As we move past the shortest day of the year, my thoughts turn to the eventual return of languid summer days. This column about how universities could make better use of their facilities and faculty during the summer months first…
Increasing costs, lavish loans, low performance standards, the absence of merit, and a lost sense of mission contribute to the diminishment of the effectiveness of public higher education. But most loathsome and detrimental is an organization hell-bent on deflecting every…
Universities must change dramatically to meet the evolving needs of their students and the workplace. But, in the process, they must not abandon their roots as places that develop the human capacity for thinking and taking action for the betterment…
Current events related to intercollegiate athletics leads me to post a story this week that was originally published on July 27, 2010. The cost of low integrity programs and poor executive decision making is the highest cost to bear, even…
There is real work associated with the purpose of the university. Work focused on changing the way people think, and changing the way a society operates. Work building a productive economy. Work that creates enlightened action. It is never…
Universities must change if we are to continue serving our students. Evermore frequently, universities will be called to meet the specific needs of each student in a unique fashion. If it is properly integrated into the curriculum, distance education gives…
Universities, one hopes inadvertently, are training generations to avoid responsibility for their actions. This is shameful. Such training breeds an expectation of entitlement that undermines initiative, industry, courage, self-reliance, community, and discourages students from exercising one of the greatest benefits…
There is a shameful trend in higher education and other quarters of society that treats success as something to be considered with suspicion. Some accuse The Occupy Wall Street crowd of holding this position, but achievement and greed are not…
Seventh and final in a series on state funding for higher education Value in higher education will make more thoughtful and careful students out of those in attendance. People will be asking why ever more frequently. Leadership better have good…
Third in a series on state funding for higher education Addressing how the Monetary Assistance Program (MAP) is affecting the students of Illinois, the IBHE Task Force observed: The first issue is the increasing demand for financial aid. More students…
Second in a series on state funding for higher education Historically, while state contributions to the total operating budgets of universities have increased as a percentage of all spending, tuition has remained a roughly stable percentage of all operating costs. …
Bachelor’s degrees at community colleges are not a good idea. Articulated transfer is a better answer but both community colleges and universities must be more responsive to the needs of student and state. Pascarella and Terenzini suggest, in Studying College…
Universities must change. The culture of college needs to evolve, particularly with regard to “perverse institutional incentives” that reward colleges for enrolling and retaining students rather than for educating them. “It’s a problem when higher education is driven by a…
Who cares about students as higher education becomes big business? The Justice Department plans to intervene in a whistle-blower lawsuit charging that one of the nation’s largest for-profit college companies, the Education Management Corporation, defrauded the government by illegally paying…
Costs are always relative and secondary to value. Governments cannot make universities by enactments of laws: Nor corporations by erections of edifices: The church cannot create them under the authority of heaven: The flattering eulogies of orators cannot adorn them…
Our University: Great Expectations In a New York Times piece on February 18, 2009, by Max Roosevelt entitled Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes, James Hogge, associate dean of the Peabody School of Education at Vanderbilt University is quoted.…
Universities must compete for students through excellence and quality. There is no substitute for competition in creating excellence, and it should be the highest priority for any institution of higher education. Governments cannot make universities by enactments of laws: Nor…
A shared vision for a university energizes people. Students must be partners in that vision casting process because theirs is the most fundamental experience that defines whether we have succeeded as an educational institution, and, more importantly to institutions in…
Eighth and final in a series of who our students are and how they perform. Appreciating different perspectives diminishes neither loyalty nor purpose, but enriches both. Diversity of opinion within the framework of loyalty to our free society is not…
Our University – Race, Ethnicity and Other Forces Seventh in a series of who our students are and how they perform. The factors that influence ethnic and racial diversity in universities are many: wealth; preparation; ability, whether innate or learned;…
Sixth in a series of who our students are and how they perform. Quality transfer students can bring positive characteristics to the university, not the least of which is a willingness to work. Avril Thorne, Professor of Psychology at U.C.…
Fifth in a series of who our students are and how they perform. The role of every professor, in every classroom, guiding every student, is to challenge that student to a level at which he or she has never before…
Fourth in a series of who our students are and how they perform. The title of an anthology of stories by and about nontraditional students complied by Donna S. Talarico may say it best, and may say it all: Kids,…
Third in a series on who our students are and how they perform. International students are a reliable predictor of U.S. institutional success in a global market for higher education. I am not confident that American postsecondary institutions will retain…
Second in a series on who our students are and how they perform. Great universities help people come into their own. Intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and moral development is always a personal matter but good learning environments are catalysts for the…
First in a series on who our students are, and how they perform. The precariousness of balancing opportunity, access and excellence will be addressed in the coming weeks as the face of the university intersects the faces of students. An…
