Most people in admissions have a road story. There are tales of wrong turns, lost suitcases, and days when they were just well-dressed ghosts, walking in and out of high schools where no students came to see them. These are the trials of admissions representatives who leave their campuses for several weeks each fall. They trek near and far to meet…

In a tough economy, a professor breaches the rules on sponsorship for one of his classes. Kyle G. Volk, one of the professors in the history department at the University of Montana at Missoula, cut a deal with El Diablo, a locally owned taqueria, to sponsor his course, "The Americans: Conquest to Capitalism." In exchange for $250, Mr. Volk…

This article reports that the incoming chancellor of California's enormous community-college system is facing a crucial choice amid tough times. Jack Scott, a longtime chair of State Senate's committee on education, will take the helm of the California community-college system in January. But in a twist of state politics, his influence over the…

Many states, and the United States as a whole, are doing a better job than they were two years ago of preparing students for college and expanding access to higher education, according to a national report card on higher education released last week. But the country continues to slip behind other nations on measures of enrollment and degree…

This article reports MyCaseSpace, a Web-based program used to present clinical cases to students in health-related professions to test their critical thinking skills. The creator of MyCaseSpace, David Segal, an assistant professor in the College of Health and Public Affairs at the University of Central Florida, has created various characters to…

The neuroscience revolution has brought a set of difficult, at times uncomfortable, changes in university-based research psychology. The technologies that allow scholars to probe the structures and functions of the human brain are also causing profound alterations in the structures and functions of psychology departments: curricula, hiring…

Just a few days before the shootings at Virginia Tech, officials at the University of Delaware received a complaint from the family of a female undergraduate student. The family said that Maciej Murakowski, a 19-year-old student who lived in the same residence hall as their daughter, had posted material on his Web site that made the woman fearful…

This article describes the hardships of rural life encountered and witnessed by the students at the Ahfad University for Women as they participate in the university's Rural Extension Program which is required of all fourth-year students. The program involves traveling in groups to impoverished communities across Sudan to share their knowledge,…

College and university presidents are increasingly called upon to make informed choices about technology. The rapidly shifting landscape makes it tough to keep up with change and innovation, let alone stay ahead of the curve. In this article, the authors discuss 10 trends to watch in campus technology. These trends are the following: (1) increased…

This article presents the discussion between John Gravois and John B. Lee concerning the problems in measuring bias. John B. Lee is president and founder of JBL Associates, Inc., a prominent higher-education-research firm. He is retained by the American Federation of Teachers to assess the research that purports to find a liberal predominance and…

The recent announcement that Randolph-Macon Woman's College will admit male students has triggered yet another round in the continuing debate over women's colleges. At Randolph-Macon itself, the news was met with the usual mix of public displays: As students and alumnae protested with signs reading "Coed is a four-letter word," administrators and…

This article presents an excerpt from the interview of Karen Hughes, under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. Hughes discusses the Bush administration's effort to attract foreign students to the United States and to send American students overseas. She also talks about what American colleges and universities can do to help.

This article describes Hanover College's Early Alert Team, an early-alert program that seeks to identify students' academic, social, or personal troubles as soon as they surface. The team's five members gather information about students from all corners of the campus and then devise strategies to help them. The early-alert system has not only…

This article describes how a top physicist took charge of reforming undergraduate science education at the University of British Columbia. Carl E. Wieman, the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, gave up his research career to devote himself to improving the way college science is taught. Wieman is heading up a $10.2 million science education…

This article discusses a new standard for measuring graduate programs in the United States. The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, produced by Academic Analytics, a for-profit company, rates faculty members' scholarly output at nearly 7,300 doctoral programs around the country. It examines the number of book and journal articles published by…