For more than a century, the Carnegie Unit has been the central organizing feature of American education. Translated into the "credit hour" in higher education (roughly, one hour of class time per week in a 14-16 week semester), this time-based unit is embedded in nearly every aspect of the system, from faculty-workload and…

Beginning with 21 US schools of education, the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) has created a network of education faculty who are differentiating the EdD from the PhD in order to better meet the needs of their practitioner-scholar students. Their discussions center on two questions: "What are the knowledge, skills, and…

This two-part article traces the history of "Change" magazine from 1969 to present in four phases. Phase One: 1969-1980, describes how "Change" first began with the American Council on Education and the Ford Foundation convening 60 higher education leaders and journalists in rural Virginia in April 1965. Eighteen months later,…

Developmental mathematics is one of the most serious barriers to educational and economic achievement. Over 60 percent of all students entering community colleges in the United States are required to complete remedial/developmental courses as a first step towards earning associate's or bachelor's degrees. Then, to earn a degree,…

What should doctoral training in the humanities and humanistic social sciences look like in the 21st century? This question has prompted a steady stream of foundation inquiries over the past two decades, including "The Graduate Education Initiative" (Mellon Foundation), "The Responsive Ph.D." (Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship…

As state support for higher education has continued its downward slide, several commissions, declarations, and association reports have called on colleges and universities to be more productively engaged with state and regional needs. An underlying subtext of these reports is that the future of state support for higher education hinges on the…

Now that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has designated a first round of institutions that meet its criteria for engagement with their communities, in this article, the authors offer their reflections on the process for other colleges and universities preparing similar applications. They learned a great deal about their own…

Digital Badges--icons that can represent skills and achievements at a more fine-grained level than a degree--give colleges and universities a new way to document learning outcomes and to map the pathways students follow to earn a degree. They also provide a common currency to denote learning outcomes and give employers a visual representation and…

In this article, the author shares how he was inspired to advance the cause of college completion in Maryland as he recently received the Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award with $500,000 as award money. He shares how he intended to make use of the award money and mentions that it is in the spirit of making a positive difference that he…

Over the last few years, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has engaged in a comprehensive re-examination of its traditional classification system. The redesign stemmed from a concern about the inadequacy of the classification for representing institutional similarities and differences and its insensitivity to the evolution of…

The past fifty years have witnessed a sea of change in teaching and learning in higher education. In a general shift of emphasis from teaching to learning, best symbolized by Robert Barr and John Tagg's much cited 1995 "Change" article, "From Teaching to Learning: A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education," reformers have…

In this article, the author looks back at the academic profession in the 20th century, as it was shaped by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, by key higher education associations situated at One Dupont Circle in Washington D.C. ("Dupont Circle" became the collective name for these associations), and by the American…

The civic mission of American colleges and universities has received renewed attention over the last decade. From the "engaged campus" designation now offered by the Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Teaching to the growth of Campus Compact (from 782 institutional members in 2000 to 1150 in 2012) to major institutional…

This article describes the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate. The project focuses on developing "stewards of practice" in doctoral education--professional practitioners who are committed to the highest standards and prepared to take on the challenges of teaching in and leading schools, serving as administrators and clinical faculty in…

The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education was established by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1967 to study and make recommendations regarding the major issues facing U.S. higher education. The commission soon confronted a problem: no extant classification system differentiated colleges and universities along the…