By John Kroger. Institutional culture is very powerful, of course, and it can prevent actors – boards, administrators, or faculty members – from successfully pushing forward their initiatives.  One sees this all the time in higher education. More...

By John Kroger. Every week or two, we hear about a liberal arts college closing its doors or cutting faculty and programs. Everyone agrees that for the remaining schools, competitive pressure is only going to increase, with declining enrollments and increased discount rates ahead. Many scholars have predicted that between 10 percent and 50 percent of these small colleges will be forced to close over the next two decades. More...

By John Kroger. If you go to the website of the University Press of New England, you will see this bleak notice:

UPNE and UPNE Book Partners
are ceasing operations at the end of 2018

Is the closing of UPNE a harbinger of the future or an isolated event? I’m not sure. What I do know is that university presses play an incredibly vital role in our intellectual and political lives, and they need to be sustained. More...

By John Kroger. A call for larger grants -- and ending eligibility for some institutions. More...

By John Kroger. Last year, a revolution took place in higher education and virtually no one noticed.  Since the Tariff Act of 1894, colleges and universities have been tax-exempt institutions. Now, with the passage of a new tax on the endowments of private institutions, higher education has moved from the tax-exempt to the taxable column. More...

By John Kroger. Yesterday, exit polls indicated that 59 percent of voters with college educations voted for Democrats, while only 39 percent voted for Republicans. Once upon a time, higher education received bipartisan support. More...

By Barbara Fister. It’s kind of amazing to think about how much change we’ve seen in our daily lives in our lifetimes. I sent my first email sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, a reply to a professor who had to call me on the phone to tell me I had mail. More...

By Barbara Fister. Maybe some chickens are coming home to roost. Tech stocks have become less irrationally exuberant. People seem annoyed about Amazon’s stunt extort bribes from cities in return for making housing more unaffordable and transit more crowded, just to attract some high-paying jobs to cities that already have a big wealth gap. More...

By Barbara Fister. . . after another incredibly stressful election. More...