Exotic branch campuses across the globe give American institutions an extra shine when recruiting students and establishing an internationally recognized brand. Now, several universities are finding similar success with satellites in other parts of the U.S. For example: Drexel University, based in Philadelphia, operates a satellite in Sacramento, California; Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh runs […]
While most libraries have cleared out hundreds, if not thousands, of books from their shelves, that doesn't mean they have surrendered square footage. In fact, many colleges and universities are investing millions of dollars to repurpose or even expand these facilities to make room for collaborative learning, technology centers, dining areas, research support and other […]
While 98 percent of librarians in a 2015 Gale/Library Journal survey wished for better communication with faculty, only 45 percent of faculty expressed the same wish. This gap presents both a challenge and an opportunity for libraries to make a case for their usefulness to faculty, in both their teaching and scholarship. To promote faculty […]
Active learning should allow students in traditional lecture halls to work in small groups solving problem sets or developing presentations. That can be accomplished without renovating the space, but the layout does present challenges. Lecture courses can be made more interactive by breaking up class time with small-group activities. "You can do it low-tech —'Here's […]
Students enrolled in media ethics at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this fall walked into a lecture hall that looked radically different than two years ago. Gone is the stadium-style seating. Now the room, used for a wide range of courses, has 100 rolling swivel chairs with adjustable tables and nine mounted […]
Overwhelmed by tweets posted every minute of the Presidential campaign? Confused by cable TV hosts conjuring new, often contradictory, poll results? You're not alone. Whether you are a voter, campaign strategist, college student, or professor, the old lessons of political campaigns haven't been very useful in this new era of politics and the media. Call it a […]
Five years ago, a researcher in Kazakhstan frustrated at the inaccessibility and cost of so many scholarly journals launched Sci-Hub, a website that today provides quick, free access to 47 million articles, often by illegally bypassing paywalls. A recent article in Science found that in a single six-month period, Sci-Hub received requests for a staggering […]
Like library administrators across the country, David Lewis of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis is used to making hard choices. This year, he saved $200,000 by canceling dozens of subscriptions to scholarly science journals. In exchange, he began offering researchers on-request access to articles within hours, replacing the instant access they were accustomed to. He also […]
To academic librarians, the serials crisis—the budget squeeze caused by the rising cost of subscriptions to scholarly journals—is old news. Library spending on serials rose 402 percent between 1986 and 2012, according to the Association of Research Libraries, and costs for individual subscriptions rose by an average of 12 percent over the past two years […]
Unionizing efforts are picking up steam at colleges and universities across the country. In the last three years, the Service Employees International Union's "faculty forward" campaign has organized more than 10,000 part-time instructors at more than 40 different schools. Beyond the widespread cultural impact, this trend has significant financial implications for universities. If union targets […]
