Public cuts in financial support have hurt public colleges and students. The author argues that the fault lies in part with the colleges themselves. Many public-university administrators are incapable of convincing political and business leaders of the need for financial support because they are no longer fully convinced themselves. They have…

Professors are professional learners. Research, inquiry, and discussion among colleagues all serve to broaden their knowledge. But even experienced teachers can benefit from becoming actual students in a classroom. There is nothing like sitting in a classroom facing the board and scrambling to translate someone else's lecture into coherent notes,…

This article reports several two-year institutions who are seeking out architects to create impressive new buildings as well as imaginative renovations of humdrum buildings from the 1960s and 1970s. Johnson County Community College, in Overland Park, Kansas, opened a limestone-sheathed museum, designed by Kyu Sung Woo Architects, that the "Kansas…

This article provides suggestions that can help community-college leaders reach the top and stay there. One way is to distinguish oneself in a positive way. It requires a record of making a positive difference in the lives of students, faculty members, and members of the community. Another way is to develop and maintain a peer network who can give…

With its forces stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army is looking to significantly expand the number of Reserve Officers' Training Corps programs on college campuses for the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which led the Army to close more than 80 programs. At the University of Maryland-Baltimore County…

At a series of four "Issues That Matter" meetings held by the Education Department's Office of Vocational and Adult Education over the last academic year, nearly 80 college leaders gathered to discuss issues urgent to community colleges. All are familiar--the need to create career pathways, improve articulation and developmental education, and…

Community colleges in nearly half of the states will probably face midyear reductions in their appropriations, according to a survey of members of the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges. The study paints a bleak picture of a widening fiscal crisis among state governments, which started in the most recent budget year and is…

Faculty pay is a big part of college budgets, but it is not what has driven tuition increases. In this article, the author talks about faculty pay and examines why it is accounted for large increases in college tuition. According to the 2004 American Association of University Professors report that although faculty and staff salary increases…

In a sputtering economy, and with demographic changes ahead, the model of ever-increasing price and merit-based student aid cannot be sustained. But what new system might rise in its place? One option is returning to a system in which the government bears more of the cost of higher education--something that might be possible, if still unlikely, in…

For the group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the drinking age recently questioned by college presidents, is not a topic for debate. In August the organization publicly berated the Amethyst Initiative, a group of 100 presidents and chancellors who signed a statement urging legislators to revisit the law and to examine its effectiveness. The…

China's education ministry has been scrapping Soviet-style curricula found in its traditional vocational colleges, pushing the creation of more-relevant majors, and encouraging students to select vocational degrees over four-year universities. Over the past decade, the ministry has turned to countries like Australia, Germany, Canada, and, most…

Not later than this winter, the National Research Council plans to release its assessments of American doctoral programs. Due to its inability to wait for the results, Ohio State University took steps last year to review its doctoral programs. Of its 90 doctoral programs, the university found five programs tagged as "candidates for disinvestment…

At many colleges, professors trained in the discipline of rhetoric and composition are finding that the specialized knowledge they bring to teaching writing is held in thrall to older notions of how students learn to write--what Linda Brodkey, an author and director of the Warren College Writing Program at the University of California at San…

In this article, the author provides the contentions of intellectual historian John Patrick Diggins on the November 2008 elections and the presidential leadership. Diggins observed that "all people spoke about was winning the elections, and no one seemed to be concerned with the problems of the future." Diggins also expressed how he was skeptical…

Academic scholarship is a business, and just like any other business, it is driven largely by the incentive for profit. Those profits may or may not be financial in nature, but the potential for reward, whether it is measured in terms of a promotion or of intellectual property, underlies whatever people do in higher education. Academics don't…