Higher Ed History The “Forced” Flexibility of Higher Education’s Target Populations 07/03/202507/10/2025 I wrote this to show how adaptable higher education has been to new populations of potential students over the past 150 years. Hopefully you can see how even when external…
Uncategorized 9 Steps for Leveraging Major and Career Exploration in a Student First Year Lifecycle 06/19/202506/25/2025 A friend, Devin Chaloux, an expert in customer relationship excellence, helped me think about how we use the wisdom of behavioral science to help colleges to guide students to positive…
Student Success Using Summer Engagement with Students as Powerful Predictor of Future Success 05/08/202506/05/2025 The Real Reason Why Students Get Summer Off Summer holds a unique place in the history of the U.S. and education – but not for the reason most people think.…
Deep Thoughts Articles ~80 Ways Colleges Can Save Money without Sacrificing Quality 01/02/2025 When I taught graduate courses for Appalachian State University and Baylor University on the business and finance of higher education, one of the course sections that was essential to cover…
Deep Thoughts Articles A Straight Talk Survival Guide for Colleges, Peter Facione 01/02/2025 Sometimes I read an article that is just so good, I simply want to recreate it in a location where I can always easily find it to share. The following…
Student Success 60,000 College Graduates Reveal What Makes a Great College Experience 12/31/2024 These are what I consider the Key Findings on College Worth from Gallup-Purdue Index (2015) The Gallup-Purdue Index results reaffirmed the importance to students of supportive relationships with faculty and…
Deep Thoughts Articles 30 Colleges that Said Goodbye (Closed) in 2024 12/30/202412/30/2024 The U.S. lost ~30 non-profit universities last year. When I study the states, Pennsylvania led the way with 7 closures. New York and Illinois both lost 4 colleges, and Ohio…
Deep Thoughts Articles 120 Additional Sources of Revenue for Universities 12/30/202401/20/2025 Having taught a graduate course in the business and finance of higher education multiple times, I have learned there are many ways for colleges to make additional money that may…
Deep Thoughts Articles Colleges Most Likely to Close – Based on 2024 Forbes’ Financial Health Failing Grades 12/29/202401/08/2025 Having taught a class on Institutional Instability in 2019 and been a student of higher education for more than 30 years, I have a fascination with how and when colleges…
The Most Interesting College of the Day! Top Performers on Social Mobility (US News) 12/27/202401/04/2025 These are the colleges, based on U.S. News' rankings of colleges, most likely to help lower income students advance to higher socio-economic levels. "Economically disadvantaged students are less likely than…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Residential Colleges in the U.S. Are Less than 100 years Old! 12/26/202412/26/2024 Taken from A Collegiate Way of Living, by Mark B. Ryan Merton of Oxford Perhaps the earliest permanent residential college, still extant, was Merton of Oxford, founded in 1264 by…
Higher Ed Mascots College Mascots without an “S” at the End – FCS and DII 09/15/202411/22/2024 Go here for a list of the College Mascots without an “s” at the End- Division I FBS Go here for a list of the College Mascots without an “S”…
Deep Thoughts Articles 10 Themes for Why People Go To College 07/20/2024 I don't necessarily agree with all of these reasons, but an honest answer, based on 30 years working in colleges, leads me to share these 20 reasons. They are not…
Personal & Family Personal Essay for Admission to M.Ed. for Student Affairs in Higher Ed (1992) 07/07/202407/07/2024 College is more than just getting good grades. When I first came to the University of Virginia I felt that my grade point average would be the best measure of…
Student Success Matrix of Student Success – A 2×2 w/ Social & Academic Engagement 07/07/202407/07/2024 Multiple years of my and colleagues' research has revealed that students' sense of belonging is the one factor more predictive of student persistence (retention) than other variable except for grade…
Student Success The Penguin Promise – How to Ensure Students Get a Good Job After College 07/06/2024 I developed this program for a private college. It is based on my understanding of best practices in student success and in studying how 7 other colleges are approaching this…
Student Success Improve Retention by Linking Scholarships to High Impact Practices 01/11/202401/11/2024 It was my first day at work at a university over 1,500 miles from my home. We were at a retreat in the Texas Hill Country and I was much…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Rationale for Eating Clubs 12/14/202301/06/2024 If you have heard about the Eating Clubs at Princeton and other elite colleges, their reputation is often similar to the power of fraternities and sororities to group students off-campus…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Ranking Students by their Socio-Econonic Status 12/14/202301/06/2024 Did you know that in America's higher education history, colonial colleges listed students and had them dress in order of their socio-economic status. "Although the social composition of the collegiate…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Harvard, Yale, & Princeton Each Quite Different 12/14/202312/30/2023 Harvard too liberal for Yale which was too liberal for Princeton... Did you know that Yale was started because Harvard was considered too liberal? And then Princeton was started because…
Deep Thoughts on Higher Ed and Life 