In most countries higher education institutions used to receive large portions of their funding by direct state allocation. For the past couple of decades this trust-based funding regime has been replaced by performance-based regimes. The article rests on the empirical observation that new funding regimes are increasingly becoming a policy…

One source of tension within and between modern nation states derives from conflict between individual and cultural rights. Modern democracies have been built on ideas of individual liberty whose extensions to the rights of culturally distinctive groups to survival and acceptance can create normative and political conflict. Such tensions raise…

The last 5 years have seen a growing number of universities use social media services such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to engage with past, present and prospective students. More recently still, a number of universities have published policy or guidance documents on the use of social media for a range of university-related purposes including…

Maine is blessed with universities that have records of significant achievement. The seven campuses of the University of Maine System (UMS) together educated over 23,000 students (full-time equivalent) during the past year. But for good reason, in recent years public confidence in higher education throughout the nation has fallen. Half of the…

This report examines Idaho's undergraduate-degree-granting colleges and universities. The authors focus on what students are learning (the curriculum), whether the marketplace of ideas is vibrant (intellectual diversity), how the universities are run (governance), and what a college education costs (affordability). In each case, the authors…

School is sometimes framed as a place for preparing, a place for becoming college and career ready. At times this approach positions school as an important space "within" the world of college and careers, envisioned perhaps as Dewey imagined it, as a safe place to try things, a space where real work of participation in society could be done but in…

Argues that parents and special interest groups should not be allowed to ban books from school libraries. States that an uncensored school library contributes to freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom to understand other cultures, and freedom to examine controversial issues. Notes that these freedoms contribute to helping children become…

Academic freedom may be defined as the right to do that which a faculty member finds appropriate to scholarly inquiry and instruction, so long as it is not legally proscribed, does not constitute an explicit violation of institutional policy or a prior agreement to perform designated responsibilities and observe specified standards of conduct, and…

To examine what freedom is and how it, in its many manifestations, may best be used to thrust journalism into more productive, progressive, and moral directions, this paper surveys the concepts of freedom and press freedom in Western thought from the eighteenth century to the present. After surveying the evolution of the concept of freedom,…

The first of two parts of this document presents a statement from the American Society of Journalists and Authors which briefly traces the history of censorship from the fourth century B.C. to the present. The second part is a list of resources on censorship and censorship-related materials that are available from the following First Amendment…

Discusses the federal court cases of "Bethel School District v. Fraser" and "Kuhlmeier v. Hazelwood School District," which resulted in one win and one loss for freedom of student expression. (SRT)

A speaker invited to give a university lecture is not merely exercising his or her rights of free speech but comes under the protections of academic freedom, the freedom to teach and to learn and not just to speak. The problem of student heckling of invited speakers is discussed. (MLW)

Attitudes toward censorship of 1,347 undergraduate education students were examined. Survey results indicated that the subjects had a propensity toward permitting free flow of information while objecting to censorship. A significant majority in one or more subgroups favored restricting free flow in certain situations. (SM)

This paper examines relations between media education discourses and teachers' reflections on their work with students around media. Based on a reading of curriculum documents and scholarly debates about media literacy, as well as conversations with teachers in Toronto, I ask how--and whether--formal discourses, common sense and local practices…

The number of lawsuits pertaining to educationally related issues is on the rise in the US (Mounts, 1999). Garner (2000) reports that teachers consider legal issues the third most important area of teacher preparation. However, few universities offer undergraduate courses in educational law and few programs offer comprehensive training concerning…