With all the change and debate in higher education this year, we had more than enough candidates for our list of the 10 most influential people. Here are some runners-up.
Who do you think had the most influence on higher education this year? Tell us here.
Angela Duckworth, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Thanks in large part to Ms. Duckworth, who won a MacArthur “genius grant” this year for her research on “grit,” many college admissions officers are experimenting with new ways to assess candidates. Looking beyond grades and test scores, they are considering noncognitive qualities like passion, persistence, and success coping with setbacks.
Individuals who made their mark through the courts; through the power of an idea; through the act of writing an open letter; even in death.
James R. Kvaal, deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council. Mr. Kvaal, with more than 15 years of higher-education policy work on his résumé, was a key influence on the college-affordability plan President Obama unveiled in August. Under the plan, colleges would be rated on access, affordability, and results, and students at higher-rated colleges could obtain larger Pell Grants and cheaper loans.
Paul J. LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University. Mr. LeBlanc believes competency-based learning can open doors to a college education for students who have traditionally been shut out. This year his university’s new College for America, a self-paced online program, became the first one not based on credit hours to be eligible for federal student aid.
Brian A. Nosek, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. Amid widely publicized cases of flaws or outright fraud in psychology research, Mr. Nosek is taking steps to improve that science—and others. He’s the researcher behind the nonprofit Open Science Framework, which encourages scientists in various fields to register their hypotheses and let the public know how they panned out. His Center for Open Science also houses the Reproducibility Project, which began as an effort to see how many studies from a year’s worth of three psychology journals could be replicated. It has since added an investigation of 50 cancer-biology studies.
Ricardo D. Torres, president and chief executive of the National Student Clearinghouse. As lawmakers and the public focus on holding colleges accountable for their performance, Mr. Torres is working to establish the clearinghouse’s Research Center as the go-to source for data on retention and graduation rates. New achievement measures are using the tallies, and this year the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the advocacy group Student Veterans of America announced a partnership with the center to conduct—and make public—the first systematic analysis of veterans’ academic progress.
Xia Yeliang, an economist at Peking University. Universities worldwide took notice when professors at Peking voted to fire Mr. Xia, who has called for democratic freedoms and human rights in China. His firing appeared to confirm the fears of many American faculty members that academic freedom will not be protected in institutional partnerships with Chinese universities. Professors at Wellesley College pushed it to reconsider its nascent partnership with Peking, but the college ultimately decided to maintain the program.