By William Bradley. Generally speaking, it is safe to say that most college commencements are the same. The students file past their camera-wielding relatives offering smiles and small, inconspicuous waves. A speaker invokes Robert Frost or Dr. Seuss or Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society to encourage the graduates to live lives of purpose and distinction. Degrees are conferred. A representative from the alumni organization urges these new alums to donate money to their school. The alma mater is sung. The young adults file back out. Read more...

By Karen Gross. Inside Higher Ed's recent article on the growing chasm between wealthy institutions and “poorer” (in dollars) institutions begs us to answer this question: How should we deal with the reality that the 40 wealthiest institutions (the Elite 40) hold 66 percent of the higher education endowment wealth, receive 60 percent of private donations and have highest percentage of endowment growth in recent years among higher education institutions. Read more...

By Scott McLemee. You don’t often come across references to “the moral sciences” these days, unless you read a lot of biographies of well-educated Victorians, and maybe not even then. The term covers economics, psychology, anthropology and other fields in what are now usually called the social sciences. I’m not sure when the one gave way to the other. Read more...

By Manja Klemenčič and Paul Ashwin. This month was significant for European higher education, with the Bologna Process Ministerial Conference on May 14-15 in Yerevan, Armenia. This was the ninth conference since June 1999, when the European ministers responsible for higher education signed the Bologna Declaration, which paved the way for the most intense intergovernmental cooperation in higher education policy in the world. Read more...

By Christopher R. Marsicano. In a shocking result in the 2015 British elections, Prime Minister David Cameron won re-election and returned to Number 10 Downing Street with a slim yet outright majority in the House of Commons. An election that, due to the rise of traditionally minor nationalist parties just weeks earlier, was heralded as the end of the two-party system ended with a victory for one of the two major parties. Read more...

By Joya Misra and Jennifer Lundquist. Is there an academic midlife crisis? Although associate professors have successfully navigated challenging straits to find a permanent faculty position, the irony is that many are even more dissatisfied than they were pretenure. It is true that job satisfaction is lower at midcareer outside of academe as well; however, the midcareer gully is particularly deep for faculty. Read more...

By Nate Kreuter. Academe is one of the most institutionally conservative communities that I’ve ever encountered. I have observed to many of my academic friends that when I left a job in the federal government to pursue an academic career, I left the second slowest, second most resistant to change institution in the nation for the absolute slowest, most resistant to change institution in the country. While that quip is mostly tongue-in-cheek, it holds true to a certain extent, at least in my own experience. Read more...

By Chris Havergal for Times Higher Education. Opening branch campuses is now the lowest internationalization priority for European universities, according to a major study, prompting suggestions that a market dominated by British institutions is now past its peak. Read more...

By Kellie Woodhouse. As Illinois, Louisiana and Wisconsin threatened nine-figure reductions in higher education funding, public colleges and universities in those states made their own threats in return. System leaders warned -- often and loudly -- that layoffs, program cuts and the general welfare of the states' college students were on the line if legislators went forward with the proposed cuts. Read more...

By Paul Fain. Professors have good reason to be wary of adaptive learning software, which automates parts of the teaching process. Adaptive courses could mean a different role for faculty members, some fear, or no role at all. Read more...