The Commons

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of higher education knows that “college completion rates” and “data-driven solutions” have become more important than ever before in public debates and media coverage. National and state-level policymakers, along with college presidents, are paying closer attention to these issues – or at the very least, they are pledging to focus on them.

Traditionally, these imperatives have put community colleges in a tough spot. There is a natural tension between their institutional commitments to open-access for all students, and their characteristically low graduation rates.

This challenge has made it particularly gratifying for us to partner with Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count. Since 2008, we have been working with ATD – which has received significant funding from Lumina Foundation for Education and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – to help community colleges stay true to their role while improving their outcomes. What began as a 26-college pilot program in 2004 has blossomed into a network of 130 such institutions spread over 24 states and the District of Columbia.

The success of this initiative receives some much-deserved credit and recognition in this Sept. 6th cover story in Community College Week. By highlighting the practices some “leader colleges” have employed to boost their graduation rates, the article provides ample food for thought for institutions struggling with similar challenges.

Tags: achieving the dream, awards, college completion, community colleges, higher education, nonprofit branding, nonprofit communications, nonprofit marketing, obama, resources, student success, trends, yield

It seems safe to say that most Americans have some realization of the fact that when any president and his administration have bad news to deliver, they do a “document dump” on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend. The thinking of the white house staff  (and many corporations who employ this technique) is that [...]

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Andrew Careaga said some good things about my new book—The Real U: Building Brands That Resonate with Students, Faculty, Staff, and Donors.  “Quick, insightful,” “good counsel,” “expertly and concisely packaged narrative….”  Dude!  But then, “peppering one’s prose with standard-order marketing adjectives,” “try[ing] too hard to be clever….”  Sigh.  The travails of being misunderstood…a poor, sensitive [...]

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Céad míle fáilte: While the Irish greeting for “100,000 Welcomes” hasn’t translated exactly to  that number of new client relationships in 2010, we have had quite the busy first two quarters at Lipman Hearne establishing new partnerships. We are proud of, and excited by, the collaborations that are underway and would like to take a [...]

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This interesting brand management article in the Gallup Management Journal shines the spotlight on an often forgotten marketing “P.”
My take on this topic…brand experience is the next most important horizon for all brands. As marketers, we continue to refine and master the “channels” and the product positioning and the pitch — but, ugh, those darn [...]

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Another day, another important article – this one in U.S. News and World Report – on how business schools are “re-evaluating the importance of business ethics and different methods of teaching ethics.”
This topic has had a lot of coverage for several years, starting even before Enron and other high-profile ethical messes. The global financial meltdown [...]

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Did the MBAs do it?  The debate rages whether business schools and their graduates are responsible for the global financial crisis.  Dutifully, many schools are “introspecting” on the subject.
Why Character is Destiny for Business Schools – and the MBAs They Groom, in the new issue of the Baylor Business Review takes a look at the [...]

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Despite being a country where Internet connections are often unreliable, India can usually be seen as an early adopter of new web and social media applications.  India’s citizens have so wholly embraced Facebook that they love it almost as much as they love film.  Facebook recently announced that it will open its first Asian office [...]

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New legislation being considered by the U.S. Department of Education is squarely aimed at for-profit colleges, with the intent of linking a student’s debt with their post-graduate earnings.  Their concern is that students—lured by advertising—are investing in credentials or degrees that don’t actually deliver the earning power that the student expects, generating flotillas of “underwater” [...]

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Upon reading the first article in a three-part Business Week series examining high-profile searches for new business school deans, it struck me that it is hard to overstate the importance of getting this process right. As with a corporate CEO position, the individual leading each of these institutions — or at any top business school [...]

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