This article addresses the broad-based reform movement led by state and federal policy makers and designed to increase dramatically the number of students graduating from the nation's colleges and universities. This movement--known as "the completion agenda"--aims to collect more and better data about students' educational progress toward degrees,…

From one state to another, boards of trustees, legislatures, and governors are implementing policies designed to increase output and efficiency in public colleges and universities. Many such policies reflect the agenda of the National Governors Association's Complete to Compete initiative, which seeks to increase completion rates without…

The completion agenda seeks significant increases in educational attainment, and its goals are quite laudable. The United States is lagging behind other industrialized nations in terms of the proportion of adults holding postsecondary degrees, and states have been challenged to implement policies that ensure improvements in degree completion…

The completion agenda (also referred to as the "reform" movement) is focused mainly on state policy leaders, governors, legislators, and boards of higher education. Complete College America (CCA), a national nonprofit organization established in 2009 to increase educational attainment in the United States, is the standard bearer of the completion…

One of the dilemmas that policy makers, campus leaders, and individual faculty members often describe with chagrin is the difficulty of scaling up successful innovations. Officials at the National Science Foundation (NSF), for example, admit they are discouraged because the results of most NSF-funded projects are not disseminated beyond the target…

Higher education is not only about money. At whatever appropriate cost as borne by whomever, it is supposed to provide life-long value to the students and to society. Yet some critics now complain that in the current system, with its rising costs, students are not in general learning much if anything, and there is a good deal of data to suggest…

In this article, the authors explain why examining the way institutions model democracy on campus is an important, but often overlooked, step in advancing students' democratic learning. First, they note how a decline in shared governance produces an educational environment that adversely affects students' civic inclinations and agency. Next, they…

In this article, the author proposes that the notion of America be reintroduced as the "shining city on a hill," that abiding image from American history. The image of the shining city on a hill captures the imagination because it reflects the abiding truth that people become fully human in society, not outside of it. People need one another to…

The direction of innovation and reform in science education is moving toward a student-centered learning paradigm that is organized around core concepts and competencies, and engaged through empirically supported instructional practices. What forms of assessment would support these educational aims? Several characteristics of a compatible…

With the US unemployment rate at 9 percent, it's rational for college students to lose confidence in the liberal arts and to opt for a vocational major. Or is it? There is a compelling economic case for the liberal arts. Against those who call for more professional training, liberal educators should concede nothing. However, they do have a…

In 1990, David Breneman asked the provocative question, are we losing our liberal arts colleges? More than twenty years later, it is time to ask Breneman's question again: in 2012, what is the position of liberal arts colleges in the landscape of American higher education? The liberal arts college, a distinctively American institution, has been a…

Despite research showing the broad impact that the study of foreign languages has on the cognitive development of young people, and despite the importance of language expertise for America's economic and geopolitical interests in the twenty-first century, the teaching of world languages has been marginalized within the American educational system…

Sustainability powerfully validates the liberal arts. In response to contemporary accusations of economic impracticality, defenders of liberal education have emphasized how such skills as critical thinking and "learning to learn" are vital to success in careers. This approach readily extends to sustainability, which has become a growing source of…

Curricular innovation is at the center of the challenges many colleges and universities face as they seek to help students address more successfully than previous generations the complex, multi-faceted, systemic challenges of global climate change, population growth, loss of biodiversity, environmental justice, toxic wastes, and food insecurity.…

Colleges across the country are hosting on-campus renewable energy projects. The general assumption is that trade schools, community colleges, or technology-oriented universities with large engineering departments make the most appropriate sites for training future leaders in renewable energy innovation. While it makes sense to take advantage of…