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By Frederick Singer. When Rowland Hussey Macy opened his namesake store in 1858, understanding consumer behavior was largely a matter of guessing. Retailers had little data to assess what customers wanted or how variables like store hours, assortment or pricing might impact sales. Read more...

By Scott McLemee. “If you spend much time in libraries,” the late Northrop Frye wrote at the start of an essay from 1959, “you will probably have seen long rows of dark green books with gold lettering, published by Macmillan and bearing the name of Frazer.” These were the collected works of the Victorian classicist and anthropologist Sir James Frazer, author of The Golden Bough (15 volumes) and a great deal else besides. Read more...

By James Jacobs. A new book, Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success (Harvard University Press) is an important step forward for community colleges. The work bridges the all-too-familiar divide between research and practice, outlining actionable, transformative recommendations to improve student attainment that have emerged out of the extensive portfolio of research conducted over the past 20 years by the Community College Research Center at Teachers College of Columbia University. Read more...

By Nannerl O. Keohane. The fate of the middle class in the United States is a topic frequently discussed by our political leaders, including President Obama. Given the growing wealth inequality, there is good reason for this emphasis. However, this should not distract us from also paying attention to the fate of people who are living in extreme poverty. Most of these individuals live in far-off countries. Others are our fellow citizens. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. For decades now, humanities scholars and advocates have been talking about the “crisis” in their disciplines. If the symptoms are arguably lower enrollments, funding cuts and slashed tenure-track lines, then diagnosing the root ailment has become a kind of Rorschach test for observers, with proponents of a great books-style approach often attributing the so-called decline of the humanities to the rise of critical theory. Supporters of theory, meanwhile, say critical approaches have revitalized the liberal arts for identity-hungry students, and that the humanities are battling a larger cultural devaluation of the field. Read more...

By Paige Taylor and Stefanie Balogh for The Australian. An Australian university's decision to forgo a federally financed research center because of its links to a controversial Danish researcher has prompted a firestorm of criticism and accusations that Australian academe supports “soft censorship” over academic freedom. Read more...

By Paul Fain. California is raking in a surprising amount of tax revenue. And on Thursday Jerry Brown, the state’s governor, said he wants to send some of that surplus to California’s public colleges. Read more...

By Ashley A. Smith. College enrollment numbers tend to be cyclical. A poor economy forces many adult learners into the classroom to retrain or hone their skills, but when it improves, enrollments decrease as they return to the workforce. Read more...

By Doug Lederman. Two community colleges roughly 75 miles apart in northwest Ohio are creating a new regional government agency smack-dab between them so they can consolidate many administrative functions and -- potentially -- academic and other programs, too. Read more...

By Kellie Woodhouse. Mills College has struggled with enrollment declines, persistent budget deficits and faculty unrest. Despite a nine-figure endowment and year-after-year budget reductions, the Oakland, Calif., women's college is just one step away from a junk bond rating by Moody’s. Read more...