John O. Harney: My new parcels of volunteer life

The author overseeng coneflowers at the Rose Kennedy Greenway

Inspired by the story of George Orwell caring for his roses while writing masterpiece essays, I looked forward to a retirement spent partly watching over the plants on Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway. Sure, I got a bit stressed over whether the fading white blooms I saw were Virginia Sweetspire Itea Virginica or Witch Alder Fothergilla. As I had earlier over whether the purple perennials were Salvia or Veronica. But for the most part, my most stressful dilemma would be choosing which dim sum joint to hit near the Greenway’s Chinatown “parcel.”

As for my own essays, never brilliant like Orwell’s, they’ve slowed to a crawl since the beginning of this year, when after 30-plus years, I left the editorship of The New England Journal of Higher Education and began volunteering in phenology at the Greenway. (Regrettably, I may have planted a kiss of death on the journal, where you’ll see few new postings since my departure.)

Fearing America’s increasing flirtations with nationalism and Us vs. Them politics, I also began volunteering in English language teaching at the Immigrant Learning Center, in Malden, Mass.

On the Greenway

Early on, a Greenway staff member gave me her cell number in case I needed help ID’ing plants or, she quipped, if I needed to report anything unusual on the Greenway, “like a body.” A staffer mentioned during an earlier volunteer pruning day, “the Greenway is enjoyed by all kinds of people so watch out for needles as you clean up around plants.”

Then Greenway retirement gig also reminded of my work days, attending economic conferences at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, directly across the street from Parcel 22. That Dewey Square stretch of gardens was then housing Boston’s version of the Occupy Wall Street movement. (Sometimes, feeling out of place in my ill-fitting suit, I wished that I was helping their cause rather than returning to my office.) By now, though, the whiff of rebellion had yielded to a riot of pink and white Coneflowers Echinacea and a Boxwoody imperial fragrance in the parcel near the Fed.

Sunflowers on the Greenway

Earlier in the summer, the Greenway folks worked with local nonprofit groups from Roxbury to plant massive stands of Sunflowers, the unofficial flower of my daughter-in-law’s war-torn Ukraine. In August, the Sunflowers bloomed gloriously around the vent and mural on Parcel 22. But more recently, it looked like some force had crashed into the middle of the main patch, pushing the Sunflower stocks outward like the Tunguska event in Siberia.

Nearby, I’m fascinated by the Pawpaw tree because of my childhood memory of a nursery rhyme that went: “Where, oh where oh where is Johnny [personalized for me], way down yonder in the Pawpaw patch.”

I’m also drawn to the paver my kids and I placed at the corner of Milk Street for my wife, saying “Joanne Harney We Love You.” I still check on the paver when I go to visit my “parcels.” And it looks sharp, as if a good angel has been coming along and buffing it. A half-joke in my house was that we could all meet there in case of disaster (though the urban location 500 feet or so from a rising sea may not be a safe haven forever).

I am also heartened by the Greenway’s small steps in food equity. In the edible garden, a sign reads:

ATTENTION GARDEN VISITORS: Please help us share the harvest!
The produce grown here is specifically cultivated and donated to our local homeless shelters.
Kindly refrain from picking the food to ensure it reaches those in need.
Your cooperation will help us make a difference in our community.

I’ve noted the ferny asparagus and carrots as well as strong corn and tomatillos. One day, a woman emerged from near a small houseless encampment and asked me if there was any mint in the garden. I said I thought there was some in Parcel 22, to which, she seemed relieved, saying that her husband, who camps out with her, eats it from time to time. A staffer suggested some of the Milkweeds in the gardens were planted secretly by visitors hoping to encourage Monarch Butterflies on the Greenway.

Ricinus

But I assume all know the stay clear of the purplish-leaved Ricinus growing in a galvanized bucket on Parcel 22 … host of the castor bean but also of famously deadly ricin.

My confines became Pearl, Congress and Purchase streets and Atlantic Avenue. The key reference points in my geographic descriptions were: the restaurant Trade, the Brazilian consulate with its national flag, the Native American Land Acknowledgment, the various Greenway maintenance sheds (and hangouts for the houseless), the Fed, the Red Line plaza, the Purchase Street tunnel (a reminder that the Greenway sits just a matter of a few feet over an interstate highway) and my favorite landmark, the Japanese Umbrella Pine in Parcel 21.

At the Immigrant Learning Center

Given America’s xenophobia, I also wanted to use my newly found time to help marginalized people in immigrant communities. I had tried to cover their predicament editorially in the journal. But retirement brought a new commitment. Reasoning that my decades of editing was something like teaching English, I applied for volunteer teaching of adults at the Immigrant Learning Center.

It has been a great pleasure to work with new immigrants from Haiti, Vietnam, China, Syria, Rwanda and elsewhere. When I helped one Syrian student read a children’s book about Winnie the Pooh, the description of the One Hundred Acre Wood reminded me of the Greenway work.

Many of the countries of origin of students at the center share a history of exploitation by the U.S., where these innocents fervently want to settle.

I have covered a few subjects probably too subtly for non-English speakers. Holidays, for example. I explained that Memorial Day was a day to remember people who had died. Sure, it was originally people who died in wars, but really anyone who’s died. Back to my old view that people who resisted the Vietnam War were as worthy of honor on Veterans Day as those who served.

Of Juneteenth, I tried to explain that while Americans say that they believe all are created equal, the concept of slavery clearly ran counter to that. And I reminded the many Haitians in the class that Haiti was among the many countries that abolished slavery before the U.S. I also mentioned to the Haitian students that I was rooting for the Haiti women’s national soccer team in the World Cup. To which, I was asked to explain the meaning of “rooting for.”

The immigrant lessons also teach much about the U.S. economy. One exercise focuses on occupations such as dishwasher, house cleaner, delivery driver and “manager.” One student noted getting a pay raise of 50 cents per hour—a modest honor. In one lesson, my lead teacher, himself a Haitian immigrant, drilled students on the difference between odd from even numbers … somewhat unimportant I thought until he noted smartly that Americans increasingly were getting shot knocking on the wrong doors.

Too much analytics

My aversion to analytics—clearly taking over the worlds of higher education and journalism that I recently fled—hobbles me even in volunteer life.

The Greenway folks prefer describing bloom progress with number rankings rather than comments. To make matters worse, the rankings are not the usual, 1 is best and 5 is worst, or vice versa. Instead, 3 is the best. It is peak flowering, then 4 is much less and 5 about done. 1 signifies just starting to bloom and 2 is progressing. Even an amateur like me can take a stab at peak flowering, but discriminating between 1 and 2 and between 4 and 5 is much tougher. And what to think of the Lamb’s Ear whose foliage graced two large banks in Parcel 21 but only shot out one flower on my watch.

The ranking snafu is familiar to anyone pestered by evaluation requests whenever you buy a product or service these days. As a former writer and editor, I’m happier with my rough notes than my arbitrary rankings.

I tell myself I may be a small part of a grand repository of plant info, or at least some effort to introduce identifying plant tags, which the Greenway lacks. Or an “interactive bloom tracker,” which sees to be always out of order when I try it. Of course, the data may be going into a black hole. But for me, the exercise is worth it.

The immigration educators understandably discourage use of synonyms, puns and anecdotes that may just confuse new English learners. All tough for a guy who considered himself “thoughtful,” but may have really been “wordy” and “unfocused.”

John O. Harney: All you can eat — interesting data From New England and beyond

From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

BOSTON

The ranks of New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine as the least diverse states in America, based on measures of socioeconomic, cultural, economic, household, religious and political diversity: 47th, 48th, 49th WalletHub

Ranks of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire among the most expensive U.S. states to retire in: 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 10th, 14th Bankrate

Increase in lifetime earning associated with lifetime labor union membership: $1,300,000 Parolin, Z., & VanHeuvelen, T., The Cumulative Advantage of a Unionized Career for Lifetime Earnings, ILR Review

Support for labor unions among Gen Zers (defined as being 23 years old or younger in 2020): 64% Center for American Progress

World rank of California’s economy if it were a country: 5th (soon to be 4th) Bloomberg News

Percentage of Americans who rely on autocorrect to correct misspellings: 79% Unscrambled Words

Percentage who say they judge someone who often misspells: 61% Unscrambled Words

Share of New Bedford (Mass.) High School students who were “chronically absent” in 2022, meaning they missed at least 18 days, or 10% of school: 70% The New Bedford Light on NAEP Data

Number of reports of book bans received by the nonprofit PEN America during a nine-month period from July 2021 through March 2022: 1,586 PEN America (PEN American reports 671 additional book bans during that period have come to light. A further 275 more bans followed from April through June, bringing the total for the 2021-22 school year to 2,532 bans.)

Percentage of those banned books that had a protagonist or main character of color: 41% PEN America

Percentage of those banned books that had LGBTQ themes: 33% PEN America

Number of America’s approximately 90,000 school board members who are known to be LGBTQ: 90 Victory Institute

Number of additional LGBTQ school board members who would have to be elected to match the 7% of the adult U.S. population that identifies as LGBTQ: 6,300 Victory Institute

At Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Mass.

From 2010 to 2015, Harvard University’s admission rate for “legacy” applicants with at least one Harvard-educated parent: 34%  Jennifer Lee, sociology professor at Columbia University, op-ed in Los Angeles Times

Admission rate for “non-legacy” applicants who do not have a Harvard-educated parent: 6% Jennifer Lee, sociology professor at Columbia University, op-ed in Los Angeles Times

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education.

Painting of “Still Life with Kitaj’s Death mask,” by Montserrat College of Art (Beverly, Mass.) professor Timothy Harney.

John O. Harney: Marketing abortion ruling; armed youth; ‘don’t say gay’ in Greenwich; not the ‘Flutie Effect’

Map by Tpwissaa

Greenwich, Conn., High School

From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

BOSTON

Could the anti-choice, forced-birth culture of the U.S. Supreme Court and many U.S. states present an advantage for New England economic boosters?

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker told reporters that he had heard from a lot of companies that the recent Supreme Court decision removing the federal protection of the right to abortion may offer a big opportunity for Massachusetts to attract some employers whose employees would want access to reproductive-health services. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont called on businesses in states that limit abortion access to consider relocating to Connecticut.

In the context of choosing where to start or expand a business, big employers have occasionally written off New England as “old and cold” compared with economically and meteorologically sunnier spots. However, a 1999 poll by the University of Connecticut’s Center for Survey Research and Analysis, while admittedly dated, found an interesting niche for New England. International site-selection consultants, accustomed to Europe’s pricey, regulated environments, were less concerned with New England’s notoriously high costs than domestic site-selection pros. Key issues for the international consultants were access to higher education, an educated workforce and good infrastructure. 

Peter Denious, chief executive of Advance CT, a business-development organization, recently told the Connecticut Mirror that such issues as diversity, equity and inclusion—and the state’s commitment to clean energy—could all help Connecticut align with the corporate goals of certain companies.

Our culture of active government, unionization and especially our human- resource development, could bode well once again in relatively enlightened New England.

Anti-semitism rising: The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported 2,717 anti-semitic incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism in 2021 in the U.S., the highest number since the ADL began tracking anti-semitic incidents in 1979, according to the group’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. These included more than 180 anti-semitic incidents in New England. And nationally, 155 anti-semitic incidents were reported at more than 100 college campuses. Meanwhile, tension between anti-semitism and anti-zionism, including the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, is challenging on campuses and beyond

Packing heat. More than 1 million U.S. adolescents (ages 12 to 17) said they had carried a handgun in 2019-20, up 41% from about 865,000 in 2002-03, according to a study by researchers at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, using data from the National Survey on Drug Use & Health. The socio-demographic profile of the gun carriers also changed. Carrying rates grew from 3.1% to 5.3% among white adolescents, from 2.6% to 5.1% among higher-income adolescents, and from 4.3% to 6.9% among rural adolescents between, while rates among Black, American Indian/Alaskan Native and lower-income adolescents decreased.

“Don’t Say Gay” here? In April, Mount Holyoke College President Sonya Stephens wrote here that Florida legislation dubbed by opponents the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, was part of a nationwide wave of proposal laws linking divisive issues of race, sexual orientation and gender identity to parents’ concerns about what their children are being taught in public schools. These bills not only undermine the real progress that LGBTQ+ people have made in society over the past 50 years, Stephens wrote, but they also further erode trust in some of our most under-compensated public servants: school teachers and administrators.

On July 1, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona noted that the Florida parents and families he’d spoken with said the legislation doesn’t represent them and that it put students in danger of bullying and worse mental health outcomes.

In Cardona’s home state of Connecticut, meanwhile, the Greenwich School Board adopted a new Title IX policy unanimously, but not without controversy. Edson Rivas and Colin Hosten of the Fairfield County-based Triangle Community Center Board of Directors wrote in Connecticut Viewpoints that the policy adopted by the Greenwich School Board “conspicuously removes any language referring to gender identity and sexual orientation” which was part of the original version of the policy introduced last fall. The board replied that “this policy covers all students, whether or not certain language is included.” But Rivas and Hosten aren’t buying it. “If the substance of the policy remains the same, as they say, then the only effect of removing the language about gender identity and sexual orientation is the linguistic pseudo-erasure of the LGBTQ+ community in Greenwich Public Schools.”

Truth to tell: Recently, the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) named 75 higher-education institutions to participate in the 2022 Institute on Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers as part of an effort to dismantle racial hierarchies.

As we at NEBHE and others have wrestled with a “reckoning” on race, gender and so many other wrongs, the “truth and reconciliation” concept has always made sense to me. Check out, for example, the thoughtful book Honest Patriots exploring how true patriots in post-World War II Germany, post-apartheid South Africa and the U.S. in the the aftermath of slavery and the genocide of Native Americans loved their country enough to acknowledge and repent for its misdeeds.

Under the AAC&U initiative, campus teams develop action plans to advance the parts of the TRHT framework: narrative change, racial healing and relationship building, separation, law and economy. The institute helps campus teams to prepare to facilitate racial-healing activities on their campus and in their communities; examine current realities of race relations in their communities and the local history that has led to them; identify evidence-based strategies that support their vision of what their communities will look, feel and be like when the belief in the hierarchy of human value no longer exists, and learn to pinpoint critical levers for change and to engage key stakeholders.

Among participating New England institutions: Landmark College, Middlesex Community College, Mount Holyoke College, Suffolk University, the University of Connecticut and Westfield State University.

Another problem with over-incarceration. NEBHE has published a policy brief about the effects of higher education on incarcerated people in New England prisons and jails—and increasingly broached conversations about the dilemmas created by the world’s biggest incarcerator — America. Now, another byproduct surfaces: Children with an incarcerated parent have exceedingly low levels of education. The most common education level for respondents from a low-income family who had an incarcerated parent was elementary school, according to research by a group of Wake Forest University students who put together an article for the Nation Fund for Independent Journalism. The students set out to understand how the academic achievement, mental health and future income of children of incarcerated parents compare to those with deceased parents. Just under 60% as many respondents with an incarcerated parent completed a university education compared to the baseline of respondents with neither an incarcerated nor deceased parent.

Acquisition of Maguire: I first heard the term “Flutie Effect” in the context of former Boston College Admissions Director Jack Maguire. The term refers to the admissions deluge after the BC quarterback Doug Flutie threw the famed Hail Mary pass (caught by the less-famous Gerald Phelan) in 1984. Flutie won the Heisman Trophy, then pursued a pro career, first with Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals in the USFL and then in the Canadian Football League, with a few bumpy stops in the NFL.

But Maguire attributed BC’s good fortune not to the diminutive quarterback but to the college’s “investments in residence halls, academic facilities, and financial aid.” In 1983, Maguire, a theoretical physicist by training, founded Maguire Associates and introduced the concept of “enrollment management,” combining sophisticated analytical techniques, customized research and deep experience in education leadership with a genuine enthusiasm for client partnerships. Maguire became a sort of admissions guru whose insights we have been pleased to feature.

Now, higher-education marketing and enrollment strategy firm Carnegie has announced it is buying Maguire Associates. Not to be confused with the foundation that administered the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, which recently moved to the American Council on Education, nor the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which has encouraged disarmament, this Carnegie, also founded in the 1980s and based in Westford, Mass., is formally known as Carnegie Dartlet LLC. Its pitch: “We are right definers. We are your intelligence. We are truth revealers. We are your clarity. We are obstacle breakers. We are your partners. We are audience shapers. We are your connection. We are brand illuminators. We are your insight. We are story forgers. We are your voice. We are connection creators. …”

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education.

John O. Harney: Some big changes at the top

The (Brutalist) Federal Reserve Bank of Boston tower, at the edge of the Boston financial district.

— Photo by Fox-orian 

(New England Diary is catching up with this report, first published Feb. 15.)

From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

BOSTON

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston named University of Michigan Provost Susan M. Collins to be the bank’s next president and CEO. An international macroeconomist, Collins will be the first Black woman to lead a regional bank in the 108-year history of the Fed system. In addition to being the University of Michigan’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, Collins is the Edward M. Gramlich Collegiate Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics. She holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She will succeed Eric Rosengren, who retired in September after 14 years leading the Boston Fed.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology President L. Rafael Reif announced he will leave the post he has held for the past decade at the end of 2022. A native of Venezuela, Reif began working at MIT as an electrical engineering professor in 1980, then served seven years as provost before being named president in 2012. Among other things, he presided over a $1 billion commitment to a new College of Computing to address the global opportunities and challenges presented by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and oversaw the revitalization of MIT’s physical campus and the neighboring Kendall Square in Cambridge, Mass. Reif said he will take a sabbatical, then return to MIT’s faculty in its Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Tufts University President Anthony Monaco told the campus that he will step down in the summer of 2023 after 12 years leading the university. A geneticist by training, Monaco ran a center for human genetics at Oxford University in the U.K. and, at Tufts, worked with the Broad Institute on COVID-19 testing programs that helped universities return to in-person learning. Among his accomplishments, Monaco oversaw the university’s 2016 acquisition of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston as well as the removal of the “Sackler” name from its medical school after the Sackler family and its company, Purdue Pharma, were found to be key players in the opioid crisis.

The Biden administration tapped David Cash, dean of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at UMass Boston and former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, to be the regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in New England.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The England Journal of Higher Education.

John O. Harney: An early look at 2022’s college-commencement season in New England

BOSTON

From The New England Journal of Higher Education (NEJHE), a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE.org)

Long before COVID changed everything, NEJHE and NEBHE’s Twitter channel kept a close eye on New England college commencements. “The annual spring descent on New England campuses of distinguished speakers, ranging from Nobel laureates to Pulitzer Prize winners to grassroots miracle-workers, offers a precious reminder of what makes New England higher education higher,” we bragged. “It is a lecture series without equal.”

In the past two pandemic years, we tracked a lot of postponements and virtual commencements on this beat, as well as Olin College of Engineering’s March 2020 “fauxmencement” ceremony right before coronavirus shut down the campus. Some medical schools at the time moved up graduation dates so graduates could join New England’s COVID-fighting health-care workforce. Dr. Anthony Fauci addressed graduates of the College of Holy Cross, his alma mater.

Going virtual meant hard times for some small New England communities where college-commencement days were crucial to local hospitality providers and the economy. Not to be confused with such larger commencement hosts as the Dunkin Donuts Center for Rhode Island College and Providence College and TD Garden for Northeastern University (switched to Fenway Park during COVID).

This year, as we all hope the pandemic is easing, some New England colleges plan to celebrate not only the class of 2022, but also the classes of 2020 and 2021—for the most part, in person.

Many years, we would pay special attention to the first few announcements of the season. When there was a season. Generally it was spring in the old days. But today’s nontraditional student pursing higher ed on a nontraditional academic calendar might just as easily graduate in January … or any other time for the matter.

As with other stubborn aspects of higher ed, the richest institutions often announced the heavy hitters, though sleepers at quieter places add special value too (think Paul Krugman at Bard College at Simon’s Rock or Rue Mapp at Unity College).

Harvard University, for its part, announced that the principal speaker at its 369th commencement, on May 26, would be New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Not a bad pick. Ardern has been lauded for her work on climate change and gender equality and, lately on how she has guided New Zealand through COVID. Harvard noted she will be “the 17th sitting world leader to deliver the address.”

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education.

John O. Harney: Update on college news in New England

At Wheaton College, which has done very well in facing COVID-19. Left to right: Emerson Hall, Larcom Hall, Park Hall, Mary Lyon Hall, Knapton Hall and Cole Chapel.

BOSTON

From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

Faculty diversity. In the early 1990s, NEBHE, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) collaborated to develop the first Compact for Faculty Diversity. Formally launched in 1994, with support from the Ford Foundation and Pew Charitable Trust, the compact focused on five key strategies: motivating states and universities to increase financial support for minorities in doctoral programs; increasing institutional support packages to include multiyear fellowships, along with research and teaching assistantships to promote integration into academic departments and doctoral completion; incentivizing academic departments to create supportive environments for minority students through mentorship; sponsoring an annual institute to build support networks and promote teaching ability; and building collaborations for student recruitment to graduate study. With reduced foundation support, collaboration among the three participating regional education compacts declined, but some core compact activities continued through SREB.

Now, NEBHE and its sister regional compacts are launching a collaborative, nine-month planning process to reinvigorate and expand a national Compact for Faculty Diversity. Under the proposed new compact, NEBHE, the Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC), SREB and WICHE would collaborate to invest in the achievement of diversity, equity and inclusion in faculty and staff at postsecondary institutions in all 50 states. Ansley Abraham, the founding director of the SREB State Doctoral Scholars Program at the SREB, has been instrumental in the design and execution of that initiative. He recently published this short piece in Inside Higher Ed.

Fighting COVID. As the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned of the roughest winter in U.S. public-health history, Wheaton College has stood out. Our Wheaton, in Norton, Mass. (not to be confused with the Wheaton College in Illinois) developed a plan based on science that has kept positive cases low on campus and allowed in-person classes during the fall semester. Wheaton was able to limit the college’s overall fall semester case count to 23 (a .06 positivity rate among 35,000 tests) due to strong protocols, rigorous testing through the Cambridge, Mass.-based Broad Institute and a shared commitment from the community, especially students. In early November, as cases were spiking across the U.S., the private liberal arts college had its own spike of 13 positive cases in one day. But thanks to immediate contact tracing in partnership with the Massachusetts Community Tracing Collaborative, only one positive case resulted after that day, notes President Dennis Hanno. Part of Wheaton’s success owes to its twice-a-week testing throughout the semester. The college also credits its work with the for-profit In-House Physicians to complement internal staff in managing on-campus testing and quarantine/isolation housing.

New England in D.C. The COVID-19 crisis should make national health positions crucial. Earlier this week, President-elect Joe Biden tapped Dr. Rochelle Walensky, an infectious disease physician at Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, to lead the CDC and Dr. Vivek Murthy, who attended Harvard and Yale and did his residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to be surgeon general. They’ll work with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor and College of the Holy Cross graduate who has served six presidents.

Last month, as Biden’s transition team began drawing on the nation’s colleges and universities to prepare to take the reins of government, we flashed back to a 2009 NEJHE piece when Barack Obama was stocking his first administration. “As they form their White House brain trusts, new presidents tend to mine two places for talent: their home states and New England—especially New England’s universities, and especially Harvard,” we noted at the time. Most recently, two New England Congresswomen have scored big promotions on Capitol Hill. Rosa DeLauro (D.-Conn.) became Appropriations chair and Katherine Clark (D.-Mass.) was elected assistant speaker of the House. Richard Neal (D.-Mass.) was already chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

Indebted. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.), long a champion of canceling student debt, called on Biden to take executive action to cancel student loan debt. “All on his own, President-elect Biden will have the ability to administratively cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt using the authority that Congress has already given to the secretary of education,” she told a Senate Banking Committee hearing. “This is the single most effective economic stimulus that is available through executive action.” About 43 million Americans have a combined total of $1.5 trillion in federal student loan debt. Such debt has been shown to discourage big purchases, growth of new businesses and rates of home ownership among other life milestones. Warren has outlined a plan in which Biden can cancel up to $50,000 in federal student loan debt for borrowers.

Jobless recovery? Everyone knew the public health crisis would be accompanied by an economic crisis. This week, Moody’s Investors Service projected that the 2021 outlook for the U.S. higher-education sector remains negative, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to threaten enrollment and revenue streams. The sector’s operating revenue will decline by 5 percent to 10 percent over the next year, Moody’s projected. The pace of economic recovery remains uncertain, and some universities have issued or refinanced debt to bolster liquidity. (As this biting piece notes, “Just as decreased state funding has caused students to go into debt to cover tuition and fees, universities have taken on debt to keep their doors open.”)

The name of the game for many higher education institutions (HEIs) is coronavirus relief money from the federal government. NEBHE has written letters to Congress calling for increased relief based on the many New England students and families struggling with reduced incomes or job loss and the costs associated with resuming classes that were significantly higher than anticipated. These costs have been growing based on regular virus testing, contact tracing, health monitoring, quarantining, building reconfigurations, expanded health services, intensified cleaning and the ongoing transition to virtual learning. Citing data from the National Student Clearinghouse, NEBHE estimated that New England’s institutions in all sectors lost tuition and fee revenue of $413 million. And that’s counting only revenue from tuition and fees. Most institutions also face additional budget shortfalls due to lost auxiliary revenues (namely, from room and board) and the high costs of compliance with new health regulations and the administration of COVID-19 tests to students, faculty and staff. (When the relief money is spent and by whom is important too. Tom Brady’s sports performance company snagged a Paycheck Protection Program loan of $960,855 in April.) Anna Brown, an economist at Emsi, told our friends at the Boston Business Journal that higher-ed staffers working in dorms, maintenance roles, housing and food services have been hit hard, and faculty will not be far behind

Admissions blast from the past. I’ve overheard too many conversations lately with reference to “testing” and wondered if the subject was COVID testing or interminable academic exams. Given admissions tests being de-emphasized by colleges, we were reminded me of a 10-year-old piece by Tufts University officials on how novel admissions questions would move applicants to flaunt their creativity. The authors told of how “Admissions officers use Kaleidoscope, as well as the other traditional elements of the application, to rate each applicant on one or more of four scales: wise thinking, analytical thinking, practical thinking and creative thinking.” Could be their moment?

Anti-wokism. The U.S. Department of Education held “What is to be Done? Confronting a Culture of Censorship on Campus” on Dec. 8 (presumably not deliberately on the anniversary of John Lennon’s assassination). The hook was to unveil the department’s “Free Speech Hotline” to take complaints of campus violations. The event organizers contended that “Due to strong demand, the event capacity has been increased!” The department’s Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education Robert King began noting that we’ll hear from “victims of cancel culture’s pernicious compact” where generally “administrators cave to the mob and punish the culprit.” He noted, “Coming  just behind this are Communist-style re-education camps” and assured the audience that the department has launched several investigations into these kinds of offenses like those that land awkwardly in my inbox from Campus Reform. Universities are no place for “wokism,” one speaker warned, adding that calls for diversity and tolerance actually aim to squelch unpopular opinions.

Welcome dreamers. Last week, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to how it was before the administration announced plans to end it in September 2017. DACA provides protection against deportation and work authorization to certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. DACA participants include many current and former college students. NEBHE issued a statement in support of DACA in September 2017 and has advocated for the initiative’s support.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education.

John O. Harney: The changing public perceptions of higher education

View of Middlebury College, in the quintessential college town of Middlebury, Vt.,  with the Green Mountains in the background.

Via the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

American confidence in higher education began waning at just the time that more people began to see colleges as more concerned about their bottom lines than about education and making sure students have a good education experience, Public Agenda President Will Friedman told educators gathered in Boston on Monday at a NEBHE panel discussion on “The Changing Public Perceptions of the Value of Higher Education: Is It a Public Good?”

The discussion was moderated by Kirk Carapezza, managing editor at WGBH, a NEBHE partner. N.H state Rep. Terry Wolf, a NEBHE delegate, offered one state’s response.

The benefits of going to college and the importance of higher education institutions were once held to be a creed as American as apple pie. But recurring state budget challenges have constrained investment. Consistently rising tuitions—fueled by increasing college costs—have alarmed many. Politics and free-speech controversies have raised questions about college and universities’ openness and balance of perspectives. In short, times have changed.

Questions swirl:

How are public opinions toward higher education changing?

Why are higher education’s value propositions suspect in the eyes of some policymakers and citizens?

Does this division mirror party lines?

Has higher education been fairly—or falsely—tarred as inefficient?

Has the higher ed enterprise overcompensated for these perceptions by obsessing with business models and efficiency?

What has this apparent shift meant to egalitarian higher education concepts such as need-blind admissions, sabbaticals (ideally to pursue deep thinking), basic vs. applied research, and tenure (especially to protect academic freedom)?

What has it meant for the role of expert faculty informing civic policy outside academe and enriching discourse as “public scholars”?

What about the role of so-called “college towns” sustaining bookstores, theaters, cafes and other businesses favored by college students, budding entrepreneurs, faculty and visitors?

NEBHE was an “early adopter” of the higher education-economic development connection. What role can NEBHE play in balancing New England’s interest in advancing knowledge … and growing its knowledge economy?

Friedman said it wouldn’t be a tremendous shock if prospective students were beginning to question the value of higher ed. Every major institution except the military and libraries have lost major credibility, he said.

Most people still believe higher education is the key to the American dream. And indeed, a surfeit of data continues to show that the more higher education one has, the higher their salary. (Notably, Tom Mortenson, the longtime publisher of Postsecondary Education Opportunity, has also compiled trend data showing states with better-educated populations show better measures of economic, civic, physical and social health, ranging from higher citizen voting rates to lower infant mortality rates.)

But after years of going up, the percentage of people saying higher ed is necessary to success has begun to go down. One reason is student debt. Another is the decline in stable middle-class jobs.

Plus, there’s a partisan dynamic. Pew research shows that among Republicans specifically, the question of whether higher ed has a positive effect in the country fell off the cliff in 2015. In a 2017 survey from Civis Analytics, 46% of Republicans said they were concerned that colleges were pushing people toward a specific political view, compared with 5% of Democrats.

Carapezza recalled that when his WGBH crew visited schools in Germany, they learned that student debt was viewed there as shame (one audience member whispered that it's also seen that way in U.S. minority neighborhoods). Higher ed in Germany, Carapezza said, is seen as a public good, whereas here it is seen as a private gain.

Wolf conceded that some legislators would be happy to totally defund higher education. And negative perceptions spread quickly via social media. She urged leaders to change the way they talk about higher education. If you have a bachelor’s degree it means you can make a million dollars more over your career than someone with a high school diploma only. So why doesn’t an ad campaign promote the chance to make a million dollars?

Plus, a legislator, Wolf said she has to take care of senior citizens and tackle the opioid epidemic before helping college students who, she noted, could be aided less expensively though dual enrollment with high schools.

Some audience members lamented that we were educating too many social workers vs. carpenters (because you can see what they do)—somewhat reminiscent of a campaigning Marco Rubio’s concerns that we need more welders and fewer philosophers.

Of course, we need both.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education, part of NEBHE.

John O. Harney: September song -- jobs, demographics, town & gown, etc.

September, from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.

Via the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

Post-Labor Days. For many, that means time to put away the white pants and relish that last summer getaway. Few will reflect on the true meaning of Labor Day (and May Day) or the too-often-denigrated labor movement in general. Fewer will think of the 19th Century mill girls in Lowell, Mass., and their successors who risked their jobs—and sometimes their lives—to create the day of recognition for workers. Many of today’s employers keep their shifts going even during Labor Day. Many professionals dabble with work even during the paid time off the labor movement won for them (though even today the U.S. is the only "first world economy" that doesn’t require employers to offer any paid time off).

As historian Charles Scontras, of the University of Maine’s Bureau of Labor Education, recently noted, “Workers whose knowledge and skills are increasing[ly] linked to increased productivity and the creation of wealth, and who may have viewed with indifference the movement of manufacturing abroad for the past few decades are, themselves, increasingly experiencing living on the edge of economic insecurity.” Many students, meanwhile, got back to class in late August; speed counts. Labor Day is not what it used to be.

But labor is more crucial than ever.

Indeed, NEBHE’s Commission on Higher Education & Employability is heating up. The Commission will host a panel discussion at NEBHE’s board meeting on Sept. 14 in Maine, a full Commission meeting on Sept. 27 at Carbonite, in Boston, and a summit Dec. 4 at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

The Commission is not some set of crass commercial tasks, but rather a deliberate initiative to help all New Englanders find fulfilling jobs and, in so doing, enrich the region’s economy. One concern for the Commission is bringing adult workers into the workplace to capitalize on the aging of the region's population; Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire have the oldest median agesin America. Why not go a step further and redouble efforts to make New England a world leader in all things geriatric, including deploying the region’s fabled health research expertise in a well-funded, concentrated fight against the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease?

The other side of New England's demographic challenge is the need to engage groups who have not always been well-served by education. Obviously, Donald Trump’s suggestion to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) will not help.

A different brain drain. On the subject of age, New England is losing its claim to an 88-year-old genius. Famed left-wing social critic Noam Chomsky announced last month that he is leaving MIT, where he has been a linguistics professor since 1955, to join the linguistics department at the University of Arizona. Brain drain is a common worry. And the drain is often the Sun Belt (at least before climate change was understood). But the brain drain is more commonly seen through the lens of New England losing workers than losing intellectual capital, especially academics such as Chomsky who have lost favor among corporate-minded higher ed thinkers.

You work too much. Most students (59 percent) work during college. But like countless moms advised, the key is moderation. Working while in college can be a good strategy for students from low-income families to get through and get ahead in college, especially if their enlightened employers offer flexibility. But an ACT Center for Equity for Learning report suggests that working more than 15 hours a week while in college may do more harm than good—especially for students from underserved backgrounds.

The findings come just as the Trump administration proposes cutting $500 million from the federal work-study program; some estimate that would lead to only 333,000 students awarded work-study aid in 2018, compared with 634,000 in 2017.

College readiness is inherently involved in the employability effort. Even in the age of alternative credentials, higher education of some sort is critical to the region’s employability future. Much talked-about 21st Century skills generally include: collaboration ("teamwork"); communication; critical thinking (though more about solving problems than being critical of authority or mass media) and creativity (as long as it can be monetized?). Having been in Boston’s Kenmore Square around the Hub’s famed Sept. 1 move-in days, I would add one more: the ability to walk down a street without knocking anyone over.

Relevant for future enrollment? The Maine House considered a proposal to allow people with concealed carry permits to carry their firearms on public colleges (except in facilities that post signs barring them). The idea was rejected. The bill would have changed existing law that lets the trustees of the University of Maine, the Maine Community College System and the Maine Maritime Academy decide the rules for the campuses they oversee. In a line straight out of Miss Sloane, bill sponsor Rep. Richard Cebra  (R.-Naples) said the proposal is “a women’s issue” because “a small, concealed handgun creates an equality between a 100-pound woman and a 225-pound attacker.” Cebra and two colleagues also requested allowing members of the Legislature to carry concealed handguns in the statehouse, following a gun attack in Virginia on a congressional baseball practice. Across the region, Massachusetts bans guns on campus; the other five states leave it up to individual campuses, according to the Campaign to Keep Guns off Campus.

Regional thinking. When we staged our mock election campaign for “Governor of New England” nearly a decade ago, one of the “candidates,” Vermont’s then treasurer, and later real governor, Jim Douglas argued: “We have 250 towns (Maine has 435) and the Legislature offered an incentive a couple of years ago to provide more school construction aid for towns that would consolidate their schools and build a joint school. They pulled back because nobody wanted to do it. So before we talk about expansion and collaboration in the federation beyond the borders, we should realize it is pretty tough to cooperate even internally sometimes.”

Hard as it is to join schools within states, Vermont and New Hampshire towns are among those considering a new interstate district. Previously, Vermont was part of the first joint compact district in the nation, when Norwich, Vt.  joined with Hanover, N.H.,  in 1964 to form the Dresden School District.

Going coed. College readiness and employability both hinge on the economic sustainability of higher ed institutions. One strategy to bolster institutional finances has been to appeal to more groups of students. The University of Saint Joseph (USJ) announced last month that it will open undergraduate admissions to male students for fall 2018. Historically, USJ admitted only women to its main undergrad programs, but began introducing coeds to various graduate programs starting in 1959. President Rhona Free cited studies showing that less than 1% of full-time female college students attend a women’s college and only 2% of female high school seniors say they’d consider attending one.

Play ball! Major League Baseball (MLB) and Northeastern University entered a partnership to provide pro ballplayers with access to higher-education programs. The agreement follows the inclusion of a new Continuing Education Program in MLB’s collective-bargaining agreement, which provides players with additional funds devoted to their educational development.

Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun, who is slated to speak at the NEBHE Dec. 4 summit, said of the baseball agreement: "We must be boundless, and meet learners where they are. That is why this partnership with Major League Baseball—to prepare players at all levels for the next step in their lives and careers—is so important." The agreement provides a range of opportunities to interested players—both during and following their baseball careers—through in-person and online instruction. Players will have access to degree programs in fields such as finance, health sciences, information technology, human services, communications and psychology, data analytics, sports leadership, digital media and project management.

Peace in Maine. The Lewiston, Maine, police have been holding neighborhood meetings to address complaints about Bates College off-campus housing. Lewiston Mayor Bob Macdonald was quoted in the Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal as saying: "These are people who have lived there for years, and their quality of life won't be ruined by out-of-state yahoos." NEJHE has covered such delicate town-gown relations, including a full edition on Colleges In Their Places.

Being your Guide. Putting together our annual Guide to New England Colleges and Universities always offers an opportune time to inspect the region’s higher-ed landscape for institutional comings and goings. What’s new this year? Facing declining enrollment, Andover Newton Theological School of Massachusetts signed an agreement to move into Yale Divinity School, in New Haven, Conn., and become Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School. The former Rockport College connected with the University of Maine Augusta is now Maine Media College. The entire board of the New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA) stepped down after turmoil between the trustees, the founders and the staff. It sent us scurrying to make sure we hadn’t missed out on the circus, but alas, NECCA doesn’t fit the criteria for the Guide, notably that they be authorized to grant undergraduate or graduate degrees.

A little civility. Former NEBHE chair and frequent NEJHE editorial contributor Lou D’Allesandro reflected on the enactment of a New Hampshire Senate Bill he sponsored to develop a uniform framework for civics courses. “By outlining an instructional framework, this bill ensures that our teachers are teaching the fundamentals of democracy, the responsibilities of every citizen, and the tools to engage. At no additional cost to the state, this is a common sense measure for our students and our democracy.”

Collaborating. I was honored to join the July 2017 ACL Northeast Community Gathering at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. It’s a group of collaborators who could save higher education money by sharing rather than cutting. But the consortia themselves face challenges. Neal Abraham, executive director of Five Colleges Inc.,  {Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire colleges and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst} notes that they are often seen as “cost centers” and collaboration is hardly mentioned to new officials stepping into higher ed leadership positions. At Five Colleges, which has 37 employees and is often seen as a leader among consortia, the directors of virtually every function area have turned over in the past eight years. Abraham, himself, is stepping down.

The featured speakers at the ACL Northeast Community meeting were Harvard Project Zero’s Howard Gardner and Wendy Fischman. They offered “impressions” from their work on “Liberal Arts and Sciences in the 21st Century.” The study investigates how students, parents of students, faculty, administrators, trustees, young alumni and job recruiters conceive of the purposes, best practices and most challenging features of undergraduate education in the U.S., especially liberal arts and sciences. It'll take time to see final results. But in the meantime, Fisher asks: Wouldn't we all want a population that reads the newspaper and understands it?

Missing BIF. For the first time in several years, I’ll be missing this month’s Business Innovation Factory summit, in Providence, due to a conflict. It’s always a profound inspiration. I urge you to watch the videos, which generally are released within a month or so of the event.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service ofNEBHE.

John O. Harney: June update on the condition of New England

BOSTON

New England’s unemployment rate stood at 4.4% in April, compared with 5% nationwide, according to the spring 2016 outlook delivered last week by the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) to 50 or so economists and others gathered at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

New Hampshire posted the second lowest unemployment rate in the U.S., at 2.6%. But all New England states are projected to have lower annual employment growth than the U.S. average through 2018, partly due to the region’s aging population.

Economist Barry Bluestone, of Northeastern University's School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, projected that New England’s population will grow by only 5.5% from 14.7 million in 2015 to 15.5 million in 2025.

Turning to the spring 2016 NEEP theme of New England’s special relationship with Canada, Bluestone noted that 6% of jobs in New England depend on trade with Canada. New England’s No. 1 export to Canada is aircraft and aircraft parts, partly from GE and Pratt & Whitney. In some instances, the interdependence is striking: One growing export from New England to Canada is live Maine lobsters.

One major import from Canada back to New England is processed and frozen lobster, much of it for casinos and cruise ships.

The conference was sponsored by Brandeis International Business School’s Perlmutter Institute, the Canadian Consulate General and TD Bank—the Toronto bank that now markets itself as America's Most Convenient Bank and has naming rights to the arena that is home of the Boston Bruins, NHL archrival of the Montreal Canadians.

Bluestone added that New England output is forecast to grow nearly 13% by 2025. At the same time, ISO New England reports that the region’s power-generating capacity will decline by at least 13%, due to nuclear, coal and oil plants going offline. That means more natural gas, including via controversial means such as pipelines carrying fracked gas from Pennsylvania and ships carrying LNG from Yemen. Wind and solar power can supplement that, but cannot provide reliable, 24/7 energy for New England. And there is the question of how to get energy from the hydropower resources of Canada to the markets of New England. People in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont don’t want to see big power lines. One solution is the power lines currently approved to run under Lake Champlain in Vermont.

Bluestone added that as international flights to Boston's Logan Airport have grown considerably, it may be time for New Englanders to think of Halifax, Nova Scotia, as another viable international airport. It’s closer to Europe than Boston is.

In one of the surprisingly rare references to education and talent at the NEEP conference, Bluestone warned that New England needs more engineers to innovates in areas such as harnessing the region’s high tides for energy and desalinizing seawater for drinking.

State of the states

The Canadian theme is engaging, for sure. But for me, NEEP’s gold comes in its colorful state-specific forecasts, this time down to four state forecasters from the usual six or more. (NEEP mourned the death of stalwart New Hampshire forecaster Dennis Delay, who died in December; Fairfield University professor emeritus Edward Deak, who historically watched ups and downs in Connecticut, retired from NEEP. Ross Gittell, the NEEP vice president who usually delivers the New England regional forecast, could not attend the spring conference because of his duties as chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire.)

Independent economist Jeff Carr of Vermont reminded the audience that his last forecast was clouded by Keurig’s launch of its cold-beverage line (which the coffee-brewing company ultimately discontinued) and Global Foundries buying IBM microelectronics facilities in the Northeast (which changed the company’s semiconductor export picture).

In January 2015, Vermont reached full recovery from the Great Recession—a benchmark whose significance is still lost on some who didn’t understand the full trauma of that downturn. Carr noted that, for the first time in years, the decrease in Vermont unemployment is actually due to increasing employment, not declining labor force. He added that the craft food industry (as he said, everything you need for vacation: Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Cabot cheese and craft beers) has been a key part of Vermont economic resilience, despite hits in overall manufacturing..

Most Vermont exports are integrated circuits from the former IBM plant in Essex Junction and engine blades from Rutland. On the Canada theme, Vermont approved the transmission under Lake Champlain to bring in electricity from Quebec. Carr pointed out that Canadian hydro initially was not considered “renewable” because of an existing large carbon footprint and environmental implications for the Cree Indian Nation.

In a tribute to Delay, who gave a regular “Segway report” based on the motorized scooter invented by New Hampshire’s Dean Kamen, Carr noted the irony that Segway tours have become a top tourist activity in Burlington, Vt.

Charles Colgan, professor emeritus at the University of Southern Maine, who also spends much of the year at the Center for the Blue Economy in Monterey, Calif., returned to NEEP for the Maine forecast. Portland unemployment is extremely low, he said, yet it does not increase in-migration.

Also five paper mills in Maine have closed since 2008, claiming 7,500 total jobs.

On the conference theme, Colgan noted that Canada is Maine’s #1 trading partner, followed by China and Malaysia. Also, Maine still attracts many Canadian tourists to Old Orchard Beach and other coastal spots on the “Quebec Riviera.”

Maine also has led New England in renewable electricity. Colgan told of how a shortage of oil power threatened the Great Northern Paper mill in Millinocket, Maine. Then-Maine Gov. Ken Curtis contacted New Brunswick Premier Richard Hatfleld to nudge Irving Oil of St. John to help keep the mill running. New England governors began meeting with Eastern Canadian premiers to discuss energy issues at that time, and Irving remains a major presence in Northern New England.

Now, many Mainers and others worry about tar sands being transported through a Maine pipeline for later redistribution.

Maine has installed significant wind power and has more planned for Aroostook County, which historically has been connected only to the Canadian grid. Meanwhile, offshore wind may help solidify Maine’s potential in the middle of a rapidly developing energy market from Maine to the ”Boston States.”

Bryant University economist Edinaldo Tebaldi displayed a slide, showing the Rhode Island economy is improving but not as fast as New England or U.S. The Ocean State suffers from very little population growth, and its labor force is actually shrinking. Rhode Island’s unemployment rate is almost back to pre-recession levels, but not quite, partly because of sluggish job growth in manufacturing and construction.

Economist Adam Clayton-Matthews of Northeastern University spoke about high confidence in Massachusetts. Unemployment is now below pre-recession levels, but demography is making it impossible for many employers to replace workers.

Asked about the crisis in creating homes for middle-income households, Carr of Vermont noted that it’s not as cool for millennials to live in Burlington, Vt., as it is to live in booming Boston. People go to Vermont to get educated, then move away, then come back with three kids, Carr quipped. He add that the milestones people used to reach in their twenties—marrying, having kids and buying a home—they now do in their thirties, partly because of the pressure of student loan debt. In Maine, the state with the highest median age in the U.S., the housing problem is a lack of affordable senior housing.

A TD Bank official pointed out that not wanting to lose that enormous body of aging talent, the bank has no mandatory retirement. Many older workers can work one or two days a week. If other companies would do it, she noted, that would help an aging New England.

If the trade data weren't enough to convince the audience of the "special relationship,"  panelists on Canadian innovation may have drove the point home.  TD senior economist Michael Dolega pointed out that no banking crises has occurred in Canada since 1840, compared with 12 in the U.S. (though housing markets are overheating in cities like Toronto and Vancouver and oil-producing regions of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland & Labrador are in recession). François-Philippe Champagne, a member of parliament from Québec, and parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance, told the audience that looming Canadian infrastructure investment will emphasize public transportation, water and wastewater treatment, and affordable housing—priorities that perhaps should, but may not, straddle the border.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education, where this piece originated. It is part of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).