Todd J. Leach: Clearing up some confusions about student debt

Congreve Hall at the University of New Hampshire’s flagship campus, in Durham.

— Photo by Kylejtod

BOSTON

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

The student-debt narrative seems to be increasingly dominated by sensational anecdotes. I recently watched a segment on a national morning television show in which a student with $290,000 in student debt was being held up as an example of how big the problem is.

The story suggests that the cost of tuition for a four-year degree, one from a public institution in this case, is nearly $300,000. Only it isn’t, at least not for the institution that the example above was based on. In fact, the average cost of attendance at the institution used in this particular story was only $28,000 a year, according to the federal College Scorecard. One might still argue that $28,000 a year is too high an average cost for tuition, but that also includes room and board. A high-need student could receive up to $6,895 a year in Pell Grants and probably qualify for even more institutional student aid funding. In other words, a high-need student would likely be paying less than $22,000 a year.

This is not to say that there are no institutions that have a cost of attendance that could exceed $290,000, But for high-need students choosing to attend a public institution, or a low-cost pathway at a private institution, and who are eligible for full Pell Grants and institutional aid, it is still possible to find a path that is much less expensive. Some states, such as New Hampshire, offer gap programs that ensure high-need students can attend tuition free. While room and board is separate from tuition, students that are able to commute can further contain the cost of education.

So how is it a student might have two or three times in debt what it actually costs to attend four years of college?

To start with, there are many different loan types that might be lumped under the heading of student debt. As far as federal Direct Loans go, there are subsidized and unsubsidized loans. Direct subsidized loans require a student to demonstrate financial need. High-need students who are still considered “dependents” may borrow up to $23,000 in aggregate of subsidized loans (total across the four years).
In addition, those same dependent students may borrow an additional $8,000 in Direct unsubsidized loans. Independent high-need students can borrow up to $23,000 in subsidized Direct loans and an additional $34,500 in unsubsidized Direct loans. If you are keeping track of the math, it means that a dependent student may borrow up to $31,000 in Direct federal student loans and an independent student may borrow up to $57,500. Those number still do not add up to the $290,000 example showcased in the story referenced in this example.

What else could be in that $290,000 number? Several things, and almost anything. There are plenty of private loan options available that are not need-based and that have few if any restrictions on how that money can be used. In fact, not all debt incurred by students is for education purposes. Students may borrow money for vacations, cars, entertainment or to support a spouse and dependents while they are unable to work during their educational pursuits. When the numbers are self-reported, they might also include money borrowed from friends or family, as well as money the student has racked-up on their credit cards. The reality is that average Direct federal student debt is under $30,000, according to the Federal Reserve.

There have been numerous calls and proposals for debt relief, but to assess the merits of those varied proposals it is first important to understand the various forms of debt and know exactly what debt is being forgiven. It is also important to understand that debt relief would affect individual college graduates very differently.

For example, a student with no financial need who borrows $25,000 in order to fund summer travel experiences will not be affected the same way as a high-need student who minimized their debt by commuting and borrowing only $5,000.

An even greater equity issue may exist when it comes to students who avoided debt altogether. This is not to say that loan-forgiveness programs have no virtue. Like any investment, student-debt forgiveness should not only have a price tag attached to it, but also some specified goals. Some states have used loan forgiveness as a way to attract graduates to a particular region, while other programs are aimed at incentivizing students to choose particular career paths. In either of these cases, the type of loan does not matter since the objective is incentivizing choices, but if the objective is to address economic disparity or poverty in general, then the details, such as the current earning level of those receiving debt forgiveness, matters.

According to the Federal Reserve, the total amount of outstanding student debt is well above a trillion dollars, which raises one final question when assessing forgiveness options: What are the opportunity costs? Even forgiving all $1.5 trillion of outstanding debt will not lower the cost to attend college, improve access or build a stronger pipeline of graduates for the workforce the way an increase in Pell Grants would. Unfortunately, this may be a false choice. These are policy questions, and the reality may be that it is more feasible to gain support for some form of debt forgiveness than to increase direct subsidies such as Pell Grants.

Regardless of the ultimate decisions on debt forgiveness, we should be looking at ways to minimize student debt to begin with. The cost of attending a four-year institution is certainly one major factor and there are several ways that cost could be further reduced, such as: increasing Pell Grant awards; developing more low-cost delivery options (including online, community college transfer pathways and early college options); and, of course,  encouraging institutions to continuously work to find efficiencies. Debt could also be reduced by increased screening and accountability for institutions that target vulnerable students with deceptive practices, as we have seen with some for-profit institutions. The federal government has already forgiven billions of dollars in student-loan debt associated with deceptive for-profits, including $5.8 billion that resulted from the failure of Corinthian Colleges. Beyond college costs and accountability, there are other measures that could be considered and that includes greater accountability for loan providers.

There are steps institutions in general can take to ensure careful borrowing decisions on the part of students. For example, a common practice today is to actually package student loans for accepted students and put the onus on the student to turn it down rather than simply informing the student what they are eligible for should they want to take out loans. Perhaps one of the most effective tools for reducing debt is better information. While not a perfect tool, the federal College Scorecard provides information on cost of attendance and on average earnings of graduates, but I suspect very few families and students are making the Scorecard a significant part of their decision process.

Perhaps it is time to expect institutions to more prominently make data, such as their student-loan default rates, available to prospective students. Students should not just be informed how much they can borrow but what are the chances they will be able to pay it back.

Ultimately, the bigger issue may not be the amount of student debt but that graduates are struggling to pay it back. While the focus is currently on whether or not students should be liable for the totality of their student-loan debt, institutions should anticipate greater focus on their student loan default rates and the return on investment for their graduates. Once again, not all student debt is the same.

Todd J. Leach is chancellor emeritus of the University System of New Hampshire and former chair of NEBHE.

Josh M. Beach: Why we can’t measure what matters in U.S. education

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

BOSTON

What do students learn in school? In the 21st Century, this question has become a political dilemma for countries around the globe. It is a deceptively simple question, but there has never been an easy answer.

The problem of measuring student learning appears to express an educational problem: What and how much do students learn? And yet, when you investigate the education-accountability movement, especially in the U.S. where it began, you realize that the preoccupation with student learning is not about education. Calls for accountability have always been more focused on politics and economics.

Accountability metrics were created to sort and rank students, teachers and schools in order to create a competition where some are winners and most are losers. This type of competitive environment creates fear, and it is not conducive to learning or high performance.

Most student learning, especially the most important types of social learning and formative interactions, happens outside school, especially in early childhood. These personal experiences later go on to affect students’ performance in schools. The most important variables that affect a student’s school achievement are environmental. They occur outside schools and affect children long before they ever set foot in a school. These three variables, which are deeply intertwined, are the social construction of: race, parental income and wealth, and parental education (especially the highest level of schooling that parents achieve).

All three of these variables are proxies for a wide range of social and economic resources that can help students learn and succeed in school, such as parenting skills and child development, especially the time parents spend talking to and reading with children, proper nutrition, access to tutors and extracurricular activities, access to top-quality schools with the best teachers, and also peer networks.

Most policymakers and school administrators talk as if schools and teachers have complete control over the student learning process, but most of the important variables that determine student success, especially in terms of learning and graduating, are beyond the control of teachers or schools.

As W. Edwards Deming pointed out, “Common sense tells us to rank children in school (grade them), rank people on the job, rank teams, divisions … Reward the best, punish the worst.” (This common-sense belief is wrong, especially, as Deming emphasized, when it comes to schooling, where the objectives are supposed to be student learning and personal development.)

Over the past half century, social scientists have found that there can be many unintended and adverse consequences when high-stake metrics get linked to individual or institutional evaluations tied to punishments and rewards.

This predicament is often called Campbell’s Law. The psychologist and social scientist Donald T. Campbell explained in 1976, “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

A British economist put it more bluntly in what is now called Goodhart’s Law: “Any measure used for control is unreliable.”

According to Campbell, “When tests scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways.”

How have accountability measurements corrupted schools? Take high-stakes standardized testing as a perfect example. Many teachers now spend most of their classroom time teaching to the tests by giving students “tricks” to answer multiple-choice tests or “ways to game the rules used to score the tests,” according to Harvard Graduate School of Education Prof. Daniel Koretz. Students engage in little, if any, real or useful learning.

Grade inflation

Teachers have also been lowering their standards and inflating grades to make students look much more successful academically than they actually are. Some administrators have been manipulating the tested population of students to make sure the lowest-performing students don’t take high-stakes tests. Sometimes, this has taken the form of transferring low-achieving students to other schools or encouraging them to drop out of school. And most shamefully, some teachers and administrators have been engaging in plain old cheating by falsifying student achievement scores.

To make matters worse, because performance measures cannot be verified, judgments of quality are made on existing data, which can be manipulated, or can be partially or wholly fraudulent. This leads to the adverse selection of personnel, whereby deceitful agents who post the best performance markers get rewarded, even though their numbers may be questionable, if not fraudulent.

Often, as Koretz points out, “the wrong schools and programs” get “rewarded or punished, and the wrong practices may be touted as successful and emulated.” The opposite is also true. Honest, hard-working and effective teachers, with true but lackluster performance measures, are passed over for promotion, criticized, sanctioned or fired. Such moral hazards create a perverse Darwinian scenario: Survival of the corrupt.

When performance goals are mandated from above without employee input, subordinates are forced to follow meaningless targets without any intrinsic motivation. Thus, the only incentive for workers to succeed are extrinsic rewards, often money, which leads to shortcuts or fraud to get the monetary reward. Staff begin chasing performance markers for the monetary incentives without knowing about or caring about the fundamental purposes of the organization or the rationale behind accountability goals.

Thus, when it comes to schools, whenever lawmakers or administrators institute a single, predictable measure of academic performance linked to extrinsic rewards, whether it be for students, teachers, or the whole school, someone somewhere will be cheating to game the system.

A 2013 Government Accounting Office report concluded that “officials in 40 states reported allegations of cheating in the past two school years, and officials in 33 states confirmed at least one instance of cheating. Further, 32 states reported that they canceled, invalidated or nullified test scores as a result of cheating.” One scholarly study estimated that “serious cases of teacher or administrator cheating on standardized tests occur in a minimum of 4-5 percent of elementary school classrooms annually.” Temple University psychologist Laurence Steinberg sardonically quipped, “Fudging data on student performance” has been “the only education strategy that consistently gets results.”

Nationwide in the U.S., we are seeing the consequences of this cynical calculation. For decades, researchers have documented rampant social promotion and grade inflation in K-12 schools and in most institutions of higher education. Koretz has argued that grade inflation is not only “pervasive,” but also “severe,” so much so that he argued that this type of subtle cheating is “central to the failure of American education ‘reform.’”

In Houston, as an example, some high schools were officially reporting zero dropouts and 100% of their students planning to attend college, and yet one principal joked, most of her students “couldn’t spell college, let alone attend.” While Texas pioneered accountability reforms in K-12 education, which became national policy through George W. Bush’s landmark No Child Left Behind law, researchers have documented how those reforms led to the corruption of education in Texas. Policymakers and administrators lost sight of education in a push to fudge the numbers so they could secure public accolades, get more funding and build bigger football stadiums.

And what is the impact of grade inflation on students? While students no doubt like high grades that they have not academically earned, they are actually harmed a great deal by such educational fraud. First of all, students become complacent and are unmotivated to learn because they think they already know it all. When students are confronted with higher academic standards in the future, they are liable to wilt under the pressure and either blame themselves or the teacher for the difficulty of authentic learning.

Disadvantaged students hurt most

To make matters worse, grade inflation affects disadvantaged students the most. Poor students and ethnic minorities, who are often segregated in the lowest-performing schools in the poorest neighborhoods, often receive the most inflated grades. This is because their teachers often can’t teach effectively due to various social, economic and environmental conditions that obstruct the learning process.

And what happens when academically underachieving high-school students fail upwards and make it into college, mostly through the open-door community college? They are then confronted with the fact that they are unprepared for academic success.

Large percentages of freshmen in the U.S. have to start college with remedial classes because they were not adequately prepared in high school. Most of these remedial college students eventually drop out of college, for various reasons, never earning a degree, and often with substantial amounts of student debt. However, many are also just passed through the college system with inflated grades and little learning.

For decades, researchers have documented the lowering of academic standards and the inflation of grades at institutions of higher education all across the U.S., especially at community colleges.

Graduating with a degree

High grades also seem to be inversely correlated with the main measure of student success in college, which is graduating with a degree. Currently, over 80% of all college students in the U.S. are earning A or B grades, but less than half of students who enroll in higher education will actually graduate with a bachelor’s degree.

As college admissions rose, graduation rates declined from the 1970s to the 1990s because standards remained relatively high. But as admissions continued to rise, graduation rates began to increase starting in the 1990s. Students were no more academically prepared, in fact, they were less prepared, so the increase in completion rates was mostly likely due to political and administrative pressure. New accountability reforms most likely contributed to a lowering of standards, especially at non-selective public colleges and universities.

Education researchers Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini pointed out in 2005 that only about half of all college graduates “appear to be functioning at the most proficient levels of prose, document or quantitative literacy,” which means that all those inflated A and B grades aren’t translating into actual knowledge or skill, putting many college graduates at a disadvantage when they enter the labor market, and putting many firms at risk because they have hired ignorant and incompetent college graduates.

While it is certainly reasonable for teachers to use tests and grades to evaluate and measure student learning, these tools are not easy to implement in a valid way that promotes student learning and development. As Jack Schneider of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, notes, “Measuring something as complicated as student learning” is very difficult, even under the best of circumstances, but almost impossible when it has to be done in a “uniform and cost-restricted way.” {Mr. Schneider is associate professor of leadership in education at UMass Lowell and director of research for the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment.}

Josh M. Beach is the author of a number of interdisciplinary titles, including How Do You Know?: The Epistemological Foundations of 21st Century Literacy and Gateway to Opportunity? A History of the Community College in the United States. He is the founder and director of 21st Century Literacy, a nonprofit organization focused on literacy education and teacher training.

Georgian-style Longfellow Hall at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, in Cambridge, Mass. It’s named for the daughter of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the famous 19th Century poet and scholar.

John O. Harney: Boston Fed chief departs and other regional comings and goings

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is the tall building at the left.

From The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

BOSTON

Boston Fed President and CEO Eric S. Rosengren, who had long planned to retire in June 2022, left the post Sept. 30 to deal with a worsening kidney condition. Rosengren announced that he has had the condition for many years and qualified for the kidney-transplant list in June 2020.

Rosengren worked 35 years at the Boston Fed and 14 as its president. Among his accomplishments, he championed the bank’s outreach to low- and moderate-income communities, hosted foreclosure-prevention workshops during the Great Recession, created a grant competition to support post-industrial New England communities and helped lead the Federal Reserve’s “Racism and the Economy” forums. Rosengren made the Boston Fed a key collaborator with NEBHE, including giving the keynote address at NEBHE’s major 2011 “New England Works” Summit on Bridging Higher Education and the Workforce. The Boston Fed announced that First Vice President and chief operating officer Kenneth C. Montgomery will serve as interim president and CEO.

The University of Rhode Island appointed Carlos Lopez Estrada, deputy director of administration and senior adviser to Pawtucket Mayor Donald R. Grebien, and Lauren Broccoli Burgess, a registered lobbyist and assistant director of government relations for the American Veterinary Medical Association, as the university’s directors of legislative and government relations. Lopez Estrada will focus on state and regional collaborations and Brocolli Burgess on federal government relations.

Lasell University appointed Lynne Celli as dean of graduate and professional studies. Celli joins Lasell from Endicott College, where she served as executive director of professional education and leadership, dean of graduate professional education, and associate dean for graduate education programs. She is also the former superintendent for Swampscott (Mass.) Public Schools.

Berkshire Community College (BCC) appointed Maureen McLaughlin as director of strategic initiatives. McLaughlin spent more than 20 years in the high-tech industry working on IPOs and acquisitions, as well as 10 years in public elementary schools supporting severe special needs students and students in crisis. BCC announced McLaughlin’s appointment among 10 new staff and faculty members.  

Yale New Haven Health (YNHH) CEO Marna Borgstrom announced that she will retire next spring. She will be succeeded as head of the regional hospital system by current YNHH President and former Hospital of Saint Raphael CEO Christopher O’Connor.

— Photo by Beyond My Ken

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) named Kristy Edmunds as its new director, succeeding founding director Joseph Thompson, who retired in late 2020 after 32 years leading the North Adams. Mass., museum. Edmunds has served as executive and artistic director at UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance since 2011.

John O. Harney is executive editor of NEBHE’s New England Journal of Higher Education.

Sara Jean-Francois: Attacks on Critical Race Theory suppress racial liberation and free speech

Rally on the Boston Common on May 31, 2020 after the murder of George Floyd

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

BOSTON

When I was in elementary school, history happened like this: The world was fighting, the Civil War happened, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and then everything was happy and free, and the U.S. was the place to be. Now obviously that is a gross exaggeration of the facts. But it’s not untrue about what we as role models, educators, parents and guardians chose to disclose to children about the historical legacy of race and, thus racism, in the U.S.

As a Black girl growing up in a wide variety of neighborhoods, but almost always attending a predominantly Black and ethnically diverse school, it strikes me as inherently odd that even as K-12 schools and higher education begin to educate an increasingly diverse set of students, we can simultaneously remain complicit in the concealment of history as it is, not as we have decided to rewrite it.

Last year, shortly after the murder of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others, it seemed as if the world had finally opened their eyes to the everyday reality and fears of Black America. And yet, just after the anniversary of these murders, we see state legislation in the headlines of various news sites attacking Critical Race Theory (CRT) and actually proposing legislation that would ban teaching history, as it is commonly accepted to be true. We cannot deny that woven into the narrative of U.S history is the history of systemic racism and other oppressions.

“Divisive” concepts?

Many have coined the term “divisive teaching” to describe teaching from what would be considered a culturally relevant and historically accurate account of race and racism in the U.S.

In Iowa, legislation has been passed that would explicitly forbid teaching of systemic racism or sexism. And Iowa is not alone. Earlier this year, Oklahoma banned CRT, causing a chain reaction of lost course offerings for students who want to learn about the true history of race in the U.S. In New England, the New Hampshire legislators  approved a bill that would ban the teaching of “divisive concepts,” including topics of inherent racism, sexism or oppression, whether consciously or unconsciously. (Similar bills have been introduced in Maine and Rhode Island.)

The Iowa, New Hampshire and Oklahoma legislation attack the discussion of systemic racism head-on, leaving the potential for an entire generation of young people to grow up with the same implicit bias, bigotry and stereotypes that have led to the death of so many Black Bodies already, including George Floyd. They are just three examples of how legislative attacks on Critical Race Theory are directly trying to use politics to attack racial progression. It raises the question, will there ever be a post-racial society?

For the past year, as so much of the world shouted “Black Lives Matter,” whether at protests, through statements of solidarity, posting little black boxes on Instagram, T-shirts, or supporting Black-owned businesses, we all felt the weight of racism in the air. We saw how racism breeds real-life consequences, and for Black people, that can mean death.

Yet here we are, concerned with the state of academic freedom, rather than about what it means for the future generation of Black bodies in the U.S. Somewhat ironically, news reports about these pieces of legislation follow the official national recognition of Juneteenth as a federal holiday. This irony begs the question: Is America moving forward toward a more racially equitable society or is performative politics the new norm as we face yet another inflection point in history?

What about antiracism?

If states are allowed to ban an entire body of research, theories and the models and pedagogy that come from this work (already left out of everyday teachings) how can the U.S. claim we learned anything about “antiracism” in the past year?

How can higher claim to care about Black life, when academic freedom is considered far more sacred? The anti-CRT legislation undoubtedly will uphold the inherently white-centric teachings that have been established as our common educational standard. The historical and present relationship that the U.S has with racism, and other oppressions within and outside higher education, seems to be more protected and guarded than the Black lives that are constantly being attacked and killed.

Bell hooks posits that “education is a practice of freedom” and yet education and, thus the freedom it gives everyone, not just Black people, is also being attacked. Who will suffer the most? And so I ask, Why did George Floyd become martyr to a cause nobody is listening to anymore?

If you ask me, the aforementioned anti-CRT legislation is not only an attack on academia and free speech, but also a direct suppression of racial liberation and consequently any racial progression moving forward. It is time that politicians, activists and educators alike take a divisive and definitive stance and decide whether the academy, and whether this democracy, will follow a path of antiracism or continue to be passively racist.

Sara Jean-Francois is assistant director of NEBHE’s Regional Student Program, Tuition Break. She recently earned her master’s degree in public policy from Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management, where she conducted significant research on race-conscious campuses and issues of equity and inclusion within higher-education policy.

Stephanie Suarez: Foreign students' big economic impact on New England

Source: NEBHE analysis of data from Open Doors: Report in International Educational Exchange, published annually by IIE and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. www.iie.org/opendoors

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

New England faces a concerning dip in its higher education enrollment, due in significant part to declines in the region’s birth and high school graduation rates that are both projected to continue through 2029. Despite these trends, New England’s postsecondary institutions continue to attract a large number of international students to the region, according to the 2018 Open Doors report released by the nonprofit Institute of International Education (IIE) and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). The report shows:

• The number of international students in New England has increased every year since 2012 and the region’s growth on this measure now outpaces the nation. In the 2017-18 academic year (AY), the region enrolled 6.3% more international students than the previous academic year. This figure compares to a national increase of only 1.5% during the same period. Both public and private nonprofit institutions in New England saw a 61% rise in the number of foreign students over a five-year period from AY 2012-13 to AY 2017-18, which is comparable to the national growth in the international student population over the same period.

• In 2018, by far the largest share (31%) of international students matriculating at New England colleges and universities originated from China. Nationally, two-thirds of all foreign students come from Asia, and one-third of the total population of international students are from China alone. The other countries rounding out the students’ top five places of origin in the region include India (14.6%), Canada (5.9%), South Korea (4.4%), and Saudi Arabia (3.4%).

• International students represent a big economic injection for New England. In AY 2017-18, international students contributed $39.4 billion to the overall U.S. economy, with $4.2 billion added to the New England economy alone. Between 2012 and 2018, international students contributed a total of $21.3 billion to the New England economy.

• International students have helped forestall a nationwide enrollment crisis. The total higher education population in the U.S. topped out in 2010 at about 21 million students and has been slowly declining since then. The decline in New England is especially acute. This has been countered to some extent by growth of the foreign student population, coupled with a rise in online enrollment, which together comprise almost a quarter of the nation’s students.

• International students help make college more accessible to Americans. Because international students generally pay significantly higher international tuition and fee rates, the recent influx of foreign students has provided a much-needed boost to many college campuses’ bottom lines. The additional revenue generated by the higher fees paid by foreign students helps subsidize the tuition and fees of low-income domestic students who could otherwise not afford to attend college. As the Washington Post recently reported, “contrary to perceptions that foreign students take spots that belong to Americans, at many schools they’re enabling more American students to get a degree.”

What can we expect in 2019?

Despite the economic and cultural value foreign students add to our college campuses and our workforce, New England’s strong international enrollment figures may be in jeopardy in 2019. In particular, over the next year, the region’s colleges and universities may need to prepare for a potential decline in the number of students originating from China. The fragile dependence on Chinese students may soon crack for a number of reasons.

• China’s deepening economic downturn has begun to raise serious concerns in academic admissions offices, as this slowdown threatens to decelerate the influx of Chinese students who have flocked to American campuses to study and bolstered institutions’ bottom lines for the past decade.

• The federal government has begun targeting and encouraging the closure of Confucius Institutes, Chinese government-funded centers for Chinese language and cultural education hosted by over 500 college campuses worldwide, with more than 100 of them in the U.S. These programs have recently come under intense scrutiny by counterintelligence experts, political figures from both sides of the aisle, and those within academe, who argue that the Institutes constitute a broader effort by the Chinese government to conduct espionage, influence American academics, silence free speech and stifle critical analysis of China. Following the passage of a national defense spending law in late 2018 that prohibits the use of appropriated funds for Chinese language instruction at colleges that house a Confucius Institute, several campuses have terminated the program, including the University of Rhode Island (URI), which in December 2018 became the sixth U.S. institution to announce the end of its partnership with the Confucius Institute. A URI representative linked the decision to terminate the program specifically to the potential loss of federal funding.

• In December 2017, the White House released a National Security Strategy plan that stated the U.S. government would consider “restrictions on foreign STEM students from designated countries” as a measure to protect intellectual property. The new screening instructions, which went into effect June 11, 2018, affect the visas of Chinese students pursuing a graduate degree in robotics, aviation or advanced manufacturing, reducing the periods of validity from five years to one year.

Economic impact by state

Connecticut. There were 15,278 international students enrolled at Connecticut institutions in AY 2017-18, which represents an increase of 4% over the previous year and a 63% increase since 2012. In AY 2017-18, Connecticut ranked second in New England and 24th in the U.S. in terms of international student enrollment. Between AY 2012-13 and AY 2017-18, Yale University and the University of Connecticut took the top spots as the universities with the largest share of international students in Connecticut. Foreign students contributed an estimated $584 million to Connecticut’s economy in the past year.

Maine. There were 1,343 international students enrolled in Maine colleges and universities in AY 2017-18, a 0.2% increase from the previous year, and a 7% increase since 2012. Maine has the lowest number of international students in New England, and it ranks 49th in the nation. Between 2012 and 2017, the University of Maine held the top spot for enrolling the greatest share of international students. International students at Maine’s four-year colleges and universities generated a total of $49 million in economic activity for the state in 2017-18.

Massachusetts. There were 68,192 foreign students enrolled in Massachusetts colleges and universities in AY 2017-18, which represents an 8.4% jump over the previous year and a 65% increase over the past five years. In AY 2017-18, Massachusetts ranked first in New England and fourth in the U.S. in terms of international student enrollment. Northeastern University has consistently enrolled the largest share of international students in the Bay State over the past five years. Foreign students contributed an estimated $3 billion to the Massachusetts economy in the past year.

New Hampshire. There were 4,391 international students enrolled in New Hampshire colleges and universities in AY 2017-18, a 6% decrease from the previous year, and a 33% increase over the past five years. New Hampshire ranks 39th in the U.S. in enrolling international students. Every year between 2012 and 2018, Dartmouth College enrolled the largest share of international students in the state. In 2017-18, international students contributed a total of $155 million in activity for the state.

Rhode Island. A total of 5,748 international students enrolled in Rhode Island colleges and universities in AY 2017-18, which represents an increase in enrollment of 2% over the last year, and an increase of 8% since 2012. Rhode Island ranks 33rd in the U.S. in terms of international student enrollment. Between 2013 and 2015, Johnson & Wales University enrolled the largest share of international students in Rhode Island, and in 2012, 2016, and 2017, Brown University took the top spot. Rhode Island’s economy has received a total impact of $256 million from these students in AY 2017-18.

Vermont. A total of 1,870 international students enrolled in Vermont colleges and universities in AY 2017-18, which represents a 6% increase from the previous year, and a 40% increase over the past five years. Vermont has the second lowest enrollment of international students in New England and is fourth from the bottom nationally. Between 2012 and 2017, the University of Vermont enrolled the greatest number of international students. Vermont’s economy received a total of $88 million from this international enrollment in 2017-18.

Stephanie Suarez is a master’s candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and NEBHE policy intern.

Aleksandr Tomic/William D. Rieders: How to listen to potential employers of your graduates

Gasson Quadrangle at Boston College, in Chestnut Hill, Mass.

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

These are very tumultuous times in higher education. Unprecedented numbers of institutions are facing closure, and quite a few are unsure how to proceed. Added to institutional pressures are issues around the ever-rising price of the college degree, and the overwhelming question as to the value of the degree, especially given the amount of debt that many students go into to finance their education. Also, regulators and the public are more and more interested in outcomes, with the possibility of tying some federal funding to these results.

While it is difficult to measure all the outcomes in higher education, the one that seems to come up very often is the job-placement rate of recent graduates.

This is especially true for adult, nontraditional students, who comprise a significant share of enrollments in higher education. This is exemplified in our MS in Applied Economics Program. The MS in Applied Economics is a relatively new program at Boston College’s Woods College of Advancing Studies that caters both to recent graduates and working professionals. It is a professionally oriented master’s degree aimed at equipping graduates to thrive in today’s data-driven world. The degree equips students to enter, change, and advance their career, unlike a traditional master of economics program focused on preparing for future study at the Ph.D. level. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive goals as our track record of placement in both industry and Ph.D. programs shows, but our focus is clearly on career readiness.

The general notion of measuring gainful employment was a rallying cry around regulation efforts of the Obama administration. Even though the Trump administration has moved to dismantle the gainful employment regulations related to for-profit colleges, the latest announcement on negotiated rule-making lists establishment of single definition for purposes of measuring and reporting job placement rates as one of five topics for negotiation. In other words, the government is interested in measuring job placement and probably acting on it at some point.

More importantly to us, job placement is also a topic that every potential student in our MS in Applied Economics asks about in the admission interview. Every last one. Even those who also inquire about potential placement in Ph.D. programs. They want to know how has been the placement of recent graduates. Return on investment (ROI) has stepped out of the realm of finance and permeated society, including higher education. Our students and their parents want to know whether the considerable investment is worth it. So, how does one ensure a strong ROI on their program?

The answer is constant listening to employers. What are their needs and how can we, as higher education institutions, prepare students for the workforce? We do not see ourselves as mere training programs, but as educating the whole person. Still, we need to understand what credential employers are looking for. Do they prefer bachelor’s and/or master’s candidates or will a certificate do?

We also need to understand what general skills our graduates need, as well as which specific competencies will push them to the head of the pack when applying for a job. Again, this does not mean that college is a job-training experience only. Indeed, employers often put liberal-arts type skills such as communication, critical thinking and teamwork at the top of their wish lists.

Institutions of higher education must ensure they communicate with employers how we teach these skills—basically teach them to navigate our transcripts so that they can more easily grasp what our students can actually do when they arrive on the job. Some concrete steps should be taken:

Establish advisory boards at sub-college levels. Most colleges within universities have advisory boards. However, we believe that more granularity is needed, especially in the case of professional degrees. If not each major, then each group of similar majors should have its own advisory board. The board should consist of industry leaders who are willing to guide the program on what skills are needed, and are also invested in the program enough to be willing to connect with students and to help shape and adjust the list of competencies as the market situation dictates. It should also include academics in the field who can help advise on how to teach those competencies. Big "blocks" rarely have to change, but finer blocks have to be adjusted more often. For example, in our program, we are not likely to ever replace our Microeconomic Theory course, but we have to fine-tune our Software Tools for Data Analysis course fairly regularly to ensure that students are being exposed to software actually used in the real world. Do we teach Stata which is very favored by economists, or R and Python that are used by pretty much everyone else? Finally, a good advisory board will be relentless in following up with the program, and challenging the leadership when necessary. We have plenty of discussion at our meetings where directors’ assumptions are challenged and examples are offered as to make the point. Including Excel in our Software Tools course is one such example, where academic economists (including the author) basically saw it as being “below” the program to do so, but industry economists in attendance “set us straight.”

Offer students experiential education. Use the advisory board connections and make connections with employers to help students obtain internships and co-ops. These experiences are invaluable for students to understand the nature of the work and become able to decide what they want or do not want to do. It also gives them a chance to “audit” for a full-time job after graduation.

Invest in understanding the market. In addition to listening to the advisory board, invest in mining of job-opening data. Tools to do so have become ubiquitous and there are services offering such reports on a regular basis. This investment is well worth the expense and can serve a useful purpose of validating or providing more information for the advisory board. This can also inform your strategy.

Stay nimble and responsive. While academic content is not changed often nor easily, as doing so can include multiple levels of approval and complexity, the “big blocks” that go into your classes probably do not need constant updating. However, you should be ready to provide quick seminars, online modules and other non-credit or small-credit workshops on topics that emerge as very timely from your research. A quick seminar on Python or a workshop on presentation skills can do wonders for students setting sail into the job market. Even a curated list of MOOCs on the topic will help, but if you are mostly a face-to-face program, some brief in-person training will be preferable.

Ongoing relationship development. Higher education has traditionally been very difficult to access for employers. All the while, higher education has relevant experience that can provide ongoing value, thought leadership and skills training to employers. The corollary is that these relationships can ensure that higher ed maintain a seat at the table, addressing some of the most complex and challenging problems.

Institutions must pay attention to ROI when it comes to operation, and we are all painfully aware of that. However, it is impossible for institutions to reach strong ROI without providing considerable ROI for students. Engaging with employers is a surefire way to do so.

Aleksandar (Sasha) Tomic is associate dean for strategy, innovation and technology at Boston College’s Woods College of Advancing Studies and director of its MS in Applied Economics. William D. Rieders is CEO and a founder of Meteor Learning.

Dan Wallace: Making things better down in the boiler room

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

DANBURY,  Conn.

For many institutions in New England, the 2020 deadline to hit objectives for the Presidents' Climate Leadership Commitments that once seemed far away are now right around the corner. These ambitious plans were entered into in 2007 with the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment—in some cases, by now-departed presidents—and many higher education institutions (HEIs) across the region find themselves a bit behind schedule and in search of ideas for how to catch up.

In our region, where temperatures range from well below 0 to over 100 degrees, heating and cooling can present a major opportunity to improve sustainability stats of a campus. Overt changes such as improving windows come to mind, but recent advancements in boiler technology and strategies for working with the heat of the sun and the cool of the earth can provide powerful, if unsexy, means of reducing emissions quickly.

Advances in biofuels

A major source of New England HEIs’ fuel usage goes to the boilers that heat their buildings. Switching to a sustainable, renewable fuel in the burner system means huge reductions in carbon emissions and lowers dependence on fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas. Most HEIs rule out this option because biofuels, such as wood chips or pellets, require a complete new boiler system and easily cost upwards of $10 million.

A new biofuel option has emerged in “liquid wood” or “bio-oil.” Liquid wood isn’t new to the market, but the technology to burn it efficiently and safely is. This liquid fuel, made from wood in a process called pyrolysis, behaves just like traditional fuel oils in the boiler, so existing boiler equipment can be retrofitted easily—for about one tenth the cost of converting to traditional biofuels. The fuel has existed for some time, but the technology to burn it has only recently been perfected.

Since the raw wood comes from tree farms, liquid wood fuel is a 100 percent renewable resource. It's also extremely carbon-efficient because the planting of new trees (to replace those harvested to create the oil) offsets much of the carbon emissions. When Bates College, in Maine, switched its heating system to liquid wood ahead of last winter, its carbon footprint was reduced by 83 percent in a single year.

Replace boiler components

Boilers are incredibly durable. They often last decades—potentially even a century—without needing to be replaced. However, just because something isn’t broken, doesn’t mean it’s green. While many schools are still working to set up protocols to lower thermostats, they can also make use of technology that increases efficiency of the heating system automatically. For instance, boiler upgrades were part of how Bowdoin College reached its climate goal two years early.

The electrical efficiency of a boiler is determined by its ability to maintain an optimal ratio of air to fuel. Older burners set these ratios manually. Not only are they difficult to adjust, they slip over time. Upgrading the controller component of a boiler system is relatively inexpensive—most of the system can remain. With ratios dialed in by computer and maintained digitally, the sustainability gains can be huge. Installation costs can be as low as $5,000, and electrical usage can be reduced by as much as 75 percent.

Harness natural thermal energy

If your campus is climate-conscious, you’ve likely explored solar panels as a power source extensively, but there are other ways to capture the sun’s energy. Solar thermal walls are dark-colored metal plates that can be mounted on the southern side of buildings to capture the sun’s heat (even during the dead of winter) and pull warmed air into the building with fans. Heating fuel savings enable these fixtures to pay for themselves in one to eight years.

Controlling the temperature of your facility isn’t the only heating and cooling cost of a campus. Tremendous amounts of energy are expended changing the temperature of water. Geothermal wells use the Earth’s ambient temperature of about 55 degrees to give a head-start on heating water. While likely cost-prohibitive as a sustainability measure alone, campuses that may already be updating their water systems can look to make sustainability gains along the way, particularly rural campuses that rely on wells because they aren’t served by city water systems.

Merge environmental studies with engineering

The enthusiasm of students was a major driver for colleges and universities entering into climate leadership commitments in the last decade. In the years since 2007, "employability" has increasingly become a top issue on the minds of students and administrators. Campuses that connect these causes can both tap the intelligence and energy of their students while providing them with valuable workforce skills.

When updated with remote monitoring technology that tracks usage data, something as mundane as the campus boiler system can become a hands-on arena for research at the intersection of environmental studies and engineering. Colleges and universities in New England could follow the example of institutions like Maharishi University of Management in Iowa, where students get hands-on experience managing the campus’s sustainable living program, which includes sustainable heating and cooling elements. Several alumni have used skills developed in the program to enter the sustainability field or launch companies in the green energy space. At Mesalands Community College, in New Mexico—which has a 1.5-megawatt wind turbine that powers the campus and is maintained by instructors and students—graduates enter the workforce trained in wind turbine maintenance.

Rather than merely agitating for sustainability improvements on campus, institutions that create a collaborative environment for students to be part of the solutions give those students an edge as they enter the workforce. New England, where energy costs are high, winters are cold, and there’s widespread community support for climate initiatives, is an ideal place to train the next generation of building managers and engineers while preparing campuses for a sustainable future.

Dan Wallace is vice president and CEO of Preferred Utilities Manufacturing Corp.

Alexandra Coso Strong/Caitrin Lynch: Learning from a moonshot

On the campus of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, Mass.

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

Each year, colleges around the nation select a common reading book for their incoming students or, in the case of our institution, for the entire college community. In 2017, our institution selected Hidden Figures as a reading meant to provide a common intellectual experience, illustrate the vigor and breadth of our college’s curriculum, and lend itself to a convocation discussion at the start of the school year.

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, by Margot Lee Shetterly, shares the stories of four women of color who worked as human “computers” at Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Va., at the start of the space program. Katherine Johnson, who turned 99 this past August, was “the girl” whom astronaut John Glenn called on in 1961 to verify that the computer’s calculations were correct. These calculations would dictate the trajectory that would bring his orbital flight capsule safely back to Earth. Through these stories, readers learn about these heroes in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and the invisible challenges they faced both inside and outside of work.

Now, in the deep cold of the New England winter, we begin the process of selecting next year’s summer reading. We have been reflecting on how Hidden Figures provided us the opportunity to engage with our students and colleagues on topics we might have not otherwise prioritized at the start of a school year. The form and impact of those discussions underscored for us that a good summer reading book carries with it profound immediate lessons and long-lasting consequences for the shape of intellectual debate in a community.

Fighting hate then and now

Our college community read Hidden Figures during the days surrounding the racist violence in Charlottesville, Va., and around the time of the release of a Google employee’s memo arguing that women are intrinsically less qualified for tech jobs. The historical context of the book’s narrative hits close to home in the wake of these and recent events. Its “hidden figures” point to an under-discussed example of diversity in STEM and allow us to acknowledge the critical role diverse teams have played in our nation’s history.

When our students returned to campus, Hidden Figures gave us a chance to engage in collective dialogue about not only diversity in STEM, but also these timely national issues via a compelling and concrete example. We embarked on these conversations knowing that progress in this area would rely on us building a community of trust and understanding.

Bringing our full selves to work

At a time when our country simmers with hatred, fear and misunderstanding, we, two women professors, an aerospace engineer and an anthropologist, find inspiration in the stories of Katherine Johnson and her colleagues—white and black, women and men. These individuals came together, despite Jim Crow laws and the societal pressures around segregation in the state of Virginia, to build America’s space program.

This collaborative spirit did not happen overnight, though. These Langley co-workers developed respect for and mutual understanding about each other’s backgrounds, family contexts, and skills over time, as they worked together towards a common goal. This is a lesson for all of us today: We are all products of our personal histories and differences, which impact our perspectives and our approach to problems. The Hidden Figures story represents a powerful example of what is possible when we take the time to acknowledge the complexity in the lives of people we ostracize and to join together, regardless of and because of our social differences, to achieve a collective goal.

Engaging history to find a way forward

As professors in an engineering college, this book gave us the chance to consider our work with engineering students and to ask questions about the book’s deep resonance with today’s society. While this book does not provide the answers to the challenges we face as a society, the stories of these women of color can help us shape how we collaborate with our colleagues and students.

These women are the role models we didn’t have in our own educational experiences, yet they paved the way for generations of women of color to pursue degrees and careers in STEM. By helping students connect these and other personal stories and experiences to their own, we can change the narrative of what it means to belong in STEM fields. These unsung heroes in Hidden Figures were the mathematical and engineering brains behind the operations, who helped take America to the moon, in spite of the challenges they faced inside and outside the workplace. As we engage with our students, we continue to think critically about how to support diversity within our community and a sense of belonging by each member within STEM and related fields. Through our curricular designs, we aim to help each student foster the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to be a creative problem solver and an effective team member.

Taking one big step together

Hidden Figures and similar stories must be told as we continue to write our national history. It’s these personal stories, historical and current, that we should discuss with our colleagues and our students in the coming years, recognizing the our opportunities and challenges as a nation are wide-reaching as they affect all individuals, not only those in the military or scientific communities. Through collective engagement about these topics we can better understand how to overcome the workplace, societal, and educational systems and policies that impact our abilities to come together as a community to support one another and our future as a nation. This is our country’s next moonshot.

Alexandra Coso Strong is an aerospace engineer at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and Caitrin Lynch is a cultural anthropologist at the college.