Drawing upon a case-study of the students and teaching staff of an Advanced Vocational Certificate of Education (AVCE) in Travel and Tourism, this paper examines the effects of the institutional habitus of a Further and Higher Education (FHE) college upon the higher education choices of a group of ethnically-mixed, working-class young people. The…

Pressure from external stakeholders increasingly requires higher education institutions to provide concrete evidence of student learning. As such, assessment of student learning has become a significant part of the process of determining institutional quality. This article describes an example of one of university's response to the call for…

In this article, the author uses the occasion of the centennial of University Extension at Harvard to document how this unique educational institution came into being and why it became associated with Harvard University. He traces the prominent role played by the Lowell family in establishing the Lowell Institute of Boston in the late 1830s and…

Purpose: This study attempts to link four groups of contextual factors to vice principals' desire for principalship using regression analysis. Relevant items representing context are grouped under professional, school, demographic, and motivational factors. The findings aim to provide greater understanding of the desire, or lack thereof, of vice…

In 1911 Jean Baptiste Beck, a scholar of international reputation, was appointed to a three-year term on the faculty of the University of Illinois. His personal eccentricities conditioned his adjustment to the community. In 1912 he married the daughter of a University professor, and as a result Edmund J. James, president of the University of…

Given the centennial of the publication of the first two textbooks in social psychology, the one by William McDougall and the other by Edward Alsworth Ross, the author stresses that it is an auspicious time for reflection. It is a time to reconsider the movements into which these volumes were secreted, and the resulting trajectories of…

Higher education in the US has long prized mission diversity as illustrated in the range of its colleges and universities including community colleges, baccalaureate (or liberal arts) colleges, doctoral-granting universities, and special-focus institutions, as well as its public, private non-profit, and private for-profit forms of control. This…

The construction of transnational and national systems for comparing qualities of universities are presented and discussed. In focus are two important university ranking lists--those produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and by the "Times Higher Education Supplement". A Swedish example concerning the making of a resource…

Purpose: This article aims to review the latest developments of the higher education sector in China since the mid-1990s by focusing on the expansion of university education. Design/methodology/approach: It is argued that while massification of higher education is an important indication of the progress in China's higher education system, the…

A Chinese list of the world's top universities would seem an unlikely concern for French politicians. But this year, France's legislature took aim at the annual rankings produced by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which claims to list the 500 best universities in the world. The highest-ranked French entry, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, comes in…

We examined the effects of professor reputation versus first impressions on student evaluations of instruction. Students in 19 Psychology courses completed course evaluation surveys either before meeting the instructor or 2 weeks into the semester. Both groups then completed the course evaluation again at the end of the semester. Unlike…

Rankings have an increasing impact on higher education. Regardless of their true ability to judge a university's success or failure, rankings are used by students, their families, and, increasingly, policy makers to define the quality of institutions. Rankings have gone beyond comparisons among universities within individual countries: Today, they…

Young people often have their first brush with credit when they leave home to start work or enter college. It is important to teach students about credit early, before they turn 18 and become eligible to sign up for credit cards in their own name. Credit poses risks for the unwary, and many young people get burned. They may pay high annual…

Everyone on the tenure track should get tenure. However, not everybody can get tenure everywhere. In fact, one of the main reasons why some educators fail to get tenure is that they are fighting the wrong war on the wrong battlefield, at an institution where they do not quite fit. One can only get tenure if only he or she is realistic in his or…

Despite near universal acceptance in the value of higher education for individuals and society, college persistence rates in 4-year and community colleges are low. Only 57% of students who began college at a 4-year institution in 2001 had completed a bachelor's degree by 2007, and only 28% of community college students who started school in 2005…