In the current climate of emphasis on outcomes assessment, colleges and universities are working diligently to create assessment processes for student learning outcomes, competence in general education, student satisfaction with services, and electronic tracking media to document evidence of competence in graduates. Benchmarking has become a…

This article is based on the premise that leadership is leadership, whatever the profession. A number of "leaders" from various enterprises are discussed to determine the basic tenets of leadership. The nine tenets of leadership are: (1) Think and Act Strategically. (2) Understand and Demonstrate the Elements of Teams and Teamwork. (3)…

The Council on the Role and Status of Women in Social Work Education (WC), a volunteer committee of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), has a 37-year history. This article presents an overview of the WC from the late 1960s to September 2006 and acknowledges the needs, status, and contributions of women in social work education. Drawing on…

American regional accreditation serves two basic functions: quality assurance and quality improvement. Through its public function of quality assurance, accreditation signals to prospective students, parents, employers, and others that the institution meets fundamental standards of quality. Through its private function of quality improvement,…

How influential has the "US News" Best Colleges ranking been over the last twenty-five years since it was first started in 1983? In what ways does this influence manifest itself? There is strong evidence of the impact of the US News rankings among consumers, prospective students and their parents, and the higher education establishment in the…

Transnational higher education is a rapidly growing phenomenon that is under-researched and often even misunderstood. As the world's most promising market, China has the potential to dwarf all traditional offshore markets. Little research has been done to seriously analyse the fast growth in China. A sound understanding of the Chinese situation…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer an overview of the United Nations University's Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (RCE) initiative--the global process created to support the implementation of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2005-2014)--and discuss the…

In 2001, the grant and research coordinator of the Community College System of New Hampshire (CCSNH) was inspired to create an informal collaborative with representatives from other organizations who had similar interests in collecting and sharing data that related to postsecondary education aspirations and participation. Representatives were…

This study explores two specific cases of institutional mergers in the field of higher education. The two cases took place in China in the 1990s. One of the cases might be labeled a vertical merger and the other a horizontal merger. The former simply implies a merger between higher education institutions with equal status and the same level of…

The University of North Carolina presents the forty-first annual "Statistical Abstract of Higher Education in North Carolina." This abstract covers the breadth of higher education activities in the State in their quantitative aspect, from simple counts of enrollment and degrees conferred to complex analyses of the flow of student…

Achieving the Dream colleges engage in a process of institutional improvement to increase student success. A central component of this process is engaging internal and external stakeholders to help develop and implement interventions or changes in programs and services that improve student success. To determine whether these interventions do…

Distance education in its many forms had been around for decades, but the Western Governors University (WGU) was arguably the first "virtual university" (VU) in the United States, or at least the first VU that gained widespread attention from the press and public. After the governors in the Western Governors Association announced they would create…

Existing research demonstrates a strong relationship between the prevalence of irregular enrollment patterns among community college students and their low rates of degree attainment (Adelman 2006; Bahr 2009; Berkner et al. 2000; Goldrick-Rab 2004, 2007; Horn and Nevill 2006). However, very little is known about the features and processes that…

This report presents an analysis of the diversity of income streams in UK higher education institutions (HEIs) at a time when the sector is facing considerable uncertainty. The research was conducted over a six-week period from March to April 2010 and, as such, it predated the establishment of the new Coalition Government in the UK. In the period…

The annual meeting of the ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) IQA (internal quality assurance) Group gathered some 60 participants in the premises of the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO) in The Hague in June 2009. This seminar was a successful follow-up to the first ENQA IQA…