Thoreau's "Walden" is a text that has been misinterpreted in various ways, one consequence of which is a failure to appreciate its significance as a perfectionist and visionary text for education. This paper explores aspects of what might be called its teaching, especially via the kind of teaching that is offered by Stanley Cavell's commentary,…

"Library Quarterly's" seventy-fifth anniversary invites an analysis of the journal's bibliometric dimension, including contributor attributes, various author rankings, and citation impact. Eugene Garfield's HistCite software, linked to Thomson Scientific's Web of Science, as made available by Garfield, for the period 1956-2004, was used as the…

Sociologists of knowledge find that academic stratification is present among individual scholars, genders, networks, fields, and all kinds of scientific organizations, while communications scholars have been studying global cultural asymmetry for a long time. Yet few researchers have explored the global dimension of academic stratification. In…

Research on the first day of class by Knefelkamp (Rubin, 1985) showed there was a real desire on the part of both students and teachers for connectedness, but neither group realized the other shared that desire. This paper presents a way to address, before the first day of class, the desire of students to learn about a class and instructor, and…

This paper considers the discursive production of violence in the context of educational markets. Drawing on a larger study of sexually violent incidents that occurred in an elite private boys' school in Sydney, Australia, in 2000, the paper examines disciplinary traditions and communicative practices surrounding these events. Insights from Michel…

When North Carolina native Evan Raleigh was in search of the perfect college, he had three things in mind: (1) the strength of the school's academic reputation; (2) the size of the school; and (3) the school's location and proximity to home. He found all three in the form of Wake Forest University. But Raleigh, who received a full academic…

Information to promote assessment of organizational effectiveness in colleges and universities is presented, along with an exercise to rank the effectiveness of 10 institutions. The exercise uses three types of criteria to indicate effectiveness: subjective ratings, data about students and activities, and institutional capacity and financial…

The University of Miami has established 19 new rules aimed at orienting student-athletes to the campus, preparing them for the pressures of college athletics, and ending incidents of embarrassing athlete behavior. (MSE)

The productivity of 40 major research universities in combining faculty and governmental grants to obtain reputational rankings in the 1980s is examined empirically. These productivities are measured relative to the most efficient members of the group and for their proximities to minimal costs. (Author/MLW)

Seven public relations consultants weigh the pros and cons of seeking national media coverage. Some advantages include reaching a broad audience and coverage that boosts morale and commands respect. What is done with national coverage is more important than the amount. (MLW)

Different types of donors may respond better to different types of approaches. Models built for four major donor groups (alumni, nonalumni individuals, business organizations) are described. (MLW)

Opinions about quality are seen as the only relevant measures of quality that can be collected. A different view of quality in higher education, and a different set of university rankings are proposed. A system that draws pairwise comparisons of university performance across nine disciplines is described. (MLW)

Five ideas to turn a college president's inauguration into a positive fund-raising and public relations event are presented: appoint the vice-president of development as committee chairman; choose an appropriate theme; thank those financially responsible for the institution's existence; recognize the need for more time and money; and make the…

Reviews trends in higher education that led to today's stringent requirements for faculty advancement. Identifies national reputation as one alternative to publication and offers several strategies for achieving such a reputation. (PD)

Demonstrated that subjects receiving positive feedback from a highly expert source exhibited greater levels of intrinsic motivation than did receivers in any other condition. Discusses implications for organizational communication research and training. (PD)