Making sense of change and how to think about change has never been more important. In the United States alone, 50 of 80 million total enrolled school-aged children and young adults (preschool to college) must adapt to the shift of formal education online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And what were once leading disruptors, the Internet and…

In 2011, the Association of American Universities (AAU) embarked on an ambitious effort to improve the instructional quality and effectiveness of undergraduate introductory Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses. The primary focus was on sustainable implementation of evidence-based methods of instruction in courses that…

The "proud-parent" attitude of states towards higher education between 1945 and 1970--due to the baby boom, the technological contributions that research universities had made to the war effort, and the GI Bill--began to cool in the late 1960s, when inflation and increasing demands from other state services such as Medicaid, prisons,…

Students enrolled in the My Wildcat Track program at the University of Arizona are receiving a novel type of support to help them get and stay off academic probation: social and affective skill building. These students, who are referred to the program by their advisors, have one-on-one meetings with professional learning specialists and attend…

Due to extensive research, we now know that in spite of extraordinary success in expanding access to American higher education over the last 60 years, far too little has been done to ensure that students complete college, even when they take 50 percent more time to complete the degree than full-time attendance should require. Obstacles to success…

Although virtually all universities have accounting systems that track every dollar in accordance with the accounting rules required by auditors, these systems are not adequate to inform their leaders or the public about the profit and loss, productivity, or efficiency of their activities. Instead, they obscure the different revenue sources on…

Colleges and universities negotiating their recovery from the most severe recession in nearly a century are currently implementing a welter of hastily devised measures aimed at reducing operating costs, becoming more efficient, and restoring a prior equilibrium. Administrators reacting to the downturn should not restrict their focus to the short…