Since 2006, it has been clear that the system of capped variable fees hasn't worked, either in practice or in principle. The system fails when it comes to delivering admission by ability, rather than the ability to pay. It fails in the allocation of bursaries, and it fails because, while there is guaranteed debt, there is no guarantee of financial…

This paper presents a philosophical approach to undergraduate curricula. The approach, informed by research, has been conceptualised as "socially critical vocationalism" (SCV). SCV is neither training nor pure traditional academic provision but an approach to curriculum that is academically defensible, practically relevant and socially…

At each Association for Business Communication (ABC) conference the authors have attended in the past 2 to 3 years, the many presentations focusing on social networking, blogs, wikis, and various Web 2.0 technologies have captured their attention. They welcome the wonderful, new communication tools that increasingly allow people to communicate and…

According to the author, the Modern Language Association's (MLA's) recent publication of the reports "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" and "Report to the Teagle Foundation on the Undergraduate Major in Language and Literature" concerning foreign language education has caused many of them to reexamine the…

In this article, the author comments on John Radford's article "Psychology in its place," which makes some keen observations around the current status of psychology education. The author's response focuses on undergraduate psychology education and the "responsible autonomy" of psychology educators. The author, as administrator,…

If communication research is to make a greater difference in society, change is needed in the ways that communication scholarship is taught to and produced by students. To do so, I contend that changes must occur in two areas. First, change must occur at the undergraduate level where students must be given the opportunity to become directly…

The author argues that the college textbook market provides a clear example of monopoly seeking as described by Tullock (1967, 1980). This behavior is also known as rent seeking. Because this market is important to students, this example of rent seeking will be of particular interest to them. (Contains 24 notes.)

Over the last twenty years, colleges and universities have invested considerable effort and resources in programs that are designed to improve undergraduate learning and enhance student success. These programs range from first-year seminars and learning communities to service-learning programs and capstone courses. Given the costs associated with…

How should one think about assessment in general education--or what is sometimes called liberal education--in the pluralistic environment of American higher education? Generalizations about longitudinal collegiate assessment are difficult, not least because of the remarkable range of four-year institutions and the students who attend them.…

This article demonstrates the need for engineering courses in UK higher education to give a higher priority to global and sustainability issues. In support of this case, the author summarizes and assesses evidence from a recently-concluded study by the Institute of Education, University of London, and Engineers Against Poverty, a specialist…

In this article, the author, a lecturer in Temple University's intellectual-heritage program, explains why colleges are teaching undergraduates the wrong Freud. Though the book "Civilization and Its Discontents" (1930), which most professors use, is Freud's most consistent and most convincing attempt to apply psychoanalytic theory to society as a…

Within the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education community there are repeated calls for the reform of undergraduate teaching. Resulting change efforts often focus on developing and disseminating specific instructional ideas and practices to individual faculty. However, in this paper, the authors argue that these efforts…

Early in his paper, Radford discusses the origins of Western universities and argues that they were designed to provide a "very practical preparation for life and particularly for the professions, specifically law, medicine and theology." Radford then mentions how a core part of such education was grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic.…

If a liberal arts education should prepare our students to participate in a meaningful way in democracy, what does that mean for how we design our courses across disciplines? In this paper, I first address the question: who should teach democratic skills? Using an upper-level course in Canadian politics, I then illustrate how to explicitly…

In September 2006, the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education released its final report entitled "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education" postulating that graduates today are lacking important skills such as reading, writing, problem solving, and critical thinking. In the field of…