By David Smith. Try again, try harder and try often.
There is a thick black binder crammed at the back of my office filing cabinet. The label down the spine reads: Thanks for coming out. Whenever I’m feeling lazy or listless about my research, I dig up that old binder, open it to a random page, and read one of the dozens of wonderful rejection letters that I’ve received over the years. They are all there, from the reviewers’ reports on the manuscript I submitted to Current Biology last month to the result of my first scholarship application, to that interview I never received for that lovely liberal arts college. More...

By John Warner. “Good colleges have always been fundamentally human institutions.”
“The fundamental problem of higher education is no longer the availability of content, but rather the availability of motivation.”
Harvard University Press was kind enough to send me a copy of their recently released book, How College Works by Daniel F. Chambliss and Christopher G. Takacs, and I’ve spent a couple of days underlining things like the above. Read more...

By Thomas Bailey. Last month the White House hosted a higher education summit to draw attention to the problem of college attainment among low-income students. The summit focused in particular on “undermatching,” in which high-achieving, low-income students fail to apply to highly selective colleges, and instead attend less competitive institutions. Read more...

By W. Kent Barnds. Recently The Atlantic predicted that one of the top five trends impacting higher education will be a push toward credit given for experience, proficiency and documented  “competency.” The recent results of Inside Higher Ed’s survey of chief academic officers also show openness to competency-based outcomes. Read more...

By Allie Grasgreen. Students are getting a better and more demanding education than scathing accounts like Academically Adrift suggest, but they and their instructors have plenty more work to do, a new study says. Read more...