Bob Kerrey's rocky tenure as president of the New School may seem a fading memory, but the recent disclosure that he earned $3-million from the institution last year could rekindle resentments on campus and raise questions about Mr. Kerrey's continuing and lucrative role at the college. Under fire from New School faculty over turnover in the…

As president of the University of Miami, Donna E. Shalala answers to dozens of trustees, many of whom are captains of industry. But two of those board members also answer to her. Ms. Shalala's uncommon role reversal is a product of her lucrative service on the boards of two different companies headed by members of Miami's Board of Trustees. In…

In a long-simmering national fight over compensation for public-college presidents, the State of California emerged this year as the primary battleground. More than any other institution in recent memory, California State University has publicly and sometimes bitterly wrestled with a vexing question for higher education: How much does a public…

A college's graduation rate is such a basic consumer fact for would-be students these days that it's difficult to imagine that the federal government didn't even collect the information as recently as the early 1990s. If not for two former Olympic basketball players who made their way to Congress and wanted college athletes to know about their…

The author has been reading George R.R. Martin's marvelous fantasy epic, "A Song of Ice and Fire," about a medieval-ish kingdom and its wars and intrigues. What fascinates him most about the narrative is the extent to which it parallels his experiences as a community-college professor and administrator. The author argues that for all the good they…

Private-college presidents often draw scrutiny for their hefty compensation packages, but most of them have a ready comeback: I could make a lot more money in the corporate world. While this statement is surely sometimes true, it is also true that some of the nation's top-paid presidents continue to receive perks that their corporate counterparts…

Every college president's success depends on building good relationships with outside groups, whether donors, alumni, or legislators. Presidents of Roman Catholic colleges have one more party to please: the local bishop. In recent months, the bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania, asked colleges in his diocese to assure him that they were not providing…

College faculties often use votes of "no confidence" to try to push out the leaders of their institutions. Many do so, however, without giving much thought to what such a vote actually means, whether they are using it appropriately, or how it will affect their campus--and their own future. Mae Kuykendall, a professor of law at Michigan State…

In July 2009, Felix V. Matos Rodriguez will take over as president of Hostos Community College of the City University of New York, which in 1970 opened in a converted tire factory in the South Bronx to educate members of a primarily Puerto Rican community. Like Mr. Matos Rodriguez, who moved to the mainland United States at age 18, many of those…

For five decades, the University of Louisville men's basketball team has played its home games at the state's fairgrounds, in a modest arena originally built for horse shows. And for just as many seasons, the team's toughest competition for scheduling has come from the livestock--and the flea markets and tractor pulls that also vie for the space.…

Signs of a leadership crisis in community colleges have been building over the past decade, with one study predicting that as many as 84 percent of current presidents could retire within the next 10 years. Several plans of action are under way to handle this changing of the guard, including more leadership-preparation programs offered by such…

Students have cheated for centuries, but the problem is knottier than it used to be. The Internet and its infinite dishonest shortcuts have made many cases more complex, and antiplagiarism software like Turnitin flags more potential offenses than could be caught before. At the same time, professors' and college presidents' run-ins with plagiarism…

In a daylong meeting broadcast online this month, David B. Ashley, the president of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, was repeatedly grilled, and then publicly demoted, during a contentious gathering of the university system's Board of Regents. The dressing-down followed months of public disputes over the conduct of Mr. Ashley's wife and…

In some ways, higher education has been a victim of the recession--but not a defenseless victim. Smart moves clearly helped some colleges and universities avoid the worst of the downturn. Mistakes have left many others in the lurch. The downward spiral has brought layoffs, budget cuts, and anxiety to many campuses. With the cuts have come protests…

When John B. Simpson, president of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, compares the campus over which he presides to its public-university peers, the contrast can be unflattering. Buildings and laboratories need upgrading. Richer, more prestigious institutions have a leg up in attracting renowned scholars and big-ticket federal…