This report by Paul Woodgates explores change initiatives in higher education institutions, considering why they are needed and why they are difficult to deliver. He outlines how universities should carefully design change projects to maximise impact and likelihood of success.

Demographic changes promise to reshape the market for higher education in the next 15 years. Colleges are already grappling with the consequences of declining family size due to low birth rates brought on by the Great Recession, as well as the continuing shift toward minority student populations. Each institution faces a distinct market context…

This handbook provides a global overview of the design, implementation and assessment of academic development centers within higher education institutions. The current nature of our complex, rapidly changing world makes it imperative that colleges and universities worldwide find ways to educate their students in new and better ways: this is…

Colleges and universities have a commitment to improve the student experience, increase persistence, and provide paths to degree completion. Course redesign, focused on student success, is a promising strategy for realizing that commitment. This article examines some of the particulars when course redesign is explicitly linked to student success.…

This paper examines the key aspects of stakeholder engagement that can strengthen the design, implementation and sustainability of outcomes-based funding policies. We seek to help policymakers understand the prevailing starting-point attitudes of institutional stakeholders, primarily college and university administrators, faculty and staff, and…

This white paper analyzes the potential effects of requiring income-driven repayment for all federal loans as well as relying on paycheck withholding for loan payments, with particular attention to the implications for low-income students and families. The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) also examines the relevance and evolution…

How to plan an open and distance learning (ODL) unit in higher education is not clearly described in the literature. A number of ODL facilities at residential universities have not been successful because of a lack of planning or because of failure to ensure that all the different systems for ODL delivery were in place and functioning. This paper…

The Division of Student Affairs at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor engaged in an iterative strategic process to create and implement a set of long-range goals. This strategic journey continues to evolve, uniting a guiding framework of strategic planning steps, a reflective process with an assessment component within each step, and a group…

Virtually all reform measures proposed at the National Collegiate Athletic Association annual meeting pass by wide margins. Changes include reduced coaching staffs and scholarships, phasing out of athletic dormitories and training tables, limiting practice and playing time, reduced recruitment expenditures. However, substantive change is not seen…

Student financial aid analysts are suggesting the federal government establish a government-run loan bank or trust fund to eliminate the need for lender involvement in the Guaranteed Student Loan Program, but congressional aides think that dismantling the existing program is unlikely. (MSE)

As the second report on ISUPS, this document evaluates the period of July 1973 to December 1974 and presents sections dealing with: (1) higher education and American Indian students; (2) recommendations based on first year operations; (3) second year operations; (4) development and research; (5) evaluation reports from the districts; (6) the…

Most assessment efforts suffer from being externally imposed on reluctant institutions. Factors that appear to influence the effectiveness of the various kinds of assessment attempts, their purpose and design, and their relationship to the ongoing health and prospects for institutions are discussed. (Author/MLW)

This paper discusses designing an individual higher education (IHE) teacher training program that focuses on the instructional needs of limited-English-proficient students (LEP). The paper seeks to accomplish the following: excite individuals to want to participate in building a new paradigm in teacher training for teachers of all LEP students;…

The design and success of the Netherlands' new researcher training system are discussed. It is concluded that the system conforms more to the natural sciences model than the social sciences model of professionalization and should adopt a different, more supportive approach to the student. (MSE)

This article proposes that more leadership is needed in the scientific community to combat inertia in research and education and for progress in higher education and scientific research to occur. This means using new techniques, designing funding mechanisms that promote more adventuresome research, and supporting the independence of creative young…