"Public education is in crisis--and it has been for some time. The problem is, no one can agree on the problem, and when there is no agreement on the problem, developing solutions is nearly impossible." Thus writes Matthew T. Lambert in this study of present-day public higher education, which is currently plagued by momentous challenges.…

Bottled water sits at the intersection of debates regarding the social and environmental effects of the commodification of nature and the ways neoliberal globalization alters the provision of public services. Utilizing Polanyi's concept of fictitious commodities and Harvey's work on accumulation by dispossession, this article traces bottled…

Public universities are microcosms of the broader trends at work in the society, and they have been for decades. From the wide range of students they educate to the transformative research they develop to their ameliorative impact on local communities, public universities provide a litmus test for the country's ever shifting demographics, mores,…

Within a quarter century after the end of World War II (1945-1970), largely because of the support and investment it received from the State, the University of California had changed from two modest-size general campuses (Berkeley and Los Angeles) and the medical campus in San Francisco (UCSF), to a system of eight general campuses. California was…

Access to safe, affordable, and convenient transportation shapes the "geography of opportunity" for many children and youth. This study looks at how ?localities across the country are implementing new and innovative alternative approaches to student transportation that expand regional transportation access for K-12 students, improve…

For decades, for-profit educational provision has been merely tolerated, often grudgingly. In the world of charter schooling, for-profit providers are lambasted and sometimes prohibited. In higher education, for-profit institutions have grown rapidly, enrolling millions of nontraditional students and earning enmity, suspicion, and now…

California's public higher education system has for a long time been lauded as one of the finest in the world. But for the last several decades, budget cuts and privatization have resulted in the steady erosion of this system, as well as K-12 education in the state and other public sector services. It was told that privatization and choice--in the…

Today's long-term jobs crisis is not about the current financial meltdown. It is about an accelerating talent showdown. The basic cause is that unprecedented technological advances are ever more rapidly transforming the world of work. The global economy will be more tech-driven with each passing year. This will continue to raise the U.S. talent…

In this article we introduce and explain a funding framework for advancing an equity agenda at the community college. The need for the framework is premised on (a) Dowd's observation that the traditional community college commitment to student access no longer suffices as an adequate strategy to achieve greater equity in society and (b) the…

This annual report, in its seventh edition, found that Education Management Organizations (EMOs) tend to focus on managing charter primary schools and on enrolling relatively large numbers of students in those schools. Fifty-nine EMOs operate in 24 states and the District of Columbia, enrolling some 239,766 students. The report is the most…

This article investigates the social relations being produced through the incorporation of information technology (IT) into educational practices. Drawing upon field research with the Los Angeles public school system, the article analyzes social relations in three technology classrooms, discusses gender and ethnic inequalities with technology, and…

The private-sector provision of school infrastructure in the form of satellite schools is discussed in this paper. Following the introduction, section 2 presents a case study of Satellite Learning Centers in Dade County, Florida, in which the schools operate as public schools on business worksites. The host-business, American Bankers Insurance…