Billions of dollars in untaxed, offshore investments by college endowments could be subject to taxation under a proposal being considered by the leaders of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. The proposed change, which targets hedge funds, a popular investing strategy for many colleges, would affect the largest college endowments, including those…

While some colleges claim not to care what "U.S. News & World Report" says, and experts cite problems in the way its annual rankings are done, many institutions scramble to improve their positions. There are well-documented examples of institutions that have solicited nominal donations from alumni to boost their percentage of giving, encouraged…

In the 1980s, when the "U.S. News & World Report" rankings of colleges were based solely on reputation, the nation's public universities were well represented at the top. However, as soon as the magazine began including its "measures of excellence," statistics intended to define quality, public universities nearly disappeared from the top. As the…

In this article, the author discusses students' disrespectful behavior towards their teachers. However, his larger concern is not just that students behave disrespectfully toward their professors. It is that they are increasingly disrespectful to one another, to the point that a serious student has more trouble coping with the behavior of his or…

As tuition is being introduced--or raised--at publicly supported university systems around the world, more people are embracing the idea that rankings can help consumers get the best value. Jamie P. Merisotis, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a Washington-based research group, says that in the last few years, national…

This article describes a virtual world program that Case Western University administrators built using Second Life. It is designed for use by prospective students, who can tour the campus online. The program shows campus buildings, athletic facilities, a diner, and a virtual dormitory with window views of the athletics fields, a feature of the…

The nation's military-service academies could be stripped of one of their chief tools for bringing in black, Hispanic, and American Indian students as a result of regulatory changes being considered by the Department of Defense, officials of the U.S. Air Force Academy said last week. The proposed change in the department's directives to its…

A mutiny may be brewing at a Catholic law school whose board has voted to pack it up and move it from Ann Arbor, Michigan to a rural community in southwest Florida. More than half of the professors at Ave Maria School of Law are fighting the move to Ave Maria, Florida, the town being created by Thomas S. Monaghan, the Domino's Pizza mogul who…

In this article, the author argues that taking an aggressive approach in hiring faculty is the only way to avoid a mediocre pool of candidates. Effective recruitment takes many forms and will depend on the context, but it begins with a search committee that has a clear understanding of its role in the process. The committee's first objective is to…

In this article, the author describes the Creation Museum, founded by Ken A. Ham and designed as a rebuttal to the evolutionary view taken by other natural history museums. He discusses the socially conservative roots of the museum's exhibits, and presents Ham's answers to questions about the museum. The message of the museum is that the Bible is…

This article describes how California's Southwestern College's prized mariachi band captures the soul and the rhythm of Mexico. Four years old, the mariachi program has proved so successful that Mr. Jeff Nevin, who now directs three bands there, persuaded the two-year college in 2005 to set up what was until recently the only American college…

A federal committee has found that there is almost no evidence to judge whether the more than $3-billion the federal government spends annually to improve science and mathematics education is effective. The committee's report calls for greater assessment and coordination of such programs. The committee, known as the Academic Competitiveness…

When the American Council of Learned Societies held its annual meeting in Montreal last week, topics such as open access, scholarly publishing, and "The Global Academy and the Geography of Ideas" figured on the agenda. This article discusses the first item of business at the meeting: the debut of the Humanities Indicators project, with a first set…

People, especially people in Washington, are worried about the state of American higher education. Last September a report by the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education expressed grave concern about the quality and purpose of colleges and universities. The report cited statistics that implied that higher-education institutions are…

As seniors throughout the nation prepare to graduate this spring, they are cramming for finals, finishing theses, and saying goodbye to friends. At many colleges, they are also looking forward to participating in graduation rituals--and scrambling to complete lists of things they must do before they leave their campuses behind. These rites of…