Jan. 5, 2018

The Review

Tips on Making the Most of Your College’s Location

Enrollment-management professionals suggest how a college in a less than ideal place can strengthen its appeal to prospective students.

Antoine Garibaldi, president of the U. of Detroit Mercy since 2011, often makes high-school visits himself, finding alumni among the administrators and putting his university on their radar.

Idea Lab

How to Market a College in a Troubled Locale

By Lee Gardner

Detroit’s reputation lags behind its rebirth, but the University of Detroit Mercy and Wayne State University do appeal to Generation Z.

The Chronicle Interview

Career Advice From a Groundbreaking President

By Adam Harris

When is it time to make a move? For what reasons, and with what conditions? Ruth J. Simmons shares her insights.

News

How a College in a Sleepy Town Energized Itself

By Lee Gardner

Culver-Stockton changed the middle of nowhere to its own distinctive somewhere.

Peter Provenzano Jr. will become president at Oakland Community College, in Michigan.

News

Appointments, Resignations, Deaths (1/5/2018)

Compiled by Brianna A. Tucker

Peter Provenzano Jr. became president at Oakland Community College in Michigan, and Deborah Bordelon was named provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Columbus State University.

Chronicle List

U.S. Institutions With the Most Foreign Students, 2016-17

By Chronicle Staff

The four doctoral institutions with the highest numbers of international students in 2016-17 were all private nonprofit institutions.

Special Reports

A Dying Town

By Sarah Brown and Karin Fischer

Here in a corner of Missouri and across America, the lack of a college education has become a public-health crisis.

The four top-earning private-college leaders in 2015 were ( left to right) Nathan Hatch, Wake Forest U.; James Wagner, Emory U.; C.L. Max Nikias, U. of Southern California; and Amy Gutmann, U. of Pennsylvania. Their pay would subject each of their institutions to a new tax under legislation about to be enacted.

Government

New Tax Law Takes Aim at Higher Education’s Millionaires Club

By Adam Harris and Dan Bauman

In 2015, private nonprofit colleges minted 158 millionaires. Their institutions would have to pay a 21-percent tax.

Berea College appeared to lose an exemption in having its endowment taxed during last-minute wrangling over tax legislation that is poised to become law.

Finance

A Small College With a Big Endowment Gets Snared in Tax Bill

By Adam Harris

Kentucky’s Berea College, which charges no tuition and serves primarily low-income students, will probably have to pay a 1.4-percent tax on its endowment earnings after a revote on tax legislation.

Eric Miller, an assistant professor of communications at Bloomsburg U. of Pennsylvania, has found that "the classroom conversations are way better" in his prison classes than on campus. "These guys always want to talk."

Behind Bars

Can a College Education Solve the Nation’s Prison Crisis?

By Kelly Field

Professors hope a federal experiment will prove that offering Pell Grants to prisoners is a good investment. It’s just as likely, though, that the program will be shut down by its political opponents.

News

Use of Free Textbooks Is Rising, but Barriers Remain

By Beth McMurtrie

A survey finds that the share of professors who have adopted open-licensed textbooks has risen to 9 percent from 5 percent in just two years.

A scene from Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the newest installment in the Star Wars saga.

Research

What Motivated a Musicologist to Study the Motifs of Star Wars

By Andy Thomason

A Tufts University professor created a catalog of the recurring themes in the space saga’s universe.

The small college for women came close to shutting down in 2015.

Teaching

Sweet Briar Chooses a Core Curriculum

By Dan Berrett

The small college’s decision makes it both an outlier and a model of recent trends in general education.

Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan U.: “I don’t think we as higher-education leaders have distinguished ourselves by a courageous taking of stands in the last couple of years.”

Immigration

With an Employee Facing Deportation, Wesleyan’s President Speaks Out

By Vimal Patel and Brock Read

Among campus leaders, Michael S. Roth might be President Trump’s fiercest critic. He explains why he thinks campus leaders should jump into the political fray.

The U. of California at San Francisco received $500 million from the Helen Diller Foundation, the largest in the state system's history.

Fund Raising

Public Universities Are Getting Better at Bagging Big Gifts

By Lee Gardner

The institutions see dwindling state support, but donors appear to like their missions.

Nathan Grawe, an economist at Carleton College: “As everyone in admissions knows, it’s not just the size of your pool that matters, but who’s in the pool. When demographics move the population around, that may or may not be relevant for a given institution.”

News

Demographic Changes as Destiny in College Admissions? It’s Complicated

By Eric Hoover

Projected shifts in the applicant pool prompt doom-and-gloom predictions at many institutions. But Nathan Grawe, an economist at Carleton College, says the forecast varies from campus to campus.

Demonstrators rally on Thursday outside the Federal Communications Commission building in Washington to protest the decision to end net-neutrality rules. Higher-education associations joined in the criticism of the commission's 3-to-2 party-line vote.

Technology

Repeal of Net-Neutrality Rules Disappoints Higher-Ed Associations

By Julia Martinez and Sam Hoisington

The Federal Communications Commission’s decision to allow internet-service providers to favor some types of online traffic over others could hurt research and instruction, college groups say.

James O’Keefe, whose conservative Project Veritas specializes in hidden-camera exposés of purported liberal bias, spoke last month with little fanfare at a hotel near Middlebury College. The mystery of who arranged his speech tantalized the campus.

Campus Speech

A Campus-Politics Whodunit: Who Invited James O’Keefe to Speak at Middlebury?

By Chris Quintana

When emails announcing a visit by the Project Veritas founder bombarded campus in-boxes, few had heard of the student group behind it all.

Renovation of the student-union building at the U. of California at Berkeley was completed in 2015 as part of a $223-million project.

No One Likes to Talk About Them, but Deferred-Maintenance Costs Won’t Go Away

By Lee Gardner

California’s public-college systems need at least $47.2 billion to cover construction, renovation, and retrofitting over the next five years, a report says.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina and chair of the education committee: “No American — no matter their walk of life — can afford for us to simply reauthorize the Higher Education Act. They need us to reform it.” The drafting session on the major legislation began on Tuesday and was likely to continue into Wednesday morning.

News

House Republicans Press for Higher-Ed Overhaul in 2018

By Adam Harris and Eric Kelderman

In a session of the House education committee that stretched nearly into Wednesday morning, members debated a plan that could mean sweeping change for academe.

Sexual Harassment

‘A Complete Culture of Sexualization’: 1,600 Stories of Harassment in Higher Ed

By Nell Gluckman

When Karen Kelsky, an academic career adviser, created an online survey so scholars could describe their experiences with sexual misconduct, the responses poured in.

The U. of Rochester's handling of a sexual-harassment case against a professor has led to protests on campus and, now, a lawsuit.

Sexual Misconduct

How Sexual-Harassment Charges at U. of Rochester Spiraled Out of Control

By Katherine Mangan

Researchers have accused a professor of crossing professional boundaries and pressuring students for sex. Now, in a federal lawsuit, they say the university tried to smear them as gossips and liars.

Faculty

Professor at UC-Santa Cruz Disputes Sexual-Assault Accusations

By Katherine Mangan

Campus officials say they are “deeply concerned” about anonymous allegations of sexual assault and harassment by Gopal Balakrishnan.

Commentary

Should Academic Honors Have Clawbacks?

By Ted Gup

As colleges rescind awards to fallen eminences, how can they separate laudable accomplishments from flawed individuals? Should they?

Advice

The Fallacy of Open-Access Publication

By Andrew V. Suarez and Terry McGlynn

It’s clearly not open to all if scholars are required to pay to publish their results.