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The recent buzz about cheating at Harvard—and the media storm that followed—may seem like bad PR, but it can actually serve as an example of just how to act when a crisis strikes.

Physical bookstores are in decline, and the signs of this are everywhere. Border’s demise was the most prominent recent example but countless small independent bookstores around the country are experiencing the same fate.

Universities have long known that to increase enrollment they must cater to students’ needs. Following this strategy, some U.S. universities are accommodating Muslim students’ religious requests, but not without controversies. Among the accusations are that the accommodations show favoritism towards a particular religion, disregarding the separation of church and state at public universities.

As colleges and universities increasingly face an environment that uses graduation rates as the primary unit of measure, it’s easy to quickly gravitate towards statistics as the final measure of success. Campuses often measure how many students complete the transition from first semester to second, first year to second year, etc. These performance metrics can inform administrators about overall student success. In many cases, the numbers highlight problem areas that ultimately lead to incomplete degrees and downward trends. But the story does not end here.

Over the course of approximately 200 conversations and interviews for our book, The Sustainable University: Green Goals and New Challenges for Higher Education Leaders (Johns Hopkins, 2012), it became apparent that while many believe the period for orientations to sustainability has passed and the movement has transitioned from one of general citizen awareness to the need for tangible solutions, many

It’s no trade secret that there is a growing trend of colleges using developers to construct student housing. A number of universities, particularly public institutions, are finding it advantageous to work with large real estate developers.

However, based on my years of experience, the advantages of working with private developers go well beyond public universities and construction of student housing.

E pluribus unum. Out of many, one. In 1776, Pierre Eugene du Simitiere proposed this motto to the government committee tasked with developing a seal for the young nation. The phrase was adopted for the newly created national emblem of the United States and still appears today as a guiding principle on the nation’s seal. In 2012, the expression persists on official documents such as passports, and is ever present on the seals of the President and Vice President of the United States, the U.S. Congress, the House of Representatives, and the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Colleges and universities are rushing to use Pinterest, the fast-growing social media innovation, but many remain uncertain of where it fits in their promotional mix. A key factor appears to be how important they consider adult women to be in their marketing outreach.

Higher education is a dynamo for economic growth, powering the supply of high-level skills and the technological advances for improving productivity and opening up new markets. Where higher ed flourishes, so can an economy.

At The University of Vermont­, a small public research university, officials had realized that mobile would become very important to our stakeholders. It was 2007 and mobile adoption rates had begun to skyrocket. Smart phones had begun to proliferate nationally and at the institution, which has an average combined enrollment of 12,500 undergraduate, graduate, and medical students.