Retention and graduation rates for engineering disciplines are significantly lower than desired, and research literature offers many possible causes. Engineering learning communities provide the opportunity to study relationships among specific causes and to develop and evaluate activities designed to lessen their impact. This paper details an…

A common type of variable-rate financing has suddenly increased the risk of bankruptcy for an unknown number of colleges, said two experts at credit-rating agencies. The threat affects mostly less-wealthy colleges that have used variable-rate bonds either to get a better price when borrowing or because they lacked bond ratings and had little other…

Policymakers are beginning to take note of the fiscal problems in teacher retirement systems. States have recently taken action by raising retirement ages, lowering benefit payments, and reducing cost-of-living adjustments. These are small steps toward shoring up the system to help ensure that it remains sustainable in the future. But the problems…

State and local governments work in partnership with the federal government to implement numerous intergovernmental programs. Fiscal pressures for state and local governments may exist when spending is expected to outpace revenues for the long term. GAO (Government Accountability Office) was asked to examine (1) the long-term fiscal pressures…

Faced with large and continued cuts in state funding, U.S. public postsecondary institutions are looking for new ways to both communicate their needs and garner support. They are calling on longtime supporters, enlisting new allies, developing strategic alliances, and crafting new messages and campaigns--all to underscore the importance of higher…

In this article, the authors argue that there "is" a real fiscal problem in higher education, but it is not the huge endowment losses--20 to 30 percent--that are attracting so much publicity. Those losses play only a small role in higher education's current financial dilemma, and then only at a comparatively few colleges and universities--but they…

How can philosophical instruction inform practical analysis and decision making among college students in a way that demonstrably benefits them as individual members of our polity and economy? I pose this question because each year, I introduce classic political theory to first- and second-year college students who simultaneously confront a fiscal…

A dyadic model of economic strain was applied to the study of anxiety and depression as mediating mechanisms in the economic strain-psychological aggression relation. Data came from self-report questionnaires completed by 143 Argentinean clinical couples. Structural equation modeling analysis indicated that anxiety and depression increased for…

This paper summarizes the experience and findings from the monitoring work carried out by UNESCO throughout 2009 to examine and assess the possible effects of the global financial and economic crisis on education provision in its Member States. The findings showed that although it was too early to ascertain the full extent of the impact of the…

Facing substantial financial pressure, many districts close schools in order to preserve solvency and improve student outcomes. Using a new longitudinal data set on all non-Cook County Illinois schools, we examine the determinants of high school closure decisions from 1986 through 2006. Our dataset combines information from a wide variety of…

The purpose of this study was to develop a model that may be used to estimate the financial costs of teacher turnover in urban school districts. It is estimated that 50% of the beginning teachers leave the profession within the first five years on the job (Murname, Singer, Wilett, Kemple, and Olsen 1991; Colbert and Wolff 1992; Ingersoll 2003;…

This interview took place in several meetings over a period of two weeks in late spring, 2008. Carl Ehmann had spent the past five months working with multiple California community college districts to resolve numerous, and multilevel, shortages in senior leadership positions. Robert A. Frost and Ehmann had come into contact through Frost's…

2008 has been a tumultuous year in the financial world, culminating in scandals and bailouts. In 2009, the author asserts, people can probably expect not only more financial upheaval, but also further attempts by state and local governments to stem the all-but-fated turmoil. But in all the talk of bailouts, of embattled homeowners, and the…

As the economy sinks, dwindling state appropriations and plunging endowment values are forcing colleges to make significant budget cuts. Professors--from the tenured to the adjunct--are beginning to see teaching-load increases and travel restrictions, along with salary cuts and layoffs. At institutions taking austerity measures, those measures are…

The Advisory Committee's 2010 report, "The Rising Price of Inequality," found that need-based grant aid from all sources was inadequate by examining the enrollment and completion rates of low-income high school graduates who seek to earn a bachelor's degree and are qualified to gain admission to a 4-year college. The major finding was…