Certain widely tested educational practices have been shown to have a significantly beneficial impact on student learning and success in college. These "high-impact practices" include first-year experiences, common intellectual experiences, learning communities, writing-intensive courses, collaborative assignments and projects,…

Passionate about making interfaith cooperation the social norm in a highly diverse religious world landscape, Eboo Patel is founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core. The organization brings together young people of different religious and moral traditions for cooperative service and dialogue around shared values. In this article, which is…

High-impact educational practices support student and faculty learning and achievement. By creating an alternative structure through which students have access to these practices, and by investing resources to make that structure available to all students, Bryn Mawr College has been able to ensure that participation in high-impact practices occurs…

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga recently updated their general education curriculum with an eye toward the essential learning outcomes identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities through its Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) initiative. Like many other campuses across the country, money is tight,…

The question of how well students are doing is central to the enterprise of higher education. Students want to know what grade was received on the paper or test. Faculty want to know what it will take to reach tenure or be reappointed. Admissions staff want to know how many students need to be enrolled in order to provide tuition revenue required…

The assessment movement that has emerged on American college campuses over the last twenty years emphasizes the need to carefully articulate the particular outcomes colleges seek for students, and it demands that faculty and administrators provide evidence of their students' success with respect to these outcomes. It also requires that this…

September marked the tenth anniversary of the release of "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of US Higher Education," the report of the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, also known as the Spellings Commission. Blue ribbon panels rarely say much that is new or stimulate much sustained attention,…

It is notoriously difficult to change a core curriculum. As credit hours and course requirements are revised, politics quickly come into play and turf battles arise to create obstacles. The author writes that, in her experience, there are two default approaches to curricular change. The first is simply to "tweak" an existing…

Student success efforts often focus on issues related to students' college-readiness, but the authors of a recent book, "Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success," challenge higher education professionals to take a different approach. The admission of increasingly greater numbers of students from…

A tension exists on college and university campuses across America today concerning how to pursue liberal, rational, open learning and, at the same time, celebrate a spirit of academic community--in short, how to exercise free expression and maintain civility. In this article, the author begins with an exploration of the boundaries of free speech,…

According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, transgender students in K-12 settings experience high rates of harassment (78 percent), physical assault (35 percent), and even sexual violence (12 percent). In response to the mounting evidence of discrimination, the Obama administration in May 2016 issued a "Dear Colleague"…

The social and economic inequities in America's K-12 education system are well known, what with a rapidly expanding system of expensive private schools and the striking contrasts between urban and suburban public schools. America's higher education system, on the other hand, is generally regarded as far more equitable, given that each of the fifty…

By outlining some of the familiar and persistent barriers to women's leadership at the highest administrative levels within colleges and universities, the authors want to open a conversation about how to accelerate the type of change embodied by Ronald Takaki's notion of a "different mirror." Developing this notion, Takaki asks,…

Despite focused efforts by many colleges and universities, the racial and ethnic composition of college faculty has not increased significantly in more than twenty years. To provide an educational environment that promotes the success of students of color, it is imperative to develop structures that promote the retention and success of faculty of…

Colleges and universities must ensure that graduates are equipped to succeed in the global workforce. What do we know about the extent to which institutions are designing international activities, providing students with direct experience of different cultures and courses on global topics, and ensuring that graduates acquire global learning…