Archives have always had an aura of neutrality and coolness that masks the heat behind the data they record: births, marriages, crimes, wars, business dealings, genocides and deaths. Long thought of as the musty haunts of scholars with a specialized interest in the demographics of Rome or 15th-century France, archives have been seen as controlled…

The number of foreign students admitted to graduate schools at American colleges and universities grew in 2008 for the fourth straight year, but the rate of increase over the previous year declined for the third consecutive year, according to survey results released by the Council of Graduate Schools. Based on previous years' data, this year's…

Colleges and universities increasingly view engineering as an important part of a liberal-arts education. Rather than segregate engineering from the arts and humanities, they are integrating the disciplines, in hopes of educating students to perform more effectively in an increasingly complex and technological world. Several college presidents,…

In this article, the author relates his experiences as a second-time college freshman at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. The author is a college president over the age of 50. He was also a melanoma cancer survivor who had underwent a lung surgery and chemotherapy four summers earlier. Chris Nelson, president of St. John's, had agreed to…

This article reports that nearly half of the nation's largest athletics programs have doubled or tripled their recruitment spending over the past decade, as their pursuit of elite athletes intensifies and becomes more national in scope. Forty-eight percent of NCAA Division I athletics departments at least doubled their recruiting budgets from 1997…

Several Web sites have emerged in recent years that encourage students to upload old exams to build a bank of test questions and answers that can be consulted by other students. This article reports that some professors have raised concerns about these sites, arguing that these could be used to cheat, especially if professors reuse old tests.…

The numbers looked strange. In early March, the University of Missouri had received many more campus-housing contracts than it expected. Each year many upperclassmen cancel their agreements after finding an off-campus rental, leaving enough spaces for incoming students. But on March 17, the first day freshmen could select their rooms online, there…

This article reports on Education Secretary Margaret Spellings' attempt to convince colleges that they risk painful government interventions if they do not improve the quality of their programs and help more students evaluate and afford them. As the Bush administration nears an end, Ms. Spellings tries to persuade colleges to adopt the measures…

This article reports that new federal ethics rules are creating headaches for colleges--and heartburn for their lobbyists. The rules, enacted last year in the wake of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, require colleges and lobbyists to report their political contributions and certify that they have complied with a new ban on gifts to members of…

This article reports that the Higher Education Price Index (HEPI), a widely used measure of colleges' costs, rose by 3.6 percent for the 2008 fiscal year, which ended on June 30. But even as they reported the good news of that moderate increase, experts at the Commonfund Institute who maintain the index noted that broader economic trends could…

Every year American faculty members bring students to Africa to participate in study-abroad programs. Last December Joseph Akol Makeer, a Sudanese student at the author's institution, North Dakota State University, turned the tables and brought the author to his home village in Sudan, Duk Payuel, to see how they might help rebuild that war-torn…

Last week the Board of Regents of the University of California tabled a faculty proposal to broaden the pool of applicants eligible for admission to the 10 campuses in the University of California system. The regents took the action to allow the university's new president, Mark G. Yudof, as well as regents who were uncertain about the proposal,…

A case pending in a federal court of appeals in California may clarify a surprisingly murky question: Do faculty members at public universities enjoy a special privilege to speak freely about institutional matters, or, as far as the First Amendment is concerned, are they just another category of government hirelings? Juan Hong, a professor of…

Colleges, not surprisingly, aren't thrilled with provisions of the bill that will create "watch lists" of the most expensive institutions. The language could have been a lot worse. Back in 2005, when Republicans were in the majority, Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon of California proposed withholding federal aid from colleges that consistently failed…

This article talks about a software designed by the University of Phoenix for its business, information-technology, education, and health-care courses. Through the university's "virtual organizations"--online teaching tools designed to simulate the experience of working at a typical corporation, school, or government agency, Phoenix students can…