Forty years after its opening, Americans must reconsider the efficacy of a federal, Cabinet-level Department of Education. Rescinding agency status, eliminating duplicative, ineffective, and inappropriate programs, and re-organizing remaining programs under a restored Office of Education within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services…

Saint Joseph's University, a small comprehensive university, implemented a one-credit capstone project for the mathematics major beginning in 2002. After expansion to three credits in 2007, the capstone, although successful, had unintended consequences. In 2010, for both programmatic and practical reasons, the department decided to remove the…

Should remediation in higher education be ended? A recent report from Complete College America says exactly that. The authors call for all public institutions of higher education in the United States to stop offering it and instead ensure that students who need extra help take co-requisite requirements, such as extra tutoring. Their…

Evaluators face challenges when programs consistently fail to meet expectations for performance or improvement and consequently, evaluators may recommend that closing a program is the most prudent course of action. However, the evaluation literature provides little guidance regarding when an evaluator might recommend program closure. Given…

Many universities increase their recruiting efforts to reach a larger and more diverse audience. Some universities also extend their reach with cross-border initiatives and seek international students in order to promote enrollment growth and global learning. The economic potential of distance education and academic globalization has attracted…

This brief and accompanying Funder's Sustainability Assessment Tool is intended to help foundation leaders address the challenges of sustainability. The brief begins with a framework for thinking about sustainability, introduces an assessment tool funders can use in a variety of ways to support sustainability in their grantmaking, and concludes…

Little solid evidence is available to gauge whether the federal government's multibillion-dollar Reading First initiative is having an effect on student achievement, but many states are reporting anecdotally that they are seeing benefits for their schools. Among those benefits are extensive professional development in practices deemed to be…

Sometimes a simple idea, such as selling gel bracelets that say "Libraries Matter" to raise money, can spark something much bigger. In this article, the authors explain how their Libraries Matter campaign grew beyond their own regional system to cover their whole state and eventually other points around the globe. This successful…

Program and Service Review (PSR) at Pima Community College in Arizona is a mechanism to provide continuous comprehensive evaluation and improvement of instructional programs and those support functions that directly serve students. The PSR's original statement of philosophy stresses the use of qualitative and quantitative measures to identify how…

Believes that music teachers must take responsibility and fight to secure the string programs in their school districts. Recommends different steps for action, such as stressing the interaction between the school string program and the community and making sure that the string program is highly visible. (CMK)

The University of Minnesota's response to financial cutbacks due to unexpected reductions in state revenues is discussed. The public higher education system and each state agency submitted alternative retrenchment budgets. The University of Minnesota proposed three approaches for cuts at the 12 percent level: across-the-board reduction; closing…

Program evaluation at Waukesha County Technical Institute consists of two phases: a review of student enrollment, job placement, and program costs, which occurs every two years; and a comprehensive review of program content, student job performance, and instructional effectiveness, which occurs every five years. A schedule for conducting program…

The 49 member colleges in the Illinois Community College System provide annual reports on improvements in productivity to the state community college Board. This document summarizes the improvements reported by the colleges for fiscal year 1995. Following a brief introduction, the first section summarizes the college productivity reports in the…

Prepared by the South Carolina Technical Education System in compliance with state policies on program review, this 1993-94 annual report presents findings on diploma program productivity in terms of enrollment, number of graduates, the percent of graduates placed in related jobs or continuing their studies full-time, and the continuation or…

Prepared by the South Carolina Technical Education System in compliance with state policies on program review, this 1994-95 annual report presents findings on diploma program productivity in terms of enrollment, number of graduates, the percent of graduates placed in related jobs or continuing their studies full-time, and the continuation or…