American public higher education systems include the largest and most impactful colleges and universities in the nation, including 75 percent of the nation's public sector students. While their impact is enormous, they are largely neglected as an area of study and underutilized as an instrument for the improvement of postsecondary outcomes.…

America's research universities lead the world in discovery, creativity, and innovation--but are captive to a set of design constraints that no longer aligns with the changing needs of society. Their commitment to discovery and innovation, which is carried out largely in isolation from the socioeconomic challenges faced by most Americans,…

The State University of New York is America's largest comprehensive public university system, with sixty-four campuses, including community colleges, colleges of technology, university colleges, research universities, medical schools, academic medical centers, and specialized campuses in fields as diverse as optometry, ceramics, horticulture,…

This volume offers personal reflections and professional advice on governing a state university system from the former president of the University of Wisconsin (UW) System Board of Regents, Laurence A. Weinstein. The book is organized into 10 chapters. Chapter I outlines Weinstein's background and his vision of the role of university system…

The traditional European university is now extinct. The conditions in higher education that have succeeded it are highly unstable and therefore transitory, and its eventual replacement is now dimly perceptible on the horizon. The European university is of course an abstraction, meant to approximate the attributes of higher education in Germany,…

Rutgers University commemorated the twentieth anniversaries of the Black Student Protest Movement and the Educational Opportunity Fund in the academic year 1988-1989. This book presents a historical overview of the movement from the 1960s to the present. Seven chapters examine and discuss the activities of the movement, factors and forces which…

This is a first-hand account of the process used in selecting undergraduates at Stanford University (California) between 1984 and 1991. The topics covered are also relevant to the procedures followed in many four-year colleges throughout the United States. There are sections on the use and abuse of standardized tests and on special considerations…

This collection contains 15 papers on issues surrounding equal opportunities in higher education for African Americans during the decades since predominantly white campuses became desegregated. Papers are organized in four parts: (1) Orienting Perspectives to the Study of Black Students in U.S. Higher Education; (2) The Under Graduate Years:…

This book advances an argument for how to restructure public higher education in the United States. Among the authors' suggestions are: instituting an open-admissions policy to allow more people an opportunity for a college education; encouraging high school students to delay their college education until they are emotionally and academically…

Public higher educational institutions, where about 80 percent of all college students and 65 percent of all four-year college students are educated, appear to be in serious trouble. In order to delve more deeply into this topic, the author invited a wide-ranging team of experts to examine changes in public higher education over the last quarter…

In a set of 10 papers this volume explores nationally pressing issues in higher education, particularly financial and access issues, by examining those issues in the New York State's higher education system. The papers are: "Factors that Have Shaped Higher Education in New York State: A Historical and Current Perspective" (William C.…

This report investigates whether the state of California can return to the levels of access to higher education envisioned in its Master Plan adopted in 1960. Chapter 1 is an introduction which discusses the state's commitment to access, the structure of the educational sector under the Master plan, the effects of the recession of the early 1990s…