The United States Air Force Academy, United States Naval Academy, and United States Military Academy are America's three largest service academies. They are "the" primary undergraduate institutions and commissioning sources that educate and develop the officers who are expected to lead this nation's armed forces. They are special places that have…

Although the author has been teaching for over a quarter century, he was never trained in, nor truly understood, "outcomes assessment." He regarded it as a task to be completed for an outside accreditor that had little relation to his real "liberal arts" goals for students. Those goals include teaching critical self-awareness, developing…

"The Quality Imperative" was approved by the Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in December 2009. This statement focuses on the core issue of educational quality. Both employers and educators know that the higher education quality shortfall is just as urgent as the attainment shortfall. Today's employers…

As the leader of the nation's only campus dedicated exclusively to early college, the author heads an institution that ensures students graduate sooner than the national average. As an academic who pursued her graduate work at Oxford University--an institution that confers most of its undergraduate degrees in three years--the author has had direct…

Study in language, literature, and culture has long been a defining feature of education in the liberal arts. Speaking, reading, and writing have traditionally stood at the heart of education because the arts of language and the tools of literacy are key qualifications for full participation in social, political, economic, and cultural life. Today…

In this article, the authors state that the presidents and deans, with the cooperation of the professors, are responsible for the faculty and for the curriculum as a whole. The faculty work within organizations, and every organizational policy and practice, many outside the purview of faculty, has at least potential impact, either positive or…

The educational purpose of the curricular breadth encouraged at liberal arts institutions is for students to acquire a variety of skills and knowledge, but it is often claimed that most skills are taught "across the curriculum," and liberal arts colleges tend to downplay disciplinary information when listing their educational goals. In this…

In this article, the author discusses that in January 2006, the "New York Times" headlined a new $3.75 billion federal initiative that would give $750 grants to low-income college students who successfully completed a "rigorous secondary school program of study" (Dillon 2006). The author argues that this quiet addition to the budget bill could…

Several nationally visible institutions--e.g., Harvard, Duke, and Stanford--have made ethics an integral part of their degree requirements. Their high profile commitments reflect a broader trend, discernible across the academy, toward articulating ethics and values and the cultivation of personal and social responsibility as important outcomes of…

Just as the African tribal maxim proclaims that "it takes a village to raise a child," this author argues that it takes the whole campus community--students, faculty, and administrators--to effectively educate a student. The goal of educators should not be simply to reduce cheating, but to find innovative and creative ways to use academic…

Introduces the articles in the theme issue, exploring their contribution to the understanding of college students' stages of intellectual development and how college instruction should respond. (EV)

Introduces William Perry's work on the stages of intellectual and ethical development and asserts the importance of professors linking students' intellectual development with their pedagogy. (EV)

Asserts the importance of developing in students an intrinsic valuing of intellectual activities as the firmest basis for sustaining intellectual motivation. Discusses how to develop in students an understanding of what it means to learn and to know, including a movement up the levels of epistemological understanding from realist to evaluativist.…

Explores the tension between passive and active learning among master's degree students working on their teaching certificate in science. Emphasizes the developmental nature of learning and that constructionist pedagogies need to be clearly integrated in university courses, especially those focused on teaching. (EV)

Asserts that liberal education has the promotion of intellectual development as a primary goal, and that to encourage intellectual progress, a context of intellectual freedom is necessary. Offers a set of principles of academic freedom that it suggests are foundational to the promotion of intellectual development. (EV)