Public colleges and universities are girding themselves to win the war for tenured talent. Some are succeeding. State budget woes and a rocky economy have shaken public colleges and universities. One of the most noticeable shudders has been a pervasive "brain drain," as many state institutions face competition for their best faculty members from…

When Timothy J. Foley started interviewing Georgetown alumni for the university's advancement office, he was surprised at how open they were. It was not unusual for them to cry or vent as they talked to Mr. Foley, a 2006 graduate who works for the university. The interviews were the centerpiece of a program started by James M. Langley, the…

When the main building of Our Lady of the Lake University was damaged in a fire this spring, its president, Tessa Martinez Pollack, worried the blaze would exacerbate its money woes. She told "The New York Times" that it's a known fact and that they are like a lot of other Catholic universities that are struggling to stay afloat financially. Not…

This article describes how Bruce Hoffman and Marc Sageman, two prominent scholars of terrorism, square off over whether Al Qaeda remains the primary global terrorist threat. The dispute began in the pages of "Foreign Affairs," where Hoffman, a professor in the security-studies program at Georgetown University, wrote a withering review of Sageman's…

In this article, the author discusses the issue of credentials in reply to one of the correspondents who is confused about the credentials she needs to teach at a community college. Generally speaking, to teach in programs that award associate of arts or associate of science degrees--i.e., to teach at a community college--faculty members are…

This article reports that India's medical profession is in a crisis. For every 10,000 people in India there are only six doctors, compared with nearly 55 in the United States and nearly 21 in Canada. The problem is likely to get worse before it gets better. Professors are leaving medical schools for better-paying jobs in private hospitals and in…

One of the nicest things about being on a search committee is getting to meet people from all over the campus, some of whom one had little or no contact with before. The downside of any search, though, despite some meals in classy restaurants, is the extra meetings, endless phone calls, numerous Equal Employment Opportunity and human-resources…

When reviewers gather to evaluate grant proposals, they usually do so privately, making those sessions a rich source of academic folklore. The best way to find out what a review session is really like is for an individual to participate in one. Reviewing proposals can require a substantial amount of work, so one should have the time before…

Kristin Roovers was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania with a bright career ahead of her--a trusted member of a research laboratory at the medical school studying the role of cell growth in diabetes. When an editor of "The Journal of Clinical Investigation" did a spot-check on one of her images for an article in 2005, Roovers'…

In early March, the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education was established under what is called the Bologna Process. The 46 countries involved in the process seek to improve the quality and assessment of higher education throughout Europe, thus facilitating students' mobility among institutions and countries and enhancing…

In a survey last year, four-fifths of Americans surveyed could not correctly define "molecule." This is not good news for educators who worry that Americans are ill prepared to compete with other nations and understand political choices involving science. Behind those disturbing numbers lie another, more encouraging, set of poll results intimately…

An airport interview is an initial interview for a senior administrative position conducted at an airport hotel not too far from the campus in question. Meeting at an airport enables a search committee to interview a large number of candidates in a short period of time with a degree of confidentiality. At the conclusion of the airport interviews,…

When Marvin Meyer was asked by the National Geographic Society to translate the most-sought after religious texts in recent history, the Gospel of Judas, he discovered a startling portrait of Judas Iscariot. Judas was not the reviled traitor who betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Judas was the trusted disciple, the close confidant, the friend. When his…

Americans have decided that the work of nonprofit colleges and universities is so invaluable that they should be exempt from taxes. Those tax exemptions involve a social compact: In exchange, colleges are obliged to carry out the charitable purpose of providing the best education to the most students at the lowest cost. In this article, the author…

Given all the changes that colleges have made in their financial-aid policies in recent months, the 2008 admissions season promised to be the most unpredictable ever. Harvard University's announcement in December that families with annual incomes as high as $180,000 would have to pay only 10 percent of their incomes toward tuition, and that it was…