Almost every day, the author learns about new green buildings from press releases. One example is that of Arizona State University's new Biodesign Institute, a soaring, "uber"-chic, high-performance, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified center. However, the author maintains that such buildings are undoubtedly a step up from…

In this article, the author describes how he was baffled with one of his students' blatant display of nonconforming attitude. Keenan is a student most loathed by his classmates. He didn't give a damn if the other students liked him. He scratched his crotch as he walked, and his unshampooed hair resembled a ragged carpet swatch. When he sneezed…

Selective colleges are undergoing intense scrutiny these days when it comes to student aid. The decisions of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and other private institutions to expand their aid packages for students from less-affluent families have drawn both high praise and heavy fire: high praise for making themselves more…

Re:Poste, a Web application that encourages academics to pick apart online articles from the mass media, is only in its infancy. The program has already generated buzz on a social-networking Web site called the Pool. Re:Poste is one of 600 creative works--games, art, and more--by new-media students and faculty members, most of them on the Orono…

All of the admissions research says that prospective students and their parents want to know something about the mysterious people who do the professing. They want to ask questions in a public forum; they want to visit classes; they want private meetings with department chairs; and they want admissions people to call them on the phone to explain…

It's expected that athletes will slowly decline in ability as they age. Every athlete accepts that. But not every professor does. It seems more or less forbidden to talk about what happens to academics as they age. There is virtual silence about the kind of age-associated changes that affect teaching, learning, and research. Baby boomers, known…

The recent release of "Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education", by the American Association of University Women, presents an opportunity to review the extraordinary success of women in education over the last four decades. The release also presents an opportunity to review the failure of the entire education system--from…

Two years after many colleges resisted attempts by the Bush administration to impose more rigorous methods of student assessment, a leading coalition of private institutions is pressing its members to adopt an increasingly popular standardized achievement test. The push to adopt the assessment comes as the test faces new questions over its…

It is hard to imagine a Microsoft venture falling under the weight of a competitor. That's the post-mortem offered by many academic librarians as they ponder the software giant's recent and sudden announcement that it is shutting down its book-digitization project. The librarians' conclusion: Google did it. Microsoft quietly revealed in May that…

Born out of one legal battle over affirmative action, the Texas college-admissions policy known as the "top 10 percent plan" is now at the center of another. The University of Texas at Austin is being challenged in U.S. District Court over its 2004 decision to return to using race-conscious admissions criteria after years without them. The outcome…

Wake Forest University will no longer require applicants to submit standardized test scores, the university announced last week. The move makes Wake Forest, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, one of the most prominent institutions with a "test optional" admissions policy. The university's decision reveals the increasing complexity of the national…

What does it take to run an international-education office? A detailed understanding of obtuse federal regulations, the ability to recruit foreign students on a shoestring budget, and a talent for creating study-abroad programs that are both academically rigorous and highly popular. That was the message in dozens of sessions last week at the…

This article reports that a Virginia Tech professor whose wife was among 32 people killed by a student gunman last year will become director of the university's new Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention. Jerzy Nowak will give up his job as chairman of Tech's horticulture department to take the new post on July 1. His wife, Jocelyne…

Colleges are fond of issuing proclamations filled with ambitious goals. So Clemson University was hardly charting new territory in 2001 when its Board of Trustees endorsed 27 goals to make it a top-20 public research university. Less than two years later, Clemson achieved one of those benchmarks by exceeding $100-million per year in research…

Tucked away in a 1,200-page bill now in Congress is a small paragraph that could lead distance-education institutions to require spy cameras in their students' homes. It sounds Orwellian, but the paragraph--part of legislation renewing the Higher Education Act--is all but assured of becoming law by the fall. No one in Congress objects to it. The…