In nearly two decades as a community-college leader, Martha J. Kanter has earned acclaim for a strong record helping disabled and low-income students graduate from college and for her bold efforts to overhaul curricula to help more students master basic skills. Kanter has made such a mark as chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College…

Sean Wilentz is a Princeton historian of great vigor and ability. He has published a number of scholarly books on American history. He is a liberal activist, and a friend of the Clintons. For some Obama champions, his recent enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton passed from acceptable to treacherous: He did not simply back Clinton, he stabbed Barack…

John McCain's announcement in late August that Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska would be his running mate got the attention of the news media, to say the least. The public heard more than enough from pundits, politicos, and pollsters. But they heard little from another group with opinions aplenty: scholars who specialize in how the news and…

Stories of transient students missing deadlines or being misled about their voting rights are nothing new. But this year, the role younger voters played in Barack Obama's win in Iowa's Democratic presidential primary seems to have motivated a wave of college students in other states. Some of those students--and the campaigns courting them--are out…

In the latest sign of the growing national prominence of community colleges, President Obama has named the chancellor of a two-year-college district to the government's top postsecondary-education position. The nominee for under secretary of education, Martha J. Kanter, is head of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, in Silicon Valley.…

In this article, the author provides the contentions of intellectual historian John Patrick Diggins on the November 2008 elections and the presidential leadership. Diggins observed that "all people spoke about was winning the elections, and no one seemed to be concerned with the problems of the future." Diggins also expressed how he was skeptical…

Forty years ago--on May 9, 1968--the local school board in Brooklyn's black ghetto of Ocean Hill-Brownsville sent telegrams to 19 unionized educators, informing them that their employment in the district was terminated. Eighteen were white. One black teacher was mistakenly included on the list, but reinstated almost immediately after the error was…

Obamamania has swept across college campuses. Students, it seems, are out campaigning, registering people to vote, singing the Democrat's praises far and wide. This article reports that a new poll of college students in four battleground states--Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania--conducted by CBS News, UWIRE, and "The…

For adult students at Lehman College, in the Bronx, and LaGuardia Community College, in Queens, the separation between politics and daily life seems practically invisible. Both colleges are part of the 23-campus CUNY system, where more than two in five of the nearly 197,000 students are 23 and older. For most of these students, it is nearly…

With the dollar's continued swoon and grim news on the job front, American economic competitiveness has become a central theme in the presidential election. Stumping in Ohio and Pennsylvania, old-line industrial states hit hard by the flight of manufacturing jobs, Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have called for renegotiating the…

During the three presidential debates this fall, both John McCain and Barack Obama opened by thanking their university hosts. If not for their locations, it's likely one would not have heard the words "college," "university," or "higher education" even uttered in the debates. Indeed, it wasn't until the final debate that Senator McCain mentioned…

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has announced she will retire as soon as a replacement is nominated and confirmed. Article discusses O'Connor's ruling and comments on education-related cases, possible judicial nominees, and pending or upcoming cases related to higher education.

Never before has a college degree been more essential to an individual's prosperity in the United States. Nor have colleges ever been asked to play a more crucial part in preparing citizens for a global economy. Yet finding a way to erase persisting inequities in who earns a college degree has proved difficult. With a new generation that is more…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This January 23, 2004 issue of "Chronicle for Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "Never Mind: An Assistant Professor Who Thought about Quitting Academe has a…