Category Archives: Colleges and Universities

Changing a college’s name from referencing a region (North Central) to pointing to its suburban home (Naperville)?

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Would changing the name of North Central College to instead reference Naperville help the institution? Here is why a change might work:

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Historically, North Central College’s location has not always been at the center of its identity, according to Gòkè-Paríolá. When a survey from 2019 showed the university had low name and brand recognition from people outside of the Naperville area, the institution started to reconsider how it markets itself.

Now, as the third largest city in Illinois, North Central College’s location in Naperville is increasingly advertised as a major part of the student experience…

Naperville has made national headlines as it garners attention for such things as safety and quality of life. In 2025, Naperville was named the best city to live in America by online rating database Niche for the second consecutive year. It also consistently ranks as the best city to raise a family in America by Niche…

“If they are in Maryland and you try to recruit them and say, ‘Come to North Central College,’ well, you got your work cut out for you,” Gòkè-Paríolá said. “But when you tell them, ‘Where is it?’ ‘Naperville.’ (They say) ‘Oh, Naperville. I know Naperville’ or ‘I read something about it.’”

As someone who has studied Naperville, my sense is that it is generally well regarded by residents and outsiders. The rankings referenced above help (see posts from recent years here, here, and here) but so does (1) population growth, (2) white-collar jobs, (3) wealth, and (4) a vibrant downtown.

Additionally, the current name hints at a broader region. The college was initially located in and named after the small town of Plainfield, a community southwest of Naperville and one that was small until growing from 4,557 residents in 1990 to over 44,000 in 2020. Before moving to Naperville, the college’s name was changed to “North-Western,” referencing the Northwest Territory from which Illinois and several other states were founded. In 1926, the name became “North Central,” which more accurately reflects the location outside of Chicago with the United States spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

There are numerous colleges that reference suburbs in their name. I wonder how many of these names were selected prior to mass suburbanization in the postwar era. How many are named after sizable suburbs today? How about University of Santa Ana or Plano or Aurora (Colorado – the large Illinois suburb has Aurora University but it was renamed for the community prior to World War Two) or Hialeah?

Related to this, is there a sense that a certain kind of learning or college experience happens in growing, wealthy suburbs compared to what is available in big cities or smaller communities? Research universities are often in big cities or college towns, not necessarily suburbs.

Where is my wrapped academic work summary for 2025?

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With different apps and platforms offering year-end summaries, who offers one of these for academics? Alongside my listening, watching, and reading, I want to see a count of emails sent, meetings attended, assignments graded, class sessions prepped, and more.

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The one platform that could do that for me would be Microsoft products, specifically Outlook or Microsoft 365. Outlook offers insights into my time through the calendar and email activity, could report on who I sent the most emails to (and who received them from me), and could look at the text of the calendar and emails to figure out what I was working on.

Expand this to Microsoft 365 and even more data is available. What did I type into Word? What did I track in Excel? What did I present through Powerpoint? What conversations and groups was I part of in Teams?

I suppose I could do this work myself. At various points I have tried to track my time and activity. This work can be helpful, particularly when filling year-end reports or updating my CV. But there is also a lot to keep track of and I have not found that knowing the contents of every or nearly every minute is useful. I do not need everything quantified; seeing general patterns can help me keep address my top priorities.

Is this what AI will offer in the near future? Could it make a to-do list for each day anticipating what I need to do based on previous activity? Or will it take work to manage the manager?

(Other contenders for helping prepare my 2025 year in academics wrapped: Google Photos, our learning management software, my library records, my key card.)

The ongoing parking issues at American colleges and universities

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New policies about class scheduling at the University of Utah have touched on an important issue for many campuses: parking.

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Debates about parking, of course, have long been frequent and contentious on college campuses. Clark Kerr, who led the University of California system in the 1950s and ’60s, once described colleges as “a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking.”

At Utah, an online petition that has received over 7,000 signatures says that “parking congestion is undeniably a concern that needs addressing, but the solution should not compromise educational quality or student well-being.”

The university, which has 36,881 students and 18,300 full- and part-time employees on the main campus, had a combined 9,314 parking spots in 2024, according to commuter-services data. But the ratio of parking spots to parking permits sold is not one to one. Knowing that not all permit owners will park on campus at the same time, the university sells more permits than they have spots, which aggravates many students. For example, though the campus last year had 5,843 parking spots in “U” spaces that are farther from campus, it sold over 12,000 permits for those spaces, at a price of $345 for the year.

Still, the lots are never at full capacity, said Collin Simmons, executive director of auxiliary services. While spaces in the “A” lots, near the center of campus, are usually full every day, spots can be found on the outskirts of campus, or within a 10- to 15-minute walk to the campus’ center, he said. But these spots can also be scarce, especially between 10 a.m. and just before 2 p.m., when fewer than 10 percent of the U spots are available, leaving parking-permit owners to circle the lots across campus before they can find a spot.

Americans like to drive. So it should not be a surprise that they also like to drive to school campuses. This includes employees who commute to college campuses but also students who may live on or off-campus and want easier access to college buildings.

The description above from one university suggests this is a complex issue to address. I wonder if what every driver wants is this: a close parking spot to where they want to go with little to no cost to the driver. Why should I inconvenienced in reaching my on-campus work or activity?

To provide everyone a great parking spot every time comes with costs. How much does it cost to build and maintain parking lots and structures? A better parking spot for all might cost drivers more money. Would it be worth it? How much land on campus should be devoted to this purpose as opposed to other competing land uses? Colleges have numerous kinds of buildings and landscapes to build and maintain and space can be at a premium for many institutions.

Imagine a different kind of university: all the lower floors of the major buildings are large parking garages. Everyone can park underneath offices, classrooms, dining halls, recreational facilities. While this might get people a parking spot, does it then eliminate the streetscape? Many colleges and universities like to portray a bucolic image of ambling through green trees and lawns surrounded by traditional buildings that look like learning and knowledge.

Not discussed in the case above is whether the University of Utah has alternatives to driving. How many students can or do walk or bike to class? Is there viable mass transit available?

Society enables people through institutions and social movements, part five

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Every human is affected by institutions. These durable social collectives outlive individuals, have particular social structures, and can do things that individuals cannot. They are good examples of how society enables people more than it constrains them.

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Take for example a college or university. This past semester, I taught a class where we looked at American institutions of higher education over time. The oldest institutions are nearly 400 years old while many others have at least a century of history. These institutions have changed in important ways over time – think of the curriculum, their size, their purpose, their values – but they are recognizable in the past and present as places of learning.

No college or university is dependent on the actions of just one person or even a small set of people. We could tell the narrative this way; focus primarily on the president or founder or key leaders. At least some of them likely did consequential things. But there is a broader story to tell of the institution. What did the Board do? How did the college or university interact with legislators or the local community or other actors in higher education? What was the experience of faculty, staff, and students at different points?

As an institution, the college or university can enable people. It can offer classes, experiences, and opportunities that an individual or a small group could not do. There are things it cannot do but there is a reason these kinds of institutions have served societies for hundreds of years.

Institutions are durable and enabling. How might one change an institution or set of institutions? Social movements are mass movements of people working toward a common goal. They are relatively unusual; it takes a lot of effort to get large numbers of people to do something. To organize a local protest or march or campaign needs organizers, participants, resources, and a space. They get receive attention and can rally people to a cause.

And even then, social movements often need openings or certain conditions where what they ask for can be achieved. Hundreds of thousands of people might march within a country and nothing happens. Or it might take years and decades for a movement to see change happen. Successful movements are remembered for a long time because they harnessed the activity and actions of many people and changed societies.

In both of these examples, people are empowered. Institutions can constrain people and they are often associated with bureaucracy. However, bureaucracy exists because large complex institutions need ways to structure their activities. Social movements can fail to reach their goals or disappoint the people who participate. However, they can achieve things that only large numbers of people working together can do.

Scaffolding assignments for class, scaffolding tasks in life

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As I do some final planning for courses this semester, I was reminded of the scaffolded final assignments I now have in each class. These involve having multiple steps that contribute to a final product, usually a research paper, at the end of the semester. At each point, students work on a portion of what will be the final product and receive feedback. I have generally found this helps lead to better final projects and more learning over the course of the semester compared to having a big assignment due at the end with little preparation or feedback beforehand.

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But this is not just for school assignments. This is often helpful for getting tasks done. People might go about this in different ways. Imagine doing a little of a task each day – such as cleaning one level of a house – and it adds up to being done. Or working hard on something for a set amount of time and then taking a short break before going back to the task. Or putting in practice time each day and it adding up to more in the long run. Indeed, how often do we set out to accomplish something that goes beyond a simple task and get it all done in one sitting? It may be possible – but scaffolding often helps.

What if one important skill to be learned here is how to learn how to break complex tasks into manageable steps over time? Being able to consider a task, see how it can be effectively subdivided, finding the time to do those parts, reflecting on the progress after each part is completed, and then putting it all together into a final product. A classroom can provide an opportunity to practice this with some guidance.

South Alabama, Ohio University, and others have become the lower minor leagues for the big time college football teams who then feed into the NFL

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Watching several big college football games yesterday, I tried to focus on the number of transfers playing for Power 5 teams. Sometimes these transfers come from other big programs but they also now come from small schools were players have proven themselves. And then when they do well, they get the call-up to the 10-20 teams that might challenge for a national championship. And then they might get the call-up to the NFL.

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To some degree, this has always been true in college football. But with the ease of transfers and NIL money, it seems like a new era is underway. The player who might never get recruited at a top team at the end of high school could be a hot commodity after several successful in the lower minor leagues. This might be especially true of quarterbacks; instead of going through years of developing someone, big programs can pluck a veteran transfer who can step right in.

How much more like the minor leagues can college football get? Will this help prompt separating the football from the education side? The number of transfers from smaller programs to bigger ones might play a role.

More colleges in places with higher costs of living

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Where do colleges tend to be located? This graph in The Chronicle of Higher Education uses one metric:

Two quick thoughts in response:

  1. Does the presence of these colleges over time help contribute to a higher cost of living? I am reminded of Richard Florida’s argument about the creative class. If I remember the analysis correctly, places with colleges tend to have higher percentages of creative class residents. And he suggests colleges and universities can help attract people and development.
  2. When Ben Norquist and I looked at the locations of smaller Christian colleges, we found they tended not to be in the biggest cities (which account for some of these higher cost of living places). In contrast, research schools are often in big cities according to the article: “Almost a third, or 32.2 percent, of colleges in The Chronicle’s analysis were in counties where cost of living was at least 15 percent higher than the national average. The types of institutions found in these expensive regions tended to vary. About 10 percent of doctoral-granting universities and 23 percent of four-year special-focus institutions (like those specializing in health professions or religious training, for example) are in the priciest 1 percent of the nation’s counties, where the cost of living is more than one-and-a-half times the national average. In contrast, nearly half of associate- and bachelor’s-granting institutions were in counties with below-average costs of living.”
  3. The other category with a larger percentage discrepancy is among the percentage of institutions in counties at 90 to 100 in cost of living.

What past me might have thought about starting Year 16 as college faculty today

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Today marks the start of my 16th year teaching sociology. What would I have thought of this particular marker in the past? Some retrospective speculation:

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-Fall 2020: How many more years of teaching during COVID might there be? This was a semester of teaching masked students sitting six feet apart plus having some students joining class via Zoom. Getting to the next Fall semester, let alone several years down the road, was far from my mind.

-Fall 2009: Starting as an assistant professor, there is much to learn. What did I need to do in the classroom each day? How could I write and publish? How did my institution operate? I was hopeful about future years but the day-to-day concerns of preparing classes took a lot of time.

-Fall 2008: Focused on finishing up my dissertation research. Lots of research and writing to do.

-Fall 2004: The beginning of graduate school in sociology. We heard about how many of us would make it and what we needed to do to succeed. Could I do what someone needed to do to be a sociologist for a long time?

-Fall 2003: Senior year of college begins and graduation looms on the horizon. Does going to graduate school and pursuing academic work sound appealing? You can get paid to teach, think, and spend years on a college campus? Time to get those applications written and sent in.

-Fall 2002: Graduation is a ways away and I am taking a semester off from college and working. Lots of options to consider for the future.

-Fall 2000: College is underway and while teaching holds some appeal, it is exciting to take classes in a range of topics that interest me. A semester later, I will take my first sociology course and soon select that to study.

-Any school year starting before this: little to no thoughts of becoming a college faculty member.

I am sometimes asked when I knew I wanted to be a faculty member and/or pursue sociology as an academic. The short answer: it developed over time.

On the other hand, it is hard to imagine what else life could be like in late August after being a sociologist this long. I have enjoyed teaching, writing and researching, working with students, and serving in my institution. As with each new school year, it is exciting to launch another round of learning and questions and development. That excitement may wax and wane through the academic calendar but today is a good day: the 2024-25 academic year is now underway.

Let an AI robot deliver the commencement address at graduation!

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A New York university had a commencement speech – a Q&A with a student leader – delivered by AI:

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The speaker certainly had the résumé for the job. She’d spoken at the United Nations, graced the covers of Cosmopolitan and Elle, and been a frequent guest on the world’s most-watched talk shows.

But she didn’t feel proud of her achievements. She didn’t feel excited to be speaking to the graduates. In fact, she didn’t feel anything at all.

Her name is Sophia, a human-like robot created in 2016 by Hanson Robotics and a “personification of AI in real life,” according to Lorrie Clemo, D’Youville’s president…

Unable to tell personal anecdotes about overcoming adversity or pursuing success, Sophia instead delivered an amalgamation of lessons taken from other commencement speakers.

“As you embark on this new chapter in your lives, I offer you the following inspirational advice that is common to all graduation ceremonies,” the robot said. “Embrace lifelong learning, be adaptable, pursue your passions, take risks, foster meaningful connections, make a positive impact, and believe in yourself.”

If the goal of commencement is to provide a speech that attendees will remember and look to in the future, that is a high bar.

If the goal of commencement is to provide a memorable experience, having a robot talk might fulfill that (even if the speech itself is not memorable).

It might be a niche market but how long until there is an AI robot that delivers a respectable commencement speech and is available for hire at high school, college, and graduate level ceremonies?

How come there are not more colleges with “suburb” or “suburban” in their name?

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There are plenty of colleges and universities in the United States named after communities. And many schools are in suburbs outside of cities. But, I had a hard time coming up with colleges with “suburb” or a form of that word in them. Here is the only one listed on a site containing over 6,500 colleges and universities:

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-South Suburban College in South Holland, Illinois.

A good number of schools were founded before the mass suburbia of the twentieth century but many have started since then. Is “suburb” or “suburban” too generic? Does it not provide the level of prestige or status a school seeks? It is hard to drum up for support for a school linked to a sector of a metropolitan region or identified with suburban life?