The economic chaos of the last two years has presented major challenges for college students. As professors at a large public university, the authors are accustomed to monitoring the broader social and economic climate for students so that they can swiftly identify "teachable moments" and seize those moments to improve learning. But what is a…

Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have suffered disproportionately in the current financial crisis. The difficult situations at these institutions have many causes, but they stem in large part from the commitment of HBCUs to serving disadvantaged students and from the history of underfunding and discrimination that disadvantages…

Even before the current global economic crisis, discontent with the governance of higher education institutions was widespread among faculty in the United States and throughout the world. Drawing from the 2007 Changing Academic Profession (CAP) survey of faculty in seventeen countries, the authors examine faculty perceptions of the current state…

About 25 percent of faculty working in the United States will reportedly consider retiring in the next five to seven years. As one of this 25 percent, the author has been researching what she needs to know to retire. What she found initially was a lot of misinformation. To complicate matters, the world has changed over the past year, causing those…

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Great Recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. With a duration of eighteen months, this recession was almost double the length of the average post-World War II economic downturn. Although the worst recession since the Great Depression is now technically over, this analysis…

For those who still see tenure primarily as a form of job security, the larger economic context should be plain. No one, not even in the traditional professions, can any longer expect a fixed pattern of employment in the course of his or her lifetime. In this article, the author discusses how this generation is witnessing the merging of the…

Each year over the past quarter century, undergraduate tuition and fees in the United States have increased by an average of 2.5 to 3.5 percentage points above the inflation rate. This continuous rise recently led one congressman to propose that the government penalize institutions that raise their tuition by more than twice the rate of inflation…

The drop in the stock markets around the world focuses attention on the role of equities in retirement plans. Steps that faculty members--and specifically those in TIAA-CREF--should consider are presented. (MLW)

Merit pay replicates Reaganomics by breeding competition between entrepreneurs who design their own teaching and research in direct response to the merit pay system. It also breeds cynicism and discourages faculty service to the institution. (MSE)

In "The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture," sociologist Manuel Castells argues that information and communication technologies are associated with a new kind of economy, society, and culture that he calls "informationalism." In this new economic order, knowledge generation, information processing, and symbolic communication--"the…

Political forces in Brazil have caused significant economic changes, including hyperinflation, and policy that threaten higher education in a variety of ways, including failure to expand during a period of economic strength, severe loss of academic autonomy, lowering of academic and administrative standards, and declines in teacher education and…

The Teachers Insurance and Annuities Association (TIAA) is criticized for inadequate financial disclosure of its mortgage and real estate investments, especially in the current market. A TIAA vice president responds that the company has not been remiss in reporting changes to its constituents and outlines its present financial status. (MSE)

Prudent asset-allocation policies, diversity in selection of investment managers, and pursuit of stocks with records of strong performance and controlled volatility averted disastrous losses encountered by the general U.S. market in the October 1987 stock market plunge. College and university endowment spending policies are discussed. (MLW)

A strong economic recovery offers higher education only some relief. Educators must respond in new ways to economic problems. Higher education offers the best chance for finding regional and national solutions, but, ironically, it must reshape itself to do so. (MSE)

It's not hard to understand why college and university professors might worry about trends in faculty compensation. It may be more difficult, however, to see why those outside higher education should share this concern. But they should. In 2005-06, average faculty salaries increased by less than the inflation rate for the second consecutive year,…