As in other industries, expansion of part-time work has profoundly affected salaries and working conditions of full-time faculty and staff at many colleges. If public higher education is to survive the influences of privatization, vocationalization, and downsizing, faculty unions, having established a place in the academy, must become more heavily…

A study measured the financial, personnel, and academic dimensions of state regulation at 122 public universities, and examined how university and state characteristics affect regulatory climate and administrative flexibility. It also analyzed the dimensions of administrator satisfaction in 12 specific administrative positions in relation to…

Student activists have put pressure on colleges and universities to toughen licensing codes aimed at eliminating sweatshop labor for college apparel made in other countries, and have had some success. However, oversight of the codes among contractors in developing countries is logistically and economically problematic. (MSE)

Development of community outreach partnership centers (COPCs) requires adaptations in the university environment. Institutions must reexamine and reinterpret the roles and responsibilities of faculty, design of the undergraduate curriculum, structures of the university that create the capacity to support and sustain different working relationships…

Assessment can be viewed as innovation to be adopted by the people in an institution. It is up to leaders in higher-education institutions to identify early-adopter and majority groups of faculty in schools, colleges, and departments and work with them to adapt assessment to local conditions in a way that overcomes any perceived disadvantages.…

Assessment can have a profound transformational impact on a college or university, but for this to occur, such core values as improvement of student learning through collection of performance-related data must be integrated into the institutional culture. At Truman State University (Missouri), an initially modest commitment to improving student…

Describes the faculty development efforts at eight medical schools participating in a large-scale medical curriculum development project, exploring faculty-development topics and the methods and ways the institutions motivated faculty to participate. Outcome measures used to gauge program effectiveness are also discussed. Concludes that approaches…

Eduardo Padron, president of Miami-Dade Community College (Florida), has created unprecedented diversity throughout the institution, created new transfer agreements, and made technological advancements. After three years, his take-charge administrative style has created tension with faculty, which recently voted to unionize. Some observers cite…

Central governance of undergraduate medical school curriculum is compared with traditional departmental approaches, based on experiences at the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania). It is argued that centralized governance has more advantages but greater cost. A major challenge of this approach is in resolution of faculty conflict between…

Documents the presence of displaced workers in adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classes and their work experiences in a changing economy. Class discussions, surveys, and the collection of oral histories in four regions in Southern Ontario elicit common themes that ESL teachers and administrators should focus on in helping learners deal…

New technologies lead higher education institutions to question their academic structures and processes, but effective implementation of the technologies and positive changes in traditions will occur only if basic research about teaching and learning is incorporated into discussions and planning. Issues related to instruction, faculty development,…

This article describes how Cahokia middle and high school students conduct inquiry-based science through a pitfall trap experiment. In a collaborative effort, students designed and conducted pitfall trap investigations that combined their interest in the natural world with their love of technology. The students set up their own experiments to…

For more than a decade, the Government of Hong Kong has instituted a policy of school decentralization aimed at devolving authority to all stakeholders, including the representatives of School Sponsoring Bodies, principals, teachers, parents, and community members. This study examines the relative contribution of two dimensions of school…

Smyth introduces this special issue with the claim that the question of "how to pursue forms of leadership that listen to and attend to the voices of...young people" is the "most urgent issue of our times". Dana Mitra's article describes what seem to be serious and elaborate attempts to involve students in school…

Implementation of IT "solutions" in the context of changes to business processes and efficiency is a common trigger for using formalised project management techniques. The trigger may include topical activities such as job evaluation schemes or quality assurance accreditation. This has led to a blurring of the boundary between projects and…