Over the past decade, deliberate efforts to "market" colleges and universities to specific audiences have gone from being a marginal--and somewhat suspect--activity in higher education to becoming a strategic imperative. Heightened competition for top students, increasing bottom-line pressures due to tuition discounting and comparative "shopping"…

Professors, department chairs, and deans no longer are the sole sources of the learning experiences that undergraduate students benefit from on our campuses. Recent years have seen the growth or expansion of a wide variety of out-of-the classroom supplements to classroom education, including learning communities, "theme" housing beyond the…

The programs that will become the chief medium for giving women's studies a permanent place in the academic world are those in which scholars with other intellectual affiliations and interests work simultaneously (1) to develop women's studies and (2) to integrate its materials into the long-established university department. (MLW)

Higher education is seen as an industry. The roles of a faculty member who manages a department or a division in an institution are discussed including: planner, evaluator, recruiter, innovator, motivator, and entrepreneur. Faculty members need to increase productivity. (MLW)

The pledge of a department chairman to be accessible to faculty members by maintaining the open-door policy is discussed, and the wisdom and utility of this policy questioned. The chairman found himself taking home three briefcases full of work while his colleagues went to basketball games. (MLW)

Perspective (the ability of an educated individual to evaluate the significance of things and events in relation to other things and events) is seen as critical to undergraduate education. Perspective offers a view that should be broadening and is seen as the essence of liberal education. (MLW)

Differences of view and controversy about whether the disciplinary department is the best organizing principle for the university are discussed. The values of a metadepartmental structure can be obtained without losing the important values of disciplinary departments. (MLW)

There were declines in three of the six categories of science and engineering assistance between 1975 and 1985: fellowships and training grants; facilities and equipment related to instruction; and general support for conferences, teacher institutes, and activities aimed at increasing the scientific knowledge of pre-college and undergraduate…

An academic department meeting is described as having an unobtrusive metamorphosis as it was changed from the traditional collegial participatory style of the reluctant, temporary, quasi-administrator chair-scholar to the autocrat who uses merit pay to reward the loyal. (MLW)

The experience of a University of Rhode Island department in developing a new curriculum illustrates the difficulty of accomplishing meaningful change in the context of institutional regulations, divergent faculty priorities, institutional needs, and department politics. It is concluded that a new curriculum is not necessarily an effective change…

A discussion on who should teach computer literacy in academe is presented. Computer science can be described as an experimental science with the computer as the laboratory but computer science is an interdisciplinary area. Defining a computer scientist is difficult. (MLW)

Quality concerns are foremost in assessing the worthiness of interdisciplinary efforts, but issues of funding, organization, student interest, and job market need to concern those who propose or review such programs. Proposed is a series of questions that may assist reviewers of proposals for new interdisciplinary degree programs. (MLW)

Evangelical colleges have been unaffected by the academic revolution in which faculties, organized into departments, have increasingly obtained hegemony over a large and growing portion of the academic enterprise. These colleges are tuition-dependent, with relatively weak departments, allowing greater flexibility. Oral Roberts University, Berea…

Describes implementation of Responsibility Center Management in the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University (Indianapolis) to achieve higher academic and research goals and what the institution as a whole has learned about the approach. Argues that this form of decentralized management is a partial antidote to the outmoded,…

Examines criticism of the National Research Council's 1995 report, "Research Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change," which ranks university departments across institutions based on peer ratings. It is argued that the criticisms are not based on the content or design of the study, but reflect general concerns…