The centrality of engagement is critical to the success of higher education in the future. Engagement is essential to most effectively achieving the overall purpose of the university, which is focused on the knowledge enterprise. Today's engagement is scholarly, is an aspect of learning and discovery, and enhances society and higher education.…

In this article, Robert M. Gates, former Secretary of Defense and chancellor of the College of William & Mary, makes three observations about public higher education: (1) Over the past generation we have seen a gradual abandonment of the principle that higher education is a public good and the emergence of a view that it is a private consumer…

The centrality of engagement is critical to the success of higher education in the future. Engagement is essential to most effectively achieving the overall purpose of the university, which is focused on the knowledge enterprise. Today's engagement is scholarly, is an aspect of learning and discovery, and enhances society and higher education.…

In this article, the authors discuss the contest of faculties on discerning the politics of social engagement in the academy. They begin by noting that the relationship between scholarship and social engagement is by no means obvious or unproblematic. They know, for example, that there are less conspicuous forms of scholarly engaged activities…

Public universities undertake business activities sometimes considered by private enterprise as unfairly competitive based on nonprofit advantages. This study was an inquiry into the attitudes and actions of chief business officers at public universities regarding these activities. The research population consisted of the 1862 Morrill Act Land…

This article introduces the notion of the "educational franchise" of Australia's public universities established in the mid-nineteenth century. In his recently published study of the public university and social access in the United States, John Aubrey Douglass suggests that from the mid-nineteenth century a social contract was formed…

President Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-grant Act in 1862, launching a nationwide project in public higher education that would build democracy, prosperity, and competitiveness to levels undreamed of 150 years ago. As student costs skyrocket, driven by steep drops in public funding, the viability of that project, like the nation itself, is under…

In this article, the authors show how higher education converted to occupational education--called professional education to distinguish it from lower-level vocational training. The vocationalization process has always had dissenters, those who complain that the dominant focus on vocational goals undermines education's moral, civic, and…

This annual bulletin, formerly prepared and published by the National Association of State Universities, has been published by the Bureau of Education for the past 11 years. The data given are taken from reports received from the offices of the presidents of the various institutions, and the figures printed are substantially as given in those…

The publication each 2 years by the Office of Education of a statistical report dealing with the institutions of higher education leads an occasional reader to a misconception of the Federal Government's relation to higher education. There is no national system of higher education in this country. Except for the 69 land-grant colleges and…

This is the complete report of 69 land-grant institutions for the year which ended June 30th, 1947. Too few of the institutions had sent reports by October 15th to make it possible, as has been the practice in previous years, to prepare a preliminary report for distribution at the November meeting of the Association of Land-Grant Colleges and…

For the statistical compilations found in the following pages the data were gathered by means of two questionnaires--one on faculty, students, and degrees; and the other on receipts, expenditures, and property. These questionnaires were sent to all of the 1,709 institutions listed in Office of Education Bulletin 1939, No. 1, "Educational…

Acts by State legislatures affecting schools, colleges, and universities during 1933 and 1934 are reviewed herein. During this biennium the legislature of every State had one or more legislative sessions; all of them except Alabama had regular sessions. In approximately three-fourths of the States special sessions of the legislature were called.…

Within the two years comprehended in this review, the Congress of the United States has been in almost continuous session and all the states, except Alabama have held meetings of their legislative bodies. Six states, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and South Carolina hold annual meetings of their legislatures, and…