In recent years, the increasing cost of higher education has introduced a new level of scrutiny toward colleges and universities, including the concern of prospective students and their families about the return on investment (ROI) of a college education. California's Pepperdine University wants its students to be transformed, inside and out, to…

In the late 1990s, the wild hope of the Lilly Endowment was that a set of American higher education institutions would respond to the call for an exploration of vocation, giving a portion of their precious institutional lives to explore this question with undergraduates. Through projects on multiple campuses, the intent was to learn whether and…

Evidence abounds that, in recent decades, students have typically entered college relying on perspectives they have uncritically accepted from others and are not sufficiently challenged and supported to transition to internal authority during college. Students who have experienced significant challenge, particularly as a result of marginalization,…

In this article, the author discusses seven critical lessons for navigating a leadership position in higher education. The author focuses on developing a personal means of remaining centered regardless of circumstances or situations as well as building an ethical foundation for one's work. He uses spiraling as a metaphor to describe his own…

The State University of New York-Plattsburgh is examining the total impact of the college experience on its students with standardized tests to measure academic achievement and student surveys to measure attitudes about learning, their own experience, and the institutional environment. (MSE)

Aspects of the small liberal arts college's environment that contribute to the intellectual and personal development of faculty as well as students include accessibility, visibility, flexibility, the institution's desire for interdisciplinary inquiry, and a reward system for scholarship. (MSE)

Three broad topics are considered including the changing demographics of education and the accompanying interest in lifelong learning, motivations that lead adults to seek out education, and the relevance of the liberal arts to the mature student in the midst of that changing demography and pluralism of motivations. (MLW)

Standard logic courses are seen as unsuitable for liberal arts curricula because they emphasize the formal logic of calculative thinking. To develop the capacity of students to make moral decisions, logic courses should emphasize thinking skills based on informal logic or rhetoric, a logic of practical reasoning and communication. (Author/MLW)

The study of literature is seen as one of the best ways to bring students through the curriculum to recognize and grapple with the moral dimension of human life. Such a focus for a basic course is especially important when students take only one literature course. (Author/MLW)

Reed College uses a junior qualifying examination, which can take a number of forms, a senior thesis based on the subject chosen for the junior exam, and an oral exam based on the senior thesis to monitor student preparation and measure the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum and instruction. (MSE)

Liberal education projects supported by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education are described. Many Fund projects are surveyed in order to indicate the range and relevance of their approaches to liberal education. (MLW)

Northwestern University's recently revised undergraduate curriculum is described. Six distributional areas of required study are: natural sciences, formal studies, social and behavioral sciences, historical studies, values, and literature and fine arts. The plan reflects the need for compensatory and transitional courses as well as for…