Relatively few students in selective colleges come from disadvantaged backgrounds, so the rewards of attending such schools go mainly to those already advantaged from birth. There is substantial variation in those colleges' socioeconomic composition, however. Some selective private institutions proportionately enroll five times as many…

This ASHE presidential address considers the meaning of higher education's public accountability in the U.S. context. American higher education has always been publicly accountable in some sense, but the forms and expectations associated with accountability have changed significantly from colonial times to the present. The address traces the…

The number of interdisciplinary, degree-granting fields in American colleges and universities has grown rapidly, with socially incorporative programs (women's studies, ethnic studies, and non-Western area studies) accounting for a large share. These fields have diffused widely over time, while other interdisciplinary fields have not. Variables…

Recent reforms in the Carnegie Foundation classification system and regional accreditation standards have fueled momentum for community engagement in higher education. This study employs a knowledge-flow conceptual framework to identify barriers and facilitators that influence the adoption of an engagement agenda at land-grant and urban research…

The recent growth of for-profit higher education has been marked by the rising importance of institutional ownership by publicly traded corporations. This paper looks at 13 publicly traded corporations that own degree-granting for-profit institutions of higher education in the United States, examining corporate growth strategies and their…

Examines the quality of the undergraduate experience in the 1990s, using student data that spans the four decades beginning with the 1960s. Two questions are addressed: whether college students in the 1960s and 1970s gained more from their undergraduate experience than subsequent cohorts, and whether reforms are having the desired effects. Data…

Two recent books, "The Case for Tenure" (Matthew W. Finkin, ed.) and "Promotion and Tenure" (William G. Tierney, Estela Mara Bensimon) are important contributions to the dialog about college faculty tenure. Each contributes to but does not fill the professoriate's need for a defense of tenure that incorporates the tradition of principled support…

Early deans of women in American higher education shaped the profession of student affairs and college administration through commitment to research, student contact, and strong belief in the worth of women to higher education and of higher education to women. Over time, deans of women lost their positions as deans of students, almost always men,…

Discussion of doctoral education looks at current trends in demand and supply; previous patterns in the nationality of doctoral degree recipients (1985-94); expansion and contraction in master's and doctoral degrees awarded, by discipline group (1976-93); and structural features of doctoral education (competition, departmental control, student…

Discussion of the controversy over freshman composition course requirements looks at the origins and evolution of such courses in American higher education, philosophy underlying rhetoric instruction, criticisms of freshman English courses, the writing-across-the-curriculum movement, attitudes about mechanical correctness in writing instruction,…

This article reviews the work of G. Stanley Hall, who offered the first course on college and university problems in 1893. It describes Hall's education and academic appointments until 1887, the European origins of his study, the founding of Clark University (Massachusetts) and Hall's presidency, the American beginnings of the field of higher…

A study investigated the development of a culture supporting scholarship in four comprehensive institutions: a merger university, a technical university, a regional state university, and a parochial college. The strategies of each institution and the disciplinary differences reflected in the cultures of the English and mathematics departments are…

Institutional controversies regarding the admission and subsequent education of academically inadequate students are discussed. Educational practices aimed at remedying these deficiencies are identified. Vassar's and Cornell's efforts to develop working relationships with emerging secondary schools are considered. (Author/MLW)

A university president, an academic scholar, and a graduate student in higher education look back at "The Academic Revolution," written in 1968, from differing perspectives. Companion essays examine the predictions made in the book and its use as a platform for discussion about the direction taken by higher education. (MSE)

A study examined the faculty personnel system in major universities today and identified sources of change and continuity in the academic marketplace over a 30-year period. (Author/MSE)