End Note

I have always viewed communication as essential to the position of a university president. In my short time as president of Loyola University New Orleans, I have been guided by a basic, underlying commitment to be as open and transparent as possible in my decision-making. Communication is crucial to fulfilling that promise.

The U.S. House higher education subcommittee wants to create a federal college affordability index. The proposal has little to do with ranking colleges in a public image-building contest. It has everything to do with de facto price controls.

Congress would insert itself into the middle of each college's pricing decisions, stripping boards at private and public institutions of their independence and responsibilities to students. At thousands of colleges, Congress and the U.S. Department of Education would walk into a trustees' meeting and take permanent seats at the table.

Pervasive student plagiarism used to be the dirty little secret in higher education, but plagiarism by professors is the dirtier secret now being told. They condemn student plagiarism but are now being found guilty of the same crime.

Campus politics and hierarchies, economics, and fear of litigation all conspire against confronting the problem. Some professors industriously steal others' phrases, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and research to trade for credibility, reputation, tenure, and textbook royalties.

Reading, Pa., northwest of Philadelphia, is a city in transition. With 80,000 residents, the historically Pennsylvania-German city has become an urban melting pot with a Latino population of nearly 39 percent. North 13th Street cuts across very different socio-economic neighborhoods, going in a matter of blocks from a working class, predominantly Latino area of modest row-homes, to the solidly middle and upper-middle class single-family homes surrounding a college campus.

This past school year, the deaths of at least seven U.S. college students have been tied directly to the excessive consumption of alcohol.

You thought your child was doing well in school. A report card comes home saying that he just received an F. At school you learn that of the 50 students in the class, 36 received Fs and 11 received Ds. Only 3 students received C- or better. Your first thought is that there's a problem with the grading.

You're right.

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