Textbook publishing has long been seen as an impenetrable business, with five major players controlling most of the nearly $14 billion industry. But in recent years, the shift to digital and open-access content has led to a proliferation of free and low-cost alternatives. Meanwhile, spiraling costs, massive student debt, changing consumer demands and public as […]
Georgetown University officials had a bit of an epiphany recently about the impact of their noncredit courses. While the offerings had been around since the 1990s, administrators hadn’t realized the big benefits they could bring to the institution. “What started as fairly standard, adult-education, personal-interest type of courses has evolved into a major part of […]
“Copyright is broken,” said Kevin Smith, scholarly communications officer at Duke University, to open his UBTech featured session on intellectual property. Smith, who is an attorney and a librarian, noted that in recent years technological innovation has put a severe strain on our copyright law, which dates from 1976. The law is supposedly technology-neutral, but […]
Some see the three year baccalaureate as a fad which will ultimately dilute the depth, breadth, and rigor of the true college learning and living experience. Other commentators see the accelerated credentials megatrend as the natural outcome of decades of degree inflation. Think about the fact that an associate's degree is no longer the coin […]
For today’s college students, on-the-go lifestyles present a challenge when it comes to finding time to eat, and, more specifically, eat well. In 2010, when Adriana Marie Reyes of The University of Arizona surveyed 219 undergraduate students for her honors thesis on what influences college students’ eating habits, 82 percent said they would eat healthier […]
It would be very easy to be jaded about the future of higher education if it were not for the fact that those who serve this industry view it as a calling. We know we can make a difference in the lives of our students and in society. We try to do the best for […]
College sports has long had its share of scandals, including rape charges against players and coaches, illegal payments to athletes, academic fraud and point shaving, to name a few. More recently, a pair of high-profile cases—an antitrust suit against the NCAA by players seeking compensation for the use of their likenesses for commercial purposes and […]
As costly as tuition and textbooks can be, poor planning and time management can raise the prices even higher. Richard O’Connor, director of financial aid at American International College in Massachusetts, says students at that institution have several options for saving on books. “About half of our students are low income, so just paying tuition […]
On April 22, College Republican National Committee chair Alex Smith appeared on a Fox News program to launch the #MyLiberalCampus hashtag campaign. In the same segment, an Eastern Connecticut State University student shared an audio recording of his creative writing professor saying that a Republican Senate win in 2014 would result in college closures, and […]
When its credit card fees hit $1.6 million in early 2011, Missouri State University officials decided there must be a better way. “Because it became so common for students and their family members to pay by credit card, the fees became unmanageable,” recalls Doug Willson, the bursar for the 23,000-student institution based in Springfield, Mo. […]
