Academic

December 16, 2020 - A conflicting mindset between higher education and the general public is whether broadly educating students in the tradition of a liberal education is compatible with training students with more specific, job-ready skills, specifically when it comes …

November 21, 2019 - Too often, people see commitments to affordability, quality, and equity in postsecondary education as competing rather than reinforcing. The nation’s future and the future of our institutions—and public confidence in them—require higher education leaders to advance these commitments together. The urgent …

Ensuring a high-quality academic experience for all students depends on a board that understands its responsibilities with respect to the stewardship of an institution’s academic mission. Boards of trustees are tasked with multiple, demanding areas of oversight: enrollment, athletics, risk management, …

July 18, 2019 - Innovation in higher education is positively influencing student learning outcomes. More institutions are providing students with academic, financial, logistical, and social support to ease their transition to and through college. This guidance has been especially useful when there are hurtles that …

The educational quality movement has gained a lot of momentum over the past 10 to 15 years. Trusteeship spoke with Terry Rhodes, vice president, office of quality, curriculum, and assessment and executive director of the Valid Assessment of Learning in …

Over the last generation or so, the process or revising general education— the path of courses every student must take regardless of major—has proven dispiriting and divisive on many campuses. Departments, feeling trapped in a zero-sum game for students and …

Too often, boards spend too little time discussing student learning, student outcomes, and student success. As stewards of the whole of the institution, the oversight of educational quality is a primary obligation of governing boards. AGB—with support from the Teagle Foundation, …

The latest installment of the Effective Committee Series covers the duties and responsibilities of the academic affairs committee. It is through the academic affairs committee that the board ensures the institution’s or system’s principal purposes—teaching and learning—are met. A must-read for …

A false choice is emerging both on campus and off between a “liberal education” (or the study of the “liberal arts”) on the one hand and “professional training” on the other. Increasingly, the view that an unbridgeable chasm exists between …

Changes in higher education require input and support from leaders across the campus—especially the board, the president, and the faculty. In American colleges and universities, this collaboration is known as shared governance. In order to engage effectively in shared governance …