Retention and student graduation rates are a major concern for community colleges nationwide. As student dropout rates continue to climb and graduation figures languish, many studies have been conducted to investigate the causes of student attrition. Numerous reports have found faculty advising to be a contributing factor in student retention,…

College and university governance works best when every constituency within the institution has a clear understanding of its role with respect to the other constituencies. It works best when communication among the governing board, the administration, and the faculty (not to mention the staff and students) is regular, open, and honest. Too often…

This research pioneered the investigation of the predictive power of organisational commitments for academics' teaching styles. Participants were 370 faculty members from 15 higher educational institutions in Beijing, the People's Republic of China. Results showed that academics' organisational commitments as measured by the Organisational…

Education is the cornerstone of national development. Higher education institutions are responsible for producing skilled manpower needed to attain sustainable economic, social and technological development. In order to make higher education institutions responsive and productive, effective leadership is needed. Leader's self-efficacy plays a…

In this paper, we explore the work life of a scholar new to academia in her methods of leading informally. We discuss five vignettes that offer moments of learning and reflection, including reducing performance anxiety, privileging financial accountability, the rise of the virtual world, the impact of silence, and the potential for confrontation…

Over the past 50 years, state legislatures have placed mandates on higher education institutions to lower attrition, thereby increasing student retention and completion. This study investigated and sought to understand the relationship between the Louisiana Granting Resources and Autonomy for Diplomas Act, or the LA GRAD Act (2010), and…

This paper primarily deals with the relationships between academics and their university in European countries. The aim of this paper is therefore not to produce new results but provide a synthesis of the main trends that can be identified from the literature and then suggest what can be borrowed from sociological theories to highlight the…

This chapter describes a diversity and democracy curriculum and faculty development collaboration among the Association of American Colleges and Universities, The Democracy Commitment, and 10 community colleges.

For more than twenty years accrediting agencies have required assessment as part of their initial accreditation or reaffirmation processes. During that period of time thousands of institutions have successfully prepared plans to achieve or maintain their accreditation. Why then does a culture of assessment not exist? And why is assessment still an…

The article presents our response to some ideas presented by David Kirk in his 2012 Scholar Lecture to the Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy Special Interest Group of the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference in September 2012. We seek to present an alternate view to one aspect of Kirk's argument which supports a view…

Shared governance between the administration and faculty has been traditional for most public universities, but varies considerably in its nature and effectiveness. In the United States it probably takes its most structured form at the University of California. There are good reasons for having shared governance, and yet it tends to be poorly…

All institutions of higher education depend heavily on the contributions of adjunct faculty. The purpose of the qualitative narrative inquiry was to gather, analyze, and interpret stories offered by faculty members to make meaning of their experiences as adjuncts in non-traditional higher education institutions. The qualitative narrative inquiry…

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between learning climate congruence and the affective commitment of university academics. The strategy of inquiry for this research is quantitative, involving a non-experimental design for the survey research. A non-probability sample of 900 academics from a large Australian university was…

This article examines, through the lens of social influence theory, the impact of consumerism on faculty behavior. Rathus (2005) defines social influence as "the ways in which people alter the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of others" (p. 607). Demands such as student-teacher evaluations and high graduation rates can lead professors to…

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) have been described as employee behaviors that are not required by job descriptions, are not formally rewarded, and contribute positively to the organization. Previous research has shown that OCBs are related to both individual and organizational performance. Given the importance of OCBs to individual…