The purpose of this article is to galvanize institutions toward a movement to value teaching excellence in higher education. Colleges and universities that demonstrate this value are Teaching Excellence Colleges and Universities (TECUs), but they have never acted as a group. Many of these institutions lack power in the higher education landscape.…

China now tops the list of countries with the largest annual number of scientific publications. At the same time, China also leads the list of countries with the highest proportion of scientific publication retractions. The rise in this academic misconduct in China has given Chinese researchers a bad reputation and likely led to lower manuscript…

Rankings are a powerful force in higher education, swaying the enrollment decisions of prospective students and affecting the opinions of parents, board members, and policymakers. In the words of one provost, "The rankings matter to our university because they matter to people who matter to us." Rankings are also a business--one that is…

The circulation of head football coaches is a well-established practice, and with it, salary costs are significantly outpacing other spending as institutions compete in the pursuit of prestige. This movement of college football coaches is known in the popular press as the "coaching carousel." The carousel is a fitting metaphor for a…

In the era of globalization, accountability, and benchmarking, university rankings have achieved a kind of iconic status. The major ones--the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU, or the "Shanghai rankings"), the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds Limited) World University Rankings, and the "Times Higher Education" World…

In this article, the author shares his experience with Burent Arel, an established composer of orchestral, chamber, and classical electronic music. At first, the author found the music of the 20th century deeply disturbing. Yet, Professor Arel converted him and his skepticism into evangelical fervor. Finally understanding the role of the artist in…

A few years ago, in "Student Success in College (SSiC)," the authors profiled twenty colleges and universities that were unusually effective in fostering student engagement and success, defined as better-than-predicted scores on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and better-than-predicted graduation rates. These schools are…

Recently, Samford University was ranked 27th in the nation in a report released by "Forbes" magazine. In this article, the author relates how the people working at Samford University were surprised at its ranking. Although Samford is the largest privately institution in Alabama, its distinguished academic achievements aren't even…

This article is written for scholars, researchers, and academic leaders who have a passion to share their knowledge outside the classroom, laboratory, or institution. They want to make a difference and believe that the information they possess and ideas they have to offer have a public importance. Based on his book "Pitch Perfect:…

The world of higher education is a world of sorting, selecting, and ranking--on both sides of the market. Colleges select students to recruit and then to admit; students choose where to apply and which offer to accept. The sorting process that gets the most attention is in the higher reaches of the market, where it is not too much to say that…

Publishing is the sleeping beast that faculty at college like the College of St. Catherine, a 5,000-student women's college in Minnesota's Twin Cities, have tiptoed around for years. Here, as in many institutions devoted to undergraduate teaching, professors could once amble undisturbed along the promotion path equipped only with pedagogical…

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has compiled its classification of higher-education institutions for more than 30 years. In the most recent incarnation of the classification, the foundation has transformed its taxonomy to better reflect the variety of colleges and universities across the United States. The new…