John Widdowson CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) is principal and chief executive of New College Durham. He chairs the Mixed Economy Group (a working group of 40 colleges that offer higher education courses in addition to their FE provision) and was a member of the HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for…

The federal government currently provides more than $150 billion each year to students and their families in the form of grants, loans, work-study funds, and tax credits to help make college more affordable. This sizable public investment in higher education has indeed made college attendance possible for a larger share of Americans. However,…

After decades of slow growth, the share of young Americans completing college has increased to 48 percent in 2019, from 39 percent 10 years earlier. What accounts for the rise? Are more students clearing a meaningful bar for graduation, or are colleges and universities engaging in credential inflation and lowering their academic standards? This…

Completing a college degree, or failing to, is a major factor in determining whether a person will have an economically stable future. While it might have been possible a few decades ago to graduate from high school, enter the job market, and find a career that enabled one to earn a solid middle-class life, that path to success has been almost…

In recent years, general education has developed considerably in Chinese universities, but it still faces many challenges and problems. Among the various negative factors, four problems may be the greatest challenges currently faced by Chinese university general education and ordinary undergraduate education: (1) In the era of massified higher…

England for the foreseeable future is stuck with a one-track government that knows only the crisis measures with which Margaret Thatcher responded to the 1970s crisis of capital accumulation. Deregulation of all public services with privatization of provision on the contracting-out state model is seen as the solution to every problem and is a part…

Last October Lord Browne of Madingley published the long-awaited report of his "Independent Review into Higher Education Funding and Student Finance" (Independent Review 2010). Browne and his colleagues recommended the removal of the "cap" on the tuition fees chargeable for first degrees by taxpayer-funded universities in…

There has been much concern about standards in British higher education in the last few years, as the number and percentage of students graduating with good degrees has increased. In 1997, 53 per cent of graduating students were awarded 2:1 or 1st class degree; in 2008 the figure was 61 per cent. How then are standards maintained? There is, of…

The importance of reflection in higher education, and across disciplinary fields is widely recognised. It is generally embedded in university graduate attributes, professional standards and course objectives. Furthermore, reflection is commonly included in assessment requirements in higher education subjects, often without necessary scaffolding or…

In this article the author discusses public reaction generated by the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. He argues that it is not simply that the methodologies adopted by the main rankers -- Times Higher Education (THE), QS and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University -- are diverse and open to the usual interpretation, but there…

Quality and standards in higher education is a tricky topic, but one that will not go away. Everyone has a view, but it is rarely informed by fact. The subject is particularly difficult for several reasons. Perhaps the most important of these is the lack of any generally agreed definition of what quality and standards are. In this article, the…

U.S. universities have had century-long success in absorbing existing professions into their curricula--by making academe their gatekeeper. These professions often started with apprenticeships and short training courses leading to a certification examination--and were then elevated and "academized" into a comprehensive body of knowledge,…

The author expresses his doubt that the general higher education bubble will burst anytime soon. Although tuition, student housing, and book costs have all increased substantially, he believes it is still likely that the federal government will continue to pour billions into higher education, largely because Americans have been persuaded that it…

Recently, Samford University was ranked 27th in the nation in a report released by "Forbes" magazine. In this article, the author relates how the people working at Samford University were surprised at its ranking. Although Samford is the largest privately institution in Alabama, its distinguished academic achievements aren't even…

Across the broad spectrum of disciplines and departments within higher education, it sometimes feels like there is little that unites them. They talk about silos, they bemoan divergent and fragmented efforts, and they refer frequently to "them" and "they," regardless of where they are on the organizational chart. However, there is one topic that…