SIAS International University, which claims to be the only solely American-owned university in central China, was founded by Shawn Chen, a Chinese-American entrepreneur who wants to shake up China's staid university system. Chen plans to do this by creating an American educational environment in China's agricultural heartland to train students to…

This article focuses on Italy's Higher Education reforms and hotly debated developments. These developments are experience credits and online universities. The reform replaced the existing degree system, in which most undergraduate programs lasted four years--although the average graduate actually took more than seven years to earn a degree--with…

A group of seven private colleges in Oregon, frustrated with the erratic pricing of health care in the state, decided to band together, drop their health-plan providers, and create a consortium to self-insure their employees. The Oregon Independent Colleges Employee Benefits Trust came into existence on May 1, 2003 and offers a collective…

Vietnam, with its cheap labor and lax copyright laws, is a counterfeiter's dream. Books are sold hot off the photocopier and Hollywood's latest blockbusters can be had on DVD's for about a dollar. But it is in art forgery that Vietnam excels. With a stable of neoclassically trained art students, who spend years learning to copy the masters, art…

America's reputation abroad has never been so abysmal. That is the inescapable conclusion of countless books, newspaper and magazine articles, and public-opinion polls that have documented the growth of anti-Americanism during the Bush administration. Yet outside Europe and the Middle East, the loathing for Bush and the bitterness toward America…

Nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina swept them off their campuses in and around New Orleans, thousands of college administrators, faculty members, and students began a new semester in January 2006. Students came back with a new spirit of determination to adapt to the new realities of New Orleans, and to campuses that are forever changed,…

The combination of the Web and the cell phone forecasts the end of the inexpensive technologies of multiple-choice tests and grading machines. These technological developments are likely to bring the multiple-choice test to the verge of obsolescence, mounting a substantial challenge to the presentation of history and other disciplines.

Federal guidelines governing how the institutions can respond to students with mental health issues rightly respect the privacy and dignity of the individual, though not without potential cost. A first person account of the difficult choices faculty members face when confronted by a student with psychological problems is presented.

Students at many public universities often have a substantial say in what they will pay for the construction of non-academic facilities usually through referenda in which they vote to enact fees to cover the debt service on the building. However, some students are reluctant to vote in any new fee, given that tuition regularly increases at…

US federal, state, and municipal courts are facing a severe shortage of qualified interpreters as the non-English-speaking population in the country soars. Virginia Benmaman, a professor of Hispanic studies and legal interpretation advocate, runs a bilingual legal interpretation program at the College of Charleston that helps students tackle the…

James Frey, author of the book "A Million Little Pieces" is accused of embellishing and/or fabricating elements of his story, a graphic but supposedly honest, depiction of his struggle with drugs and alcohol. More and more college students who are caught plagiarizing believe, as Frey seems to, that as long as one agrees with the authors one…

On December 4, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in two significant affirmative-action cases. Each case--one from Seattle and the other from Louisville--involves the constitutional validity of school-district plans that consider race in assigning students to public schools. Determined parents from both cities will ask the court to declare the…

Several books published by university presses serve no purpose besides credentialing professors, but since the collapse of the US academic job market in the early 1970s, it is mandatory for professors to be published. However, it appears to be time, particularly for the younger academics, to abandon the genteel pose of being aloof from the sordid…

The world is moving toward a uniform material culture, dominated by mostly material American influences: technological innovations, fashion, Hollywood and the celebrity culture it promotes, hip-hop, and rock and roll. But the pervasiveness of the trappings of American culture obscures the central cultural paradox that lies within the…

The field of disability studies combines several disciplines to address the philosophical, moral, legal, medical and cultural questions emerging from the intersection of biotechnology and identity. Such a biocultural approach is crucial not just for scholars in the humanities to know the impact that science has on culture and the body, but also…