Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was in the university-building business. The elite institute is back in the university-building business. In addition to the thousands of faculty research collaborations around the globe, the university over the past five years has once more engaged in ambitious efforts to…

A series of unprecedented scandals has eroded confidence in big-time sports, increasing the appetite for change. Some critics have a tough time seeing the NCAA as a savior; they say the real problem is the NCAA structure itself, which allows athletes to generate billions of dollars for colleges while earning no compensation themselves. Mark A.…

This article describes the current lives of the Chinese leaders of 1989. Wang Dan, an active organizer year before the demonstrations and quickly became a leader in the square, has completed a Ph.D. in Chinese history at Harvard University last year and is now on a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford. Wu'er Kaixi, who took a…

Claiborne Pell lived in a waterfront house in Newport, Rhode Island. The Princeton-educated senator came from such old money that his people once owned much of New York's Westchester County and the Bronx. Having grown up in a roach-ridden house, it didn't seem to the author that she and Pell inhabited the same universe. Even so, when she learned…

In the late 1960s, Kent E. Dove, a new fund raiser at Indiana University, spent so many evenings at the home of his colleague Curtis R. Simic. The two junior fund raisers would talk into the wee hours about how they'd do things differently, if only they were in charge of raising money for their alma mater. Now, more than 40 years later, that's…

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…

In 1974, John G. Sperling left a tenured position at San Jose State University with $26,000 in savings to start an academic program for working adults. In the beginning, he ran the operation out of his house. The program soon outgrew the house, Sperling relocated to Arizona, and the program adopted the name of that state's capital. Now the…

One can hardly mention higher education today without hearing the word "innovation," or its understudies "change," "reinvention," "transformation." Last summer the National Governors Association opened its meeting with a plenary session on higher education, innovation, and economic growth. But there is nothing funny about the need for innovation…

This article presents an open letter to Bill Gates. In his letter, the author suggests that Bill Gates should build a brand-new university, a great 21st-century institution of higher learning. This university will be unlike anything the world has ever seen. He asks Bill Gates not to stop helping existing colleges create the higher-education system…

When Michael J. Hogan, president of the University of Connecticut, declined a performance bonus after his first year as the head of the state's flagship university, he was not expecting grateful e-mail messages or glowing newspaper editorials, or that people he did not know would stop him at football games to say thanks. He is not the only college…

Philippe Bourgois, who has spent his career studying some of America's roughest neighborhoods and subcultures, got an unusually harsh welcome to his new hometown: Last May, during a trip to North Philly to make contact with some drug dealers, he got caught up in a police raid. The arrest was Bourgois's first, though hardly his first brush with…

In a warmly received address to Roman Catholic educators, including 200 college presidents, in April, Pope Benedict XVI expressed his "profound gratitude" for the educators' "selfless contributions," which "serve both your country and the church." Pope Benedict's talk also built an intellectual case for academic freedom that is based on a bedrock…

The California State University campus at Long Beach graduated 8,720 students last month. Each one got the opportunity to walk the stage, and F. King Alexander, the university's president, shook every hand. California State at Long Beach has made graduating a greater number of its 38,000 students its top priority. The slogan "Graduation…

President Bush is leaving the White House with a mixed record on higher education. His administration catapulted conversations about holding colleges more accountable for their performance into the national spotlight, and it pressed for some increases in federal spending on student aid and research. At the same time, Mr. Bush faced criticism from…

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize would be shared by Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the award implicitly celebrated a third party--academic institutions. Much of the research on global warming has come from university scientists, and higher…