In August 2010, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, speaking informally at a technology conference, said technological innovations should be able to lower the cost of college to $2,000 a year. Mr. Gates's comments reportedly caught the attention of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican of Texas, who came up with his own back-of-the-envelope estimate of how…

This article profiles A.C. Grayling, a British intellectual who pioneers a new model for college. In his role as founder of the New College of the Humanities, Britain's newest and most controversial institution of higher education, A.C. Grayling could have chosen among several titles. The senior academic officer at most English higher-education…

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…

With the growing demand for improving college completion rates has come a need for more thorough information about just how well or poorly colleges and their students are performing on a variety of measures. In a growing number of states, that data is being used to improve the number of students who finish their degrees. Some states and…

Many of the nation's chiropractic colleges, like other small colleges that rely heavily on tuition, are struggling to stay in business. At the same time that they are working to improve their stature in higher education and broadening their missions to increase their appeal, a number of the colleges are seeing enrollments plummet--and revenues are…

Salaries for midlevel administrators rose by a median of 2 percent this year over last year, matching the median pay increase for senior administrators and coming in slightly higher than the 1.9-percent median increase for faculty members, says an annual report released by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.…

College officials deny it, but many Asian-American high-school students feel they will be held to a higher standard. The idea that Asian-American applicants are held to a higher standard in college admissions has received a wave of attention lately. The U.S. Department of Education is now investigating whether Princeton University discriminates…

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…

It is easy to see why a college might want a big board. It is simpler to add trustees than to remove members who are no longer pulling their weight, and growth can be justified as an effort to broaden the diversity of opinions in a group. It is also true that there may be no better way to cultivate donors than to give them active policy-making…

With tax revenues beginning to rebound in most states and endowments on the rebound at many private and public institutions, colleges and universities are growing more hopeful about their financial outlook and instituting new strategies to take advantage of the opportunities. Yet as the economic recovery has slowed in the past few months,…

With 16,000 graduate and undergraduate students, the International College for Experienced Learning (ICEL) is widely considered among the better for-profit universities in Mexico, where such institutions have flourished over the last 20 years by offering degrees that can be earned relatively quickly, and flexibility in terms of fee payments and…

A newly compiled analysis by the U.S. Department of Education and obtained by "The Chronicle" shows that 114 private nonprofit degree-granting colleges were in such fragile financial condition at the end of their last fiscal year that they failed the department's financial-responsibility test. Colleges that fail the test are subject to extra…

Oklahoma City University prides itself on treating its faculty and staff members like family. It is the kind of place where new employees are welcomed in the president's house, staff members kick in to raise money when a colleague faces hard times, and promising young workers are offered flexible work schedules and free tuition to help them…

Charismatic as well as politically astute, Ton Nu Thi Ninh is a patient woman--up to a point. As a high-ranking member of Vietnam's Communist Party, and regarded as the most powerful woman in the country, she had to be. But for far too long Ms. Ninh has watched the abysmal state of Vietnam's higher education handicap the country's future…

The public has become all too aware of the term "bubble" to describe an asset that is irrationally and artificially overvalued and cannot be sustained. The dot-com bubble burst by 2000. More recently the overextended housing market collapsed, helping to trigger a credit meltdown. The stock market has declined more than 30 percent in the past year,…