experience at these two institutions, and what it tells us about the responsibility of university leaders.

Why holding an orientation for black students is the right thing to do

Posted on by Don Heller

In the heavily-politicized and racially-charged environment in which our nation finds itself today, I suppose it is not surprising that some observers would seize upon a program like the University of San Francisco’s Black Student Orientation and criticize it as promoting segregation, or providing a benefit from which other students are excluded.

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Why would a high school encourage its students to apply to 100 colleges?

Posted on by Don Heller

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article titled, “They each applied to more than 100 colleges. That may be the problem” (the article is behind the Chronicle’s paywall; here’s a link to it that will be available for a limited period of time). The article’s lede states:

Anisah Karim was by all measures a good student – she earned high grades, took part in her high school’s selective dual-enrollment program, launched her own culinary nonprofit, and participated in a slew of extracurriculars.

But when her college counselor told her to apply to 100 colleges so she could have a chance at becoming a “million-dollar scholar,” a coveted term her school uses to honor students who receive more than a million dollars in scholarship offers, Ms. Karim said she found herself getting pulled out of class and faced with disciplinary action during her senior year for not meeting application requirements.

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Is the American higher education system out of date?

Posted on by Don Heller

Washington Post web page

This week, the Washington Post is running a series titled, “Do we need to remodel our university system?”  The Post invited me to contribute an essay to the series in which I argue that one of the strengths of our system is the many forms of postsecondary educational institutions we have, and that it provides students with many options.  I invite you to read my essay as well as the others in the series.

My reaction to the Fisher v. University of Texas Supreme Court decision

Posted on by Don Heller

 

The Washington Post asked me to write a commentary in response to yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, in which the court upheld the university’s use of race-based affirmative action.  This was a historic decision for the Supreme Court, and an important one for higher education institutions across the country.  As someone who has done research over the last two decades on college access and success for underrepresented students, I was extremely pleased to see the court affirm the importance of allowing colleges and universities to use the tools they need to create a diverse class of students.