New York's Nyack College has a plan in place to retain adult students.
While increased enrollment is widely regarded as a positive development, understanding ways to manage the influx of additional students, providing a high-quality educational experience, meeting academic goals, and staying within budget requires administrators and architects to minimize new construction and maximize existing space.
The congested college and university marketplace means that every presidential communication must further institutional branding and messaging. Contemporary presidents are the public “face” of the institution, and competition for audiences’ attention has never been fiercer.
In an age when digital has become such a key channel, the colleges and universities that embrace this concept will outpace those that don’t. It’s not a financial question anymore, a bifurcation of the haves and have-nots; it’s more of a mindset issue. While having the vast resources of a major institution certainly helps, it doesn’t matter how much money you throw at a website project if it’s not seen as the central hub of your overall communication efforts. And if it isn’t used as a chance to engage an inclusive set of stakeholders from across campus, it’s a huge opportunity missed.
So, why have smart campuses found sustainability such an attractive value proposition? In short, because our customers are demanding sustainability, because it saves money, and because higher education’s ethical license to operate is at risk if we don’t respond to a society beset with myriad unsustainable ailments.
Increasing numbers of colleges and universities, however, are adopting more of a change-agent, upstart mentality. Schools such as the University of Rochester, Duke University, and Case Western Reserve University are prime examples of institutions that are finding ways to circumvent the go-slow approach that long has characterized American higher education. The processes and technologies that these institutions develop find their ways into the marketplace as business ventures. And the creation of these technologies leads universities to beef up their own hiring.
Educators have been less successful in providing access for American students. Access creates the pathway that makes choice possible. Ideally, education should be a series of seamless transitions between various levels and complexities of learning. What has happened in America, however, is that access has become a fundamental stumbling block for students seeking to learn and to advance themselves.
Old dogs are learning new tricks as adult students return to colleges to enhance their careers or springboard into new ones. However, to attract these dedicated, engaged scholars, there's one question you should definitely not ask.
This holistic PACT model is fundamentally different than most programs as it provides one person as a "go-to" source, thereby eliminating the frustration that students experience when assistance is fragmented into segregated silos, such as singl