Articles: Enrollment & Retention

It’s become fashionable to prize innovation in higher education, not only because university research produces new knowledge that enriches our lives and changes our understanding of the world, but also because new campus programs are themselves markers of institutional vitality. It is less fashionable to celebrate colleges and universities as custodians of the world’s cumulative knowledge and conveyors of it to the next generation.

As student loan debt levels and default rates in the United States continue to climb, consumers remain concerned about the accessibility and affordability of higher education. The average overall loan debt for bachelor’s degree recipients is fairly manageable (about $26,500 for the class of 2011, according to The Institute for College Access and Success). Still, students and families are shouldering a greater portion of the cost of college through loans than they ever have before.

When Boston College leaders sent a letter to a student group in March saying its members could expect disciplinary sanctions if they distributed condoms from dorm rooms on campus, a game of sides followed. Some students, members of the media, and the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union stood by the unofficial student group, Boston College Students for Sexual Health.

Some of us east-coasters are urban-centric when it comes to identifying with the last American higher learning frontier—rising out of the Rocky Mountains and continental college town divide. Indeed, new interest in eco-tourism, adventure tourism, and extreme sports is creating a different kind of gold rush—expeditions to places of big sky, wild rivers, lakes, and peaks formed by glaciers thousands of years ago.

Maintaining healthy town/gown relations enhances campus life and generally makes the institutional mission easier to achieve. In recent years, however, community college officials are finding that efforts must go beyond providing cultural venues that locals can access.

Spring means warmer temperatures and longer days, offers of admission flying to mailboxes and inboxes across the land, and acceptances coming back. We peeked behind the admissions curtain and connected with four top administrators at a range of institutions—small and large, public and private, West Coast to East Coast, and in between—to learn more about what is changing in their world.

Not many colleges have a four-star general at the helm, but students at Birmingham-Southern College (Ala.) are such big fans of their president, former Marine Corps Commandant Charles C. Krulak, that the campus bookstore wanted to come up with a t-shirt reflecting how they feel. When the store received a copy of a USMC poster featuring Krulak (known on campus as "the General") with his arm around a young recruit, they decided to use the image and make it their own.