With the pool of high school graduates decreasing, national and global competition increasing, and the need to invest in new technologies and approaches growing, many universities and small colleges alike are struggling--not just to thrive, but to survive. In this challenging environment, mergers and consolidations are often viewed as options of…

Press reports and industry statistics both give incomplete pictures of the outcomes of the Great Recession for U.S. four-year colleges and universities. To address these gaps, we conducted a statistical analysis of all articles that appeared in Lexis-Nexis on a sample of more than 300 U.S. colleges and universities during the Recession years. We…

This paper intends to describe the recent experience of a small, rural, two-year technical college. After four decades of success, the college had found itself in a difficult situation with a substantial loss in enrollment and diminished state and local support, coupled with low campus employee morale. In response, the college team closed ranks…

In difficult budget times, especially at state colleges and universities, honors programs might seem too easy for budget-cutters to reduce, cut, or lose in the shuffle of administrative reorganization. Recent years have been financially perilous and hardly an easy time for honors programs or colleges to increase budgets. Using Western Carolina…

The authors describe their experiences of teaching through a series of major earthquakes and the lessons learned regarding sustaining teaching and learning through an ongoing natural disaster. Student feedback data from across the university is analyzed to generate a model of constructive practice for instructors responding to a crisis. The…

The United States economic recession is now in its third year and continues to have a serious impact on the American higher education system, including Illinois' public community colleges. Illinois community colleges are seeing increases in enrollments while at the same time seeing significant decreases in state funding. The purpose of this…

The challenge was given to transform aviation-related programs to keep them from being eliminated. These programs were to be discontinued due to enrollment declines, costs, legislative mandates, lack of administrative support, and drastic state budget reductions. The New Rule was a paradigm shift of focus to the global market for program…

Economic downturns have decreased most community college budgets as no other time in history. Public revenues are down significantly. Enrollments are up. Competition from the private sector is increasing. This environment, which developed with surprising rapidity, presents a challenge for community and technical college leaders and a paradigm…

It is a frequent, if not ongoing, problem: deep funding cuts despite increased enrollments, and accompanying need for more instructors and updated technology. According to Joe Barwick, Roy Flores, Bernadine Chuck Fong, Al Lorenzo, Judith Redwine, and Jerry Sue Thornton, community colleges should start at the top when they deal with institutional…

Agricultural education has been an essential factor in the success of agricultural development in the Netherlands. At present, as in many countries throughout the world, the position of agricultural education is threatened. Does agricultural education have a future in the Netherlands, and if so, what strategies are being used for its survive? This…