This article examines how peer interactions in college organizations (Greek, ethnic, and religious) affect interracial friendships, including whether peer interaction in student organizations mediates the relationship between structural diversity and interracial friendship. Involvement in ethnic student organizations was non-significant;…

Describes major demographic shifts in the potential clientele for U.S. higher education and some of the novel actions that institutions have begun to take in response to the changes. (EV)

Data from an annual national survey of college freshmen indicate the women's movement has had dramatic effects on educational aspirations, career plans, behavior, and values of young women entering college and equally dramatic effects on attitudes of both men and women toward women's roles. One consequence is that current male and female freshmen…

Substantial changes in the nature of undergraduate student politics are reported, based on a 1993 survey and focus group interviews, a 1995 survey of student leaders, and two surveys of student affairs officers. As a generation, current students are critical, optimistic, and activist. Activism is local in orientation, peaceful, and rooted in…

Argues that demographic, institutional, economic, and technological changes have altered fundamentally both the way we think about what it means to go to college and the methodologies we use to assess college impact. Discusses the implications of four forces: changing undergraduate student population; increasing importance of community colleges;…

Examines the prospects for protecting academic freedom in American higher education, addressing three areas of potential conflict and tension: pressures to divorce the protection of academic freedom from formal tenure systems; increasing regulation of harassment and other forms of incivility in the collegiate community; and academic freedom in…

Examines quantitative studies, especially small-scale statistical probes, which have become the dominant mode of inquiry in higher education, but criticisms of this approach are mounting. Describes the presuppositions of this prevailing mode, and several strands of criticism, noting how education and social research have changed over four decades.…

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…

Explores changes in academic jobs and career trajectories by examining shifts in faculty employment patterns in Canadian universities (excluding Quebec). Discusses the general history of job entitlements, then the experiences of 15 cohorts of entrants to university teaching, and examines how these findings contribute to the debate on the future of…

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…

Discusses the growing phenomenon of private college counseling services (independent educational consultants, or IECs), using survey results (n=157 IECs) to document their characteristics and those of their users, and considers the implications of the privatization of college counseling for admissions, students' college choice behaviors, and…

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,…

Reviews political science literature on changing state politics. A statistical analysis focuses on the relationship between changing legislative structures and higher education for all 50 states. Presents a case study of Pennsylvania that suggests a possible causal relationship between changing political structure and limitation of public…

A discussion of the increased use of qualitative methods in social science research looks at four emerging issues: the nature of research, the growth in status of the narrative in research, political influences on the research process, and the nature of the relationship between the philosophy of science and applied research practice. Some…