What is the business of business? How can planners and investors anticipate the true chances of failure and success of a business idea? This article describes a rationale for developing successful new business on the basis of a simple, sensible idea: the business of any business is to make its clients successful enough to continue purchasing and…

Early childhood family literacy programs have great potential to positively influence children and families. This article presents the core values and key components of high quality early childhood family literacy programs. The benefits and cost effectiveness of these programs are also discussed.

The Internet and advancements in the field of information technology have opened up unprecedented opportunities for every citizen to succeed in the 21st Century. Higher education has been utilizing the new technology by offering web-based education. Many universities today offer online classes and even online degrees using eLearning. But how can…

This phenomenological study sought to address the overarching research questions: What are the costs and benefits of participation in Division I college sports? How does participation in Division I college sports prepare student-athletes for life after college? A qualitative methodology was selected to provide richer data than that which could be…

Educational institutions, especially community colleges, are facing challenges to provide accessible, affordable, and quality learning opportunities to a growing number of both traditional and nontraditional students. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems facilitate institutional operations and provide an integrated platform for information…

This document contains the estimated impacts of the recommendations of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board on Higher Education Cost Efficiencies and descriptions of current practices in other states that are representative of each recommendation. The estimates provide a reasonable expectation of impacts within an order of magnitude of…

This dissertation seeks to increase our understanding of the factors that lead to student success at community colleges. Using data on a cohort of students enrolled at a two-year college, this dissertation presents the results of a longitudinal analysis. Citing the results of several persistence studies as well as the literature on…

The University of Florida (UF) established a Strategic Communications Planning Committee in May 2009 to coordinate a campuswide effort to promote strategic communications planning, strengthen the university's brand, unify key themes and messages, maximize use of available research and resources, and identify and propagate best practices and…

Alumni participation rates of 40 percent and more are not uncommon at private baccalaureate institutions in the United States. At most publics, there is real cause for cheering when the rate peaks over 10 percent. Part of the problem is simply the math. With larger pools of alumni, public institutions face much higher costs, for instance, to send…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on the results of an Massachusetts Institute of Technology Chemistry Department campaign to reduce energy consumption in chemical fume hoods. Hood use feedback to lab users is a crucial component of this campaign. Design/methodology/approach: Sash position sensor data on variable air volume fume…

Mark C. Taylor's op-ed in the "New York Times," "End the University as We Know It," struck a nerve among both faculty and graduate students, as shown by the numerous blog posts and letters to the editor it inspired. Taylor, chair of the religion department at Columbia University, spoke directly to their deepest insecurities by…

Many companies struggle with the question of when to take a manual training process online. For most, the internal conflict comes from a belief that the course development costs will be astronomical, making the process cost-prohibitive. However, the facilities expense and that of hiring qualified professors, combined with the rising trend of busy…

The bicentenary in 2011 of the Luddite Revolt prompts us to ask "what would Ned Ludd think of today's automated styles of distance education?" He would no doubt echo the common criticism that educational technologies create an impersonal style of teaching and learning, and devalue the teacher. He would probably agree that online methods…

Purpose/Objectives: The purpose of this study was to compare food cost and public school foodservice directors' satisfaction between districts participating in school foodservice cooperatives or group purchasing arrangements and districts purchasing independently. It also assessed the prevalence of purchasing cooperatives in school foodservice and…

Moving from a traditional desktop computing environment to a virtualized solution is a daunting task. In this article, the author presents case histories of three districts that have made the conversion to virtual computing to learn about their experiences: What prompted them to make the move, and what were their objectives? Which obstacles prove…