Make completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) a requirement for high school graduation in the Commonwealth.
Lane Glenn
Posted inOpinion
Affirmative action is dead; long live affirmative action
“The big, well-funded, elite research institution is a particularly American phenomenon and represents one of the country’s greatest contributions to the world of knowledge. But…I wonder if America’s success at providing for the top of the pyramid, at creating places for future geniuses to be taught by current geniuses, sometimes blinds us to a more […]
Posted inEducation
Undocumented students are the key to our future
FOR A STATE that that relies as much on immigration as Massachusetts does, we are falling farther behind the rest of the country when it comes to economically competitive policies and funding for our young, undocumented residents seeking a college education. That’s the finding of a recently released report from the Education Trust, “Higher Education […]
Posted inOpinion
Gun violence keeps creeping closer and closer
ON MONDAY evening, February 13, 43-year-old Anthony Dwayne McRae shot and killed three students and critically injured five others in Berkey Hall and the Student Union on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. As chronicled by the Gun Violence Archive, the horrific rampage at MSU was just the latest in what […]
Posted inOpinion
A college president’s assessment of DACA
TEN YEARS AGO, on June 15, 2012, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, directed by President Barack Obama, issued a memorandum to US customs, border, and immigration agencies: “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children.” The memo, which outlined the policies and procedures that would become known […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, Opinion
5 ways to avoid a skilled workforce crisis
IF YOU THINK it is hard to find workers for jobs today, just wait: It’s about to get a whole lot worse. That’s the biggest takeaway from a research brief released last week by MassINC, “Sizing up Massachusetts’ Skilled Worker Shortage.” The brief is a follow-up to a 2014 MassINC-UMass Donahue Institute study that estimated […]
Posted inOpinion
Forgiving student loans is not the best policy
ANY DAY NOW, President Biden is expected to make an announcement that his administration will be cancelling up to $10,000 in college student loan debt for each borrower. A lot of people are going to be unhappy about that. Borrowers with much larger loan balances hoping for greater relief will be deeply disappointed. Democrats like […]
Posted inOpinion
Uvalde comes nearly a decade after Newtown
NEARLY A DECADE AGO, on December 19, 2012, I shared this message with my college and our community about the worst school mass shooting in American history: It’s been a soul-searching week at Northern Essex Community College… Like parents across the country and around the world, I’ve been holding my children even more closely this […]
Posted inOpinion
How Harvard could become a higher ed hero
IT MAY NOT always take money to make money, but it sure helps. Last year, according to the recently released 2021 NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments, Harvard University’s famed endowment grew from $41.9 billion to $53.2 billion, an astonishing 27 percent return on its investment, earning America’s oldest and most famous university, with its 5,000 or […]
Posted inOpinion
College, sheriff team up to reduce recidivism
THE UNITED STATES puts more of our citizens in jail than any other country on the planet. While we have only 5 percent of the world’s total population, we have 25% of the world’s prisoner population. According to the World Prison Population List, an astonishing 716 of every 100,000 Americans are behind bars in local and […]