This chapter presents findings from eight interviews with college and university chief financial officers about institutional borrowing practices during periods of uncertainty and crisis.

In this chapter, the experiences of mid-level business and finance staff positions in private colleges are explored to illuminate how they engage the campus environment as they help navigate their institutional fiscal vitality through the lens of empowerment theory. Through qualitative interviewers, findings include how they negotiate shared…

This chapter presents the perspective of a provost on public intellectuals in higher education. It provides practical guidance through a series of questions faculty members might ask themselves about their role and approach to public intellectualism, including how to translate academic scholarship into a legible message for the general public and…

This chapter examines the impact and success of mid-level business and finance staff at private colleges or universities, using an adaptation of Bronfenbrenner's multilevel social integration model. This chapter also highlights the voices of mid-level business and finance staff and describes the experiences, successes, and challenges they have…

Higher education institutions and the actors therein are still grappling with disparities in student outcomes and disparate student experiences. Although diligent efforts have been made, institutions have yet to transform in any substantial way to overcome these issues. Rather than offering new student success practices, the focus of this chapter…

This chapter focuses on institution-wide administration of advising and student success initiatives that address the complexity of higher education. The authors stress the importance of "staying the course" set by campus leadership (or setting a visionary agenda) while being responsible to stakeholders.

This chapter delves into the growing influence and impact of rankings on higher education, as a lens through which to view how the race for reputation and status is changing the higher education landscape, both globally and nationally. The author considers the extent to which rankings are driving policy choices and institutional decisions and the…

Learning is a core part of all forms of higher education work. College leaders of all kinds--administrators, staff, faculty, and students--must know how to seek out and support the wide array of learning that can go on in colleges and universities.

There is limited research on how postsecondary institutions prepare to become HSIs. This chapter examines organizational change through a group of emerging HSIs and their governance, policy, and leadership.

At every college and university, students enroll with expectations and aspirations about the kind of experience and the kind of outcomes that the institution delivers. When those expectations are met and exceeded, students are satisfied and likely to remain committed to their college choice. When their experience falls short of their expectations,…

Over 35 years of retention theory and literature have acknowledged the importance of institutional and student profiles in accounting for cross-sectional differences in retention and completion rates between types of colleges and universities. The first "P" within a 4 Ps framework of student retention--"profile"--recognizes that an institution's…

A 4 Ps framework for student retention strategy is a construct for reframing the retention discussion in a way that enables institutional improvement by challenging some conventional wisdom and prevailing perspectives that have characterized retention strategy for years. It opens new possibilities for action and improvement by suggesting that…

When institutions engage in discussions regarding improving retention and graduation rates, invariably the conversation focuses on entering student characteristics, especially ACT and SAT scores and high school grades. Clearly, attracting and enrolling well-prepared and motivated high-ability students will certainly improve institutional measures…

Codes of conduct can and should fulfill a critical role in higher education. Codes help overcome some of the challenges inherent in a system predicated on high levels of autonomy and on self-regulation. Codes not only are important indicators of critical topics that are deemed worthy of explicit protection or expectations for behavior; they may…

Focusing on the student experience broadly defined and, in particular, on the quality of student encounters in and out of the classroom is of critical importance to improving student outcomes. Improving learning, satisfaction, retention, time to degree, and graduation outcomes is not predicated simply on improving entering characteristics or…