As a dental student 35 years ago, Leo E. Rouse and his Howard University classmates learned to fill cavities and cap teeth by crowding around one faculty member and angling for a clear view of the day's demonstration. Today students at Howard's College of Dentistry, where Dr. Rouse is now the dean, get an unobstructed view of dental procedures…

Controversial faculty reassignments and resignations in March have left the Middle East Center at the University of Utah in turmoil. The problems come only a year before the university must reapply for the grant from the U.S. Department of Education that supports the center, which is among the oldest such academic units in the country. The…

When the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) held its annual meeting in Washington, in mid-June, some members called the gathering the most crucial in the group's 93-year history. On the last day of the meeting, members overwhelmingly approved a restructuring plan that could resolve longstanding problems, which include declining…

Poetry does not matter to most people. They go about their business as usual, rarely consulting Shakespeare, Wordsworth, or Frost. One has to wonder if poetry has any place in the 21st century, when music videos and satellite television offer daunting competition for poems, which demand a good deal of attention and considerable analytic skills, as…

Feminist researchers in psychology and education have been theorizing about the kind of sexuality girls ought to have. They are not afraid to investigate morality and what makes a good life. While they explore the meaning and cultural context of girls' sexual development, the good sexual life they describe may be an elusive ideal that, in the end,…

The psychology behind getting the big gift and making "the ask" for it was a major topic at Fund Raising Day in New York 2008, which drew representatives from across the nonprofit world, including charities, hospitals, colleges, and museums. Laura Fredricks, who was vice president for philanthropy at Pace University from 2002 until earlier this…

Georgia, along with a number of other former Soviet countries, is rapidly reforming its higher-education system. Russian is being replaced by English in classrooms and textbooks. Western-trained professors are flooding campuses with new methods of teaching and liberal-arts courses are replacing vocational training. This change is part of broader…

For many academics, managing the influx of daily communication has become a second job. While many scholars like the flexibility and creative opportunities technology affords, they have trouble turning off their gadgets. That can eat into time reserved for uninterrupted reading, writing, reflecting, or working in the laboratory. Technology has…

At many colleges across the nation, as administrators fret about the effects of a worsening economy, students arriving this fall will get more help securing jobs and more advice on paying for their educations. Some students will even find colleges willing to cut their tuition bills. This article reports that as banks tighten standards for private…

The University of Phoenix is often derided by traditional academics for caring more about its bottom line than about academic quality, and every year, the annual report issued by its parent company focuses more on profits than student performance. This article reports that the institution that has become the largest private university in North…

This article reports on the University of North Carolina's "phased-retirement" plan, which lets professors formally ease their way into retirement. The challenges of personnel planning in the North Carolina system, made tougher when higher education was stripped of a mandatory retirement age 14 years ago, have lessened because the program has…

It's not just the climbing walls and the salaries for star professors driving up the cost of college. In some cases, costs go up because the culture and management of traditional institutions are simply not structured to promote efficiency and savings. At for-profit colleges, it's a different story. There, the "incentives to save money are…

With the average age of faculty members going up and the number of students expected to go down, many colleges are encouraging professors to retire. That is not a universal urge--in some regions of the country, like the Southwest, colleges anticipate rising enrollments, and in some disciplines, like nursing, skilled faculty members are in short…

The forbidden-laptop zone is territory into which few professors dare tread. Students have been known to protest when laptops are banned from a classroom, and even claim that they are being denied a proper education. Professors who have taken the bold step, though, sound like they've experienced an epiphany. A professor at the University, Don…

A Texas court's recent ruling that allowed a negligence lawsuit to proceed against 12 former administrators at Texas A&M University has some higher-education legal experts concerned about campus officials' liability in a variety of situations, including fraternity initiations, housing accidents, and student suicides. The decision was in favor of…