The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, commonly referred to simply as "the stimulus package," is poised to pump over $100 billion into U.S. public education in the next few years. This allocation reflects the Obama administration's new commitment to education as a public good, which is embodied in President Obama's ambitious goal of 60…

Last fall, the National Center for Public Policy in Higher Education published the results of a five-state demonstration project aimed at developing common state-level benchmarks for student learning for its fifty-state report card, "Measuring Up." One of the instruments used in this Pew-funded project was the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA),…

By late last November, the 2004-2005 academic year had become known informally among higher education policy wonks as "the year of accountability." Probably because of anticipated debates about the Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (which were supposed to have begun in January but fizzled), no fewer than four major reports on…

One of the most ambitious and intriguing developments in higher education in the world today is the so-called Bologna process in Europe. An initiative of the European Union, this process began in June 1999 when twenty-nine ministers in charge of higher education met to begin creating a European higher education area within which the comparability…