The author reports on a Supreme Court case that is echoing across the University of Texas at Austin, and for some students, it is personal. Not long after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Abigail Fisher's case against the University of Texas at Austin, a lighthearted joke made the rounds at the Warfield Center for African and African-American…

In this article, the author discusses a mutilation that he has encountered involving Google Book Search. That massive text-digitization project, working in collaboration with several of the world's most important library collections, has now made available, in both PDF and text view, tens of thousands of 19th-century titles while it awaits the…

This article reports that a five-year stretch of steady growth in the job market for academic historians is over. The number of job advertisements colleges have posted with the American Historical Association so far this academic year is down 15 percent from last year--the first decline since a slump that occurred in 2001-2002 and 2002-2003. The…

Help for colleges may be on the way in the $825-billion stimulus package being pressed by Congressional leaders. The bill that House Democrats introduced this month includes $7-billion for higher-education modernization, renovation, and repair that could kick-start projects like upgrading heating and cooling systems, fixing roofs, and doing…

Momentum can stall in a time of diminished resources. For colleges on the fast track, leaders have shifted money around and made some hard choices to keep growing. The author reached out to five up-and-coming institutions to find out how they manage their ambitions during tough times. As many colleges instituted hiring freezes to save money,…

Worries about a partner's finding a job are a major reason why colleges lose faculty and professional-staff recruits. Some institutions have hired people to focus largely on nonfaculty job searches. (Finding faculty jobs for spouses or partners is a more complex negotiation with the university.) But as the economy continues to dip into uncharted…

In his presidential acceptance speech last week, Barack Obama gave a nod to his youngest and most loyal supporters, who, he said, had "rejected the myth of their generation's apathy." Indeed, voters ages 18 to 29 turned out more than they had since 1972, the first presidential election after the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. They supported…

According to a new survey by a leading higher-education group, women represent a significant share of the senior campus administrators whose jobs are most likely to lead to a college presidency. However, when it comes to members of racial minority groups, the supply of such potential leaders is much smaller. The survey, which was conducted by the…

After a month of celebrating the largest boost in federal spending on scientific research that most of them have ever seen, university presidents are increasingly tuned to the possibility of a downside. The new money--primarily from a $21.5-billion jump in research-and-development spending in the economic-stimulus law--is certainly welcome,…

President Obama's 2010 budget proposals include exciting news for those concerned with increasing educational opportunities. The urgency of the economic crisis and the clear commitment of the administration and Congress to make college more affordable provide the perfect opportunity for those in higher education to update their approach to…

For Daniel J. Kaniewski, the magic formula needed to redirect his career path from anonymous academic researcher to presidential policy adviser was only 719 words long. A single newspaper column that he wrote in April 2005 succinctly criticized the Department of Homeland Security's disaster-preparation plans. A few months later, a White House…

America's present economic unraveling has attracted intense interest among policy makers and the public. A far greater number of analysts that predicted the crisis now seem to know a path out of it. To be sure, the new president does not lack for advice on how to fix the situation. While the financial and regulatory underpinnings of the current…

Politics and a lack of money resulted in decades of neglect for the social sciences in China, by foreign and domestic institutions alike. American universities looking to establish partnerships here have focused instead on high-demand fields like finance and the hard sciences. But societal change, along with a government push to develop more…

It's not every day that scientific researchers need to defend themselves against charges of destroying humanity. And yet a group of several dozen physicists associated with the Large Hadron Collider may be getting pretty good at it--and, at the same time, actively engaging in public education and debate in ways that university scientists have…

The global economic crisis has accelerated the need for Asian universities not only to engage internationally, but also to create regional mechanisms through which students and faculty members can move more easily from one country to another, said Asian university presidents at a conference here in April. The importance of internationalization to…