Some colleges and universities show indifference to employment prospects for their graduates, almost callousness, as hoards of students receive degrees, accompanied by too many promissory notes and too few job prospects. Students almost unanimously choose to pursue a particular career…
University systems are political organizations. Universities are academic organizations. The two coexist symbiotically only with determined leadership. In a speech opening the legislative session, House Speaker Dean Cannon said Florida’s public university system is “racing toward the middle,” a hodgepodge…
Traditions, good and bad, are difficult to dislodge once in place. Change in universities occurs at glacial velocity. The nature of a university, like the character of a community, is determined, in large part, by its traditions and habits. “All…
Universities need to change over time. Change comes from leadership, as organizations resist it by nature. Interim Chancellor Robert Easter, who oversees the Urbana-Champaign campus, praised the program’s “long and prestigious history as a leader in aviation education” but said…
Concerns that college costs are spiraling out of control are well placed. However, painting institutions capable of garnering support for their mission as greedy, risks killing the incentive to improve is misguided. Private wealth of a philanthropic sort is also…
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…
