The future of liberal education in the United States, in its current form, is fraught but full of possibility. Today's institutions are struggling to maintain viability, sustain revenue, and assert value in the face of rising costs. But we should not abandon the model of pragmatic liberal learning that has made America's colleges and universities…

How do we transfer the brilliance of university research results into new products, services, and medicines to benefit society? University research is creating the technologies of tomorrow in the fields of medicine, engineering, information technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. These early-stage technologies need investment from…

By the mid-eighteenth century, when the first university appeared in Russia, many European nations could boast of long and glorious university traditions. But Russia, with its poorly developed system of elementary and secondary education, lagged behind other European countries and seemed destined for a long spell of second-tier performance. Yet by…

The outlook for the future of colleges and universities is uncertain. Financial stresses, changing student populations, and rapidly developing technologies all pose significant challenges to the nation's colleges and universities. In "Academia Next," futurist and higher education expert Bryan Alexander addresses these evolving trends to…

Many countries confront surprisingly similar challenges in preparing K-12 educators for success, while national contexts also make for surprising differences. In "Teaching the World's Teachers," education historians Lauren Lefty and James W. Fraser and their contributors make a convincing case for approaching these shared challenges from…

Higher education gets a bad rap these days. The public perception is that there is a growing rift between public universities and the elected officials who support them. In "What's Public about Public Higher Ed?," Stephen M. Gavazzi and E. Gordon Gee explore the reality of that supposed divide, offering qualitative and quantitative…

Daryl G. Smith has devoted her career to studying and fostering diversity in higher education. In "Diversity's Promise for Higher Education," Smith brings together research from a wide variety of fields to propose a set of clear and realistic practices that will help colleges and universities locate diversity as a strategic imperative…

In "Rethinking Education and Poverty," William G. Tierney brings together scholars from around the world to examine the complex relationship between poverty and education in the twenty first century. International in scope, this book assembles the best contemporary thinking about how education can mediate class and improve the lives of…

Do you want to go to graduate school? Then you're in good company: nearly 80,000 students will begin pursuing a PhD this year alone. But while almost all of new PhD students say they want to work in academia, most are destined for disappointment. The hard truth is that half will quit or fail to get their degree, and most graduates will never find…

Colleges and universities have always had interesting relationships with their external communities, whether they are cities, towns, or something in between. In many cases, they are the main economic driver for their regions--State College, Pennsylvania, or Raleigh, North Carolina, for example--and in others, they exist side by side with thriving…

Higher education in America, still thought to be the world leader, is in crisis. University students are falling behind their international peers in attainment, while suffering from unprecedented student debt. For over a decade, the realm of American higher education has been wracked with self-doubt and mutual recrimination, with no clear…

The United States, long considered to have the best higher education in the world, now ranks eleventh in the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds with a college degree. As other countries have made dramatic gains in degree attainment, the U.S. has improved more slowly. In response, President Obama recently laid out a national "completion agenda" with…

America's research universities consistently dominate global rankings but may be entrenched in a model that no longer accomplishes their purposes. With their multiple roles of discovery, teaching, and public service, these institutions represent the gold standard in American higher education, but their evolution since the nineteenth century has…

This volume analyzes the impact of public policy on the knowledge economies and higher education systems of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the overall European Union. Given that…

No issue in higher education is as salient, or as controversial, as finance. As demand for higher education around the world grows, so do the costs associated with it, especially as governments shoulder less of the burden. Tuition fees rise and student loan debt grows. Who pays for these surging costs? Who "should" pay? D. Bruce Johnstone and…