Higher education is in crisis. Revenues from all sources are expected to decrease at both public and private universities. The current crisis will raise existential questions for small and mid-tier institutions. Only universities with massive endowments and highly competitive admissions will escape the effects of the coming enrollment cliff.…

The California Community Colleges (CCC) is the largest system of higher education in the United States. In the past two decades, CCC has effectively shut hundreds of thousands of students out of higher education by increasing the cost of tuition. The drop in student enrollment resulted in fewer students meeting their educational goals within a…

The California Community College mission requires offering relevant Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs. Due to program accretion and bureaucratic inertia, program discontinuance (PD) seems at odds with postsecondary culture. Yet, as a result of recent budget constrictions, community colleges are forced to identify effective PD…

This article explores the closing of the Howard Ross Library of Management at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. We hypothesized that closing a branch library would result in a decline in the use of library services. We measured library service using circulation statistics, library instruction workshop statistics, and data from the online survey…

Attendance is down at many academic and professional conferences in higher education this year, and next year's numbers are expected to be far worse, as campus budgets take further beatings. With many colleges limiting travel to professors or administrators who are speaking at events they are attending, will anyone be left in the audience? A new…

In economically challenging times, institutions of higher education are often forced to make cuts that would not be considered during times of prosperity. If one such decision is to eliminate the music degree, what factors might contribute to such a decision and what repercussions might be felt after it? How do faculty, administrators, alumni, and…

Economic downturns can lead companies doing business internationally to cut costs by reducing staff and/or closing subsidiaries. Efficiency in downsizing can put people and capital to their most effective use. This exercise educates students about country differences in labor termination practices, costs, legal requirements for downsizing, and…

When Dr. James Ammons took the helm of his alma mater, Florida A&M University (FAMU), he inherited a nationally recognized school facing numerous crises. Ammons, who served as provost of FAMU during its heyday in the 1990s, knew the school was mired in trouble with the state, having accumulated dozens of state auditor questions about its…

Across the U.S., colleges like Anne Arundel Community College (Maryland) are devising strategies and designing curricula to meet the demands created by the substantial troop shifts. They are adding degree and certificate programs and refashioning or expanding others, in areas as diverse as network security, procurement and contracting, and…

President George W. Bush submitted his eighth and final budget request to the Congress on Monday. Under the proposal, fiscal year 2009 discretionary spending--spending subject to annual appropriations--would be at the same level as in the prior year for domestic programs and agencies not involved in homeland security efforts. The budget request…