A common type of variable-rate financing has suddenly increased the risk of bankruptcy for an unknown number of colleges, said two experts at credit-rating agencies. The threat affects mostly less-wealthy colleges that have used variable-rate bonds either to get a better price when borrowing or because they lacked bond ratings and had little other…

Viewbooks, rankings, and accountability measures cast colleges as distinctive and readily comparable. But the average student experience doesn't differ that markedly among institutions, according to this year's National Survey of Student Engagement. Rather, the survey found, more than 90 percent of the variation in educational quality occurs among…

Among the many groups of Barack Obama's supporters who considered him one of their own, and helped propel him into the presidency, were large numbers of the nation's college professors, administrators, and students. The president-elect won overwhelming support from academe throughout the campaign. The Obama campaign aggressively courted student…

The 2008 presidential election has broken so many political barriers that historians may overlook one unusual fact: When Barack Obama takes the oath of office in January alongside his running mate, Joe Biden, it will be the first time that the president, the vice president, and both of their spouses have worked in higher education. Taken together,…

This article talks about a course at Texas A&M University at College Station that teaches students how to detect spin in political blogs. In the new course, "Communication and Political Blogging," students are analyzing blogs from the far right of the political spectrum all the way to the far left. They are also writing their own blogs in which…

What is network neutrality? The basic premise is that people should have the right to access online, in a free and unfettered manner, any type of content that is not illegal, based on the predetermined speed they are paying their Internet-service provider (ISP) for each month. That is, with network neutrality, the content becomes irrelevant. The…

The first code of ethics by the American Anthropological Association, adopted in 1971, was forged during the Vietnam War, years after revelations that anthropologists had engaged in counterinsurgency research in Southeast Asia. Now, in response to issues raised by the war in Iraq, the author advocates that it is time for a new code. Members of the…

At a time when colleges are under increasing financial pressure to rely more on part-time instructors, three new studies suggest that doing so erodes the quality of education many students receive. Part-timers' inability or unwillingness to devote more time to students outside the classroom, the research suggests, results in the denial of…

This article reports that a state ballot measure to ban affirmative-action programs based on race, gender, and national origin at public colleges and other state agencies was defeated. Colorado voters narrowly rejected such a referendum last week by a razor-thin margin that took two days to become official. Voters in Nebraska, however, took the…

According to this year's National Survey of Student Engagement, attending more than one college is increasingly common, and transfer students tend to be disconnected from and overlooked on their new campuses. More than 40 percent of seniors who responded to the survey had started at different institutions, according to the report. Compared with…

Starting salaries for newly minted professors are highest in Canada, but for the best prospects of raising earnings over an academic career, one should look to Saudi Arabian universities. These are some of the findings of a new study that looks at faculty pay across international borders, examining salary data in 15 countries, among them the…

In his presidential acceptance speech last week, Barack Obama gave a nod to his youngest and most loyal supporters, who, he said, had "rejected the myth of their generation's apathy." Indeed, voters ages 18 to 29 turned out more than they had since 1972, the first presidential election after the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. They supported…

Six months after the carnage at Virginia Tech last year, the author relates that she studied the steps colleges have since taken to try to prevent suicide and homicide on campus. Here, she discusses some of the observations she gathered from her study. She describes that some faculty members are indifferent, oblivious, or even nasty to their…

Over the past two decades, there have been 14 fatal multiple shooting incidents on college campuses nationwide, of which three assaults were committed by campus outsiders (including one by a visiting parent at Shepherd University and another allegedly by a group of gunmen last month at the University of Central Arkansas). Moreover, eight of the…

Disquisitions about public intellectuals usually conclude that they are not what they used to be. The pessimism about public intellectuals is reflected in attitudes about how the rise of the Internet in general, and blogs in particular, affects intellectual output. Critics fail to recognize how the growth of blogs and other forms of online writing…