In August 2010, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, speaking informally at a technology conference, said technological innovations should be able to lower the cost of college to $2,000 a year. Mr. Gates's comments reportedly caught the attention of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican of Texas, who came up with his own back-of-the-envelope estimate of how…

The nation's veteran population is expected to swell by a million or more in coming years as the military winds down more than a decade of conflicts. How veterans adjust to life out of uniform has become the subject of heightened scrutiny in the military community and beyond. As today's returning service members confront a stagnant economy--and a…

This article reports that when Nian Cai Liu, director of Shanghai Jiao Tong's Institute of Higher Education, posted his first ranking of the world's top 500 universities on Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Web site, in June 2003, he thought the list might interest Chinese education officials, along with a few scholars of higher education. Instead…

Last year, the University of Idaho dropped its motto "From Here You Can Go Anywhere" for a new marketing theme dubbed "No Fences," with the accompanying tag line "Open Space. Open Minds." The words were intended to evoke both the romantic landscape of Idaho and the boundless intellectual opportunities at the…

Colleges have lived a charmed life. According to the public-opinion studies that the authors have conducted over the past 15 years, many fields--athletics, accounting, politics--have lost the public's trust, but higher education continues to receive praise for its accomplishments, while criticisms usually fail to stick. The honeymoon may be slowly…

This article reports that a state ballot measure to ban affirmative-action programs based on race, gender, and national origin at public colleges and other state agencies was defeated. Colorado voters narrowly rejected such a referendum last week by a razor-thin margin that took two days to become official. Voters in Nebraska, however, took the…

In the wake of China's harsh suppression of antigovernment protests in Tibet--among other human-rights abuses throughout its territory--world leaders have faced mounting pressure to boycott the opening ceremonies of the approaching Olympic Games in Beijing. The boycott has also become a hot topic on the presidential-campaign trail. John McCain and…

Michael Garrison has earned his bachelor's and law degrees at West Virginia University, the state's flagship institution, where he was president of the student government. He rose rapidly to high-powered political posts, including chief of staff to a previous governor. Garrison then became a lobbyist with the longest client list in West Virginia,…

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…

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…

For the group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the drinking age recently questioned by college presidents, is not a topic for debate. In August the organization publicly berated the Amethyst Initiative, a group of 100 presidents and chancellors who signed a statement urging legislators to revisit the law and to examine its effectiveness. The…

The older Americans are, and the less time they have spent on a college campus, the more likely they are to believe that professors are politically biased. That's the chief finding of a question from a survey conducted through The Chronicle/Gallup Panel that asked Americans: "How often do you believe that college professors use their classrooms as…

It came as a great surprise recently to read in "The New York Times" that the New York attorney general's office had launched an investigation into possible financial improprieties between colleges and outside organizations that provide study-abroad programs. Subpoenas had been issued to five of the largest program providers, "with more to come."…

When the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education named James E. Rogers, the system's largest benefactor, as state chancellor in May 2004, they were looking for a strong leader who could stanch a torrent of ethics problems, end backbiting among the state's eight public colleges and the board's own members, and repair the system's…

America's reputation abroad has never been so abysmal. That is the inescapable conclusion of countless books, newspaper and magazine articles, and public-opinion polls that have documented the growth of anti-Americanism during the Bush administration. Yet outside Europe and the Middle East, the loathing for Bush and the bitterness toward America…