Navajo Technical University (NM)

An article in The Daily Times of Farmington, NM by Noel Lyn Smith describes an upcoming Birth of a University Celebration planned by Navajo Technical University highlighting the institution's recent name change in July 2013.

NTU was founded in 1979 as the Navajo Skills Center in Crownpoint, NM.  It was designated as a land grant college in 1979 and became Crownpoint Institute of Technology in 1985.  The name then changed to Navajo Technical College in 2006.

Videos on YouTube...Scripps College (CA) and Berea College (KY)

There are number of excellent videos on YouTube that focus on history of colleges...  Use the Comment section below to provide urls for other videos highlighting the history of other colleges or universities. 

A Brief History of Scripps College was prepared for the 75th anniversary of the institution.

A detailed history of Berea College, founded in 1855, runs for over 22 minutes.  Berea is one of seven members of the Work College Consortium.

Bates Center for the Study of Nursing History

The Barbara Bates Center for the Study of Nursing History provides a variety resources including a Nursing History & Healthcare page.  Patricia D'Antonio's interesting article includes a variety of charts and a

lengthy list of references, To Degree or not to Degree: Women, Nursing and Baccalaureate Education in Twentieth-Century America.

Transcripts are also available through the center for the following nursing schools:

• Chestnut Hill Hospital School of Nursing
• Lankenau Hospital School of Nursing
• Mercy-Douglass Hospital School of Nursing
• St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing. Lancaster, PA.
• Temple University Health System – Episcopal Hospital School of Nursing & Perfusion Science 

University of Jamestown (ND)

An editorial from the Jamestown Sun on August 22, 2013 supports the institution's announcement of a change in name to the University of Jamestown.  The institution was founded as Jamestown College in 1883 and is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.

An article by Keri Lucin from the Fargo Forum on August 21, 2013 provides more details on the institution and the decision.

Finding Hope for the Future of Higher Education...

Thomas Frey offers two recent posts at FuturistSpeaker.com that I encourage others to read.  The first is from July 5, 2013, By 2030 over 50% of Colleges will Collapse, and this initial post stands apart from the articles with a similar theme that I've been reading the past year.  Frey sets the stage by quantifying what he calls driving forces before arguing that eight core issues will confront institutions...and, over 50% will fail.

While it is a bit weird to say that I enjoyed reading a  post that predicts the demise of learning communities that I've known...maybe even the one where I'm currently employed, Frey is one of the first authors I've read who also articulates a rationale for a substantial increase in demand for education.  He even goes so far as predicting in his follow-up post on July 28, 2013, Preparing our Minds for Thoughts Unthinkable: The Future of Colleges and Universities, that, "In the future the largest web property on the Internet will be oriented around education."

Reading other authors and the often lengthy list of emotional comments of their readers or watching various pundits on t.v. has not been very satisfying...with their repeated references to unsustainable price increases, student debt loads, and higher education institutions that are unable or unwilling to change....people just seem a bit too happy sticking a finger in my eye...or, saying in many ways that what I've been doing, is at best, irrelevant....or worse, buries innocent young people under mountains of debt without imparting any marketable skills.

Instead of breathlessly anticipating the end of our "bubble" and the demise of higher education...I came away from reading Frey more hopeful than I've felt for a while...and with luck I might live just long enough to see if he is correct.

Corporate Colleges

While corporate institutions of higher education have not had a high profile over the years, they have caught the attention of a few scholars.  For those who are interested, Gordon Thompson's article, "Unfulfilled Prophecy: The Evolution of Corporate Colleges," from The Journal of Higher Education [Vol. 71, No. 3 (May - Jun., 2000), pp. 322-341] available through JSTOR provides a good introduction.  Thompson begins by reviewing different definitions of corporate colleges, including alternative ways they can be categorized.

Brief sketches of three institutions that have closed are included in Thompson's article [the highlighted text below links to corresponding pages on Wikipedia]:

• Northrop University, began as a division of Northrop Corporation in 1942 and became independent in 1957, ultimately closing in 1993.
• Wang Institute of Graduate Studies started by Wang Laboratories in 1979 and later closed in 1987.
• Watterson College, created as the College of Computer Sciences, later becoming MetriData Institute, purchased by Jostens in 1983 and ultimately closed in 1993.

When Colleges Close...

I recently discovered Martin Van Der Werf's essay from February 11, 2013 titled, "When Colleges Close..." with references to the closing of Mount Senario College in Wisconsin (1962-2002) and Bradford College in Massachusetts (1803-2000).  Van Der Werf has a long term interest in the subject reflected through a number of articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education beginning with a July 2000 article on Vermon't Trinity College.  He provides links to a couple of these articles and also includes comments of Ann E. Martin's 2005 doctoral thesis and Arthur Levine's chapter from Alice Brown and Sandra Ballard's book, Changing Course: Reinventing Colleges, Avoiding Closure.