The Lipscomb University Adult Degree Program exemplifies how a centralized governance system can benefit nontraditional college students and promote cross-departmental interactions. The two-person staff of the adult program at Lipscomb University envisions a number of potential benefits of having a much larger staff. However, such a programmatic…

North Park University's adult program has moved steadily from a centralized governance structure toward a more distributed structure in many ways. The School of Adult Learning hires its own faculty, some of whom are full time in the adult program. The school also has autonomy over academic policy. Ultimately, this academic autonomy has fostered…

Those who work within adult higher education know there is something unique about their perspective on academic life. Employed in the adult education arena in one capacity or another since 1993, the author has had the privilege of working at an institution with a small adult program and an institution with a very large adult program. In this…

Adult degree programs have been seen as a win-win solution for private colleges and adult learners, but their innovative and often-entrepreneurial postures are not a natural fit with governance structures in more traditional institutions. Through narrative and illustrative vignettes, this chapter presents an overview of efforts employed by some…

Abilene Christian University uses a hybrid governance model. Centralized structures include traditional program departments that supply the faculty and curriculum development for online graduate programs. Decentralized structures include an associate provost and separate student services for the online program.

Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, comprises three primary units that each serve a distinct population: the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) is a residential college for roughly 2,800 traditional-age undergraduates; the College of Adult and Professional Studies and Graduate School (CAPS/GS) serves roughly 2,200 adult learners at both the…

The chapters in this volume, in addition to the follow-up survey described in this chapter, constitute a study of the way adult education programs in small private colleges and universities relate to the institutions of which they are a part. The chapters not only present many variations of organizational relationships but also reveal some common…

Eastern Mennonite University's adult program uses a hybrid governance structure. Functions separated from the traditional program include marketing, admissions, and student advising. Functions that remain connected to the traditional program include the registrar, financial aid, and student business accounts.

The increasing competition for the desired quantity and quality of college students, along with the rise of for-profit institutions, has amplified the scrutiny of behavior and ethics among college admissions professionals and has increased the need for meaningful ethical guidelines and codes of conduct. Many other areas of responsibility within…

In the popular movie series "Pirates of the Caribbean," there is a pirate code that influences how pirates behave in unclear situations, with a running joke about whether the code is either a set of rules or guidelines for behavior. Codes of conduct in any social group or organization can have much the same feel; they can provide clarity and…

Generation of voluntary support for colleges and universities has become an ever more important function that is key to the success of all postsecondary institutions. This is true even for public institutions, which have shifted from primarily focusing on alumni relations activities to executing billion dollar campaigns that equal those conducted…

Fundamentally, ethical codes take on the most troublesome of behaviors related to academe and present ways for individuals to behave in the face of pressures and uncertainties. They represent the ideals of various stakeholder subgroups and even mediate key institutional relationships. Codes can also exist at different organizational levels in…

Codes of conduct can and should fulfill a critical role in higher education. Codes help overcome some of the challenges inherent in a system predicated on high levels of autonomy and on self-regulation. Codes not only are important indicators of critical topics that are deemed worthy of explicit protection or expectations for behavior; they may…

Four-year colleges and universities that espouse teaching as their primary mission bear a responsibility to safeguard the welfare of their students as clients of teaching. This responsibility takes the form of a moral imperative. Faculty members hold considerable autonomy in the professional choices they make in their teaching. As a consequence,…

Most academic disciplines promulgate codes of ethics that serve as public statements of professional norms of their membership. These codes serve both symbolic and practical purposes, stating to both members and the larger public what a discipline's highest ethics are. This article explores what scholarly society codes of ethics could say about…