IHE
Report The University of Georgia Institute of Higher Education Autumn 2008
IHE Doctoral Education Growing by degrees
Louise McBee’s far-reaching career
Investing in women, education, and Georgia citizens
Higher Education’s New Business Models How colleges and universities are changing the way they work
Oxford, England
The Institute partnered with the University of Bath’s International Centre for Higher Education Management for the annual IHE Oxford Higher Education Seminar. Admission to the seminar was competitive and the 13 participants selected represented students from the US, Canada, the UK, and throughout Europe. IHE was well represented, with three students admitted: Angela Bell, Patrick Crane, and Lisette Montoto. The group also includes IHE faculty members Jim Hearn and Scott Thomas, and Senior Fellow Kenneth Redd.
Publisher
The University of Georgia
Director, Institute of Higher Education Libby V. Morris
Publication Coordinator Susan Sheffield
Contributing Writers Elisabeth Hughes Rebecca McCarthy
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he Institute of Higher Education, founded in 1964, is noted for its multidisciplinary approach to teaching, research, and outreach, with particular emphases on policy and law, faculty and instruction development, and public service and outreach. The Institute offers the Ph.D. in higher education, and students may earn an M.P.A. with a higher education specialization through the School of Public and International Affairs. The Institute also collaborates on projects and programs with the Franklin College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Education, the School of Law, and the Center for Teaching and Learning at UGA.
Designer & Graphic Artist Nick Ciarochi
Contributing Photographers
Paul Efland, UGA Public Affairs Peter Frey, UGA Public Affairs Nancy Evelyn, UGA Public Affairs Robert Newcomb, UGA Public Affairs
www.uga.edu/ihe
FRONT COVER: Meigs Hall, the historic north campus building dedicated solely to housing the Institute of Higher Education.
IHE
In This Issue
Report
New and ongoing research
Autumn 2008
2008 IHE Fellows
The University of Georgia Institute of Higher Education
President of ACE to deliver 20th McBee Lecture
IHE doctoral education: growing by degrees
Louise McBee’s farreaching career invests in women, education, and Georgia citizens Rebecca McCarthy
Higher Education’s New Business Models:
2 4 5 7 8
From the Director
3 6
How colleges and universities are changing the way they work
Charles Knapp co-chairs group for education reform Karen Webber leads the Faculty Activity Repository project Instructional Technology Seminars
15 16 18
Two new Senior Fellows enhance Institute’s strengths IHE around the world Governor’s Teaching Fellows reunite for conference Students reap academic rewards from 2008 Oxford seminar
19 20
International students lend IHE a different perspective
James C. Hearn
Nine Ugandan students visit IHE for summer studies
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IHE research conferences
IHE faculty help network global higher education programs Education Policy Seminars 2007-08 Fall 2008 events Honor a mentor; support a student: a message from Libby Morris
22 24 Autumn 2008
From the Director Libby V. Morris
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he IHE Report is an annual publication of the University of Georgia’s Institute of Higher Education (IHE) dedicated to highlighting the accomplishments of faculty and staff in the preceding year and to communicating with our many colleagues and contributors across the state and around the globe. As this issue shows, our faculty is actively engaged in research, instruction, and service, the three missions of both the Institute and the University of Georgia. We are especially pleased that in 2007 the IHE doctoral program was once again listed in the top 10 programs nationally in higher education, ranking 7th according to U.S. News & World Report. Additionally, the Institute’s faculty ranked 2nd in faculty scholarly productivity in higher education according to Academic Analytics, LLC, (Nov. 2007). At the same time, extramural funding for faculty research increased substantially. In 2007, IHE faculty held more than $1.5 million in contracts and grants from NSF, NIH, Lumina, Mellon, and the Advanced Learning Technology Unit of the University System of Georgia. Importantly, these research funds support 13 Ph.D. students and provide opportunities for students to collaborate early in their careers on important research projects. A synopsis of faculty research interests and scholarship is included in this issue. In the last academic year, the Institute continued to strengthen its involvement in international higher education with workshops, presentations, and collaborations in Oxford, Croatia, Armenia, China, Puerto Rico, and Norway, among others. Scholars came to the Institute from the University of Delhi (India), Chonnam National University (Korea), University of Belgrade (Serbia), Makerere University (Uganda), and the Republic of Georgia. Our students now hail from five overseas countries and they are instrumental in building our international network. With our successes being briefly summarized, it is with regret that I must close this column with the announcement of the departure of two Institute faculty members, Maryann Feldman and Scott Thomas. Professor Feldman joins the Department of Public Policy, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (my alma mater) where she will continue her research in the areas of university technology transfer and the implications for economic development. She held the Miller Distinguished Professorship for two years and during that time engaged our students in cutting-edge funded research from the NIH and NSF. We are pleased that she has ongoing research collaborations with Professors Slaughter, Hearn and Morphew and that she will visit the Institute often. Our best wishes to Maryann. Scott Thomas will join the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Scott came to the Institute in 2001, and he was instrumental in building the doctoral
IHE Report
program’s focus on policy in higher education, in creating the annual IHE-Oxford University study abroad symposium program, and in establishing the IHE educational policy series, which brings leading scholars from across higher education to the IHE. During his tenure at UGA, Scott was PI or Co-PI on grants from the Lumina Foundation, NIH, and NSF. Scott’s move to California takes him home, and we wish him, his wife and children well. His daily presence will be missed, but we are delighted that he has ongoing research with Institute colleagues, and we look forward to his regular visits. In conclusion, I want to thank the many colleagues and supporters who gave financial gifts to the Institute in the past year. Beyond our basic instructional mission, our programs depend on the generosity of our friends. I know that the readers of this publication understand development and its role in building a great university. I hope you will continue to support the Institute and its growth and will consider a future gift to one of our funds. Importantly, mark your calendar now for 11:00 a.m., November 14, the 20th anniversary of the Louise McBee lecture to be delivered by Molly Broad, president of ACE. I look forward to seeing you on that day. Sincerely,
Libby V. Morris
IHE Doctoral Education: Growing by Degrees
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he doctoral program at the Institute has never been more robust. The Institute admitted 13 Ph.D. students to matriculate in fall 2008, including six from Georgia, drawing from a pool of applicants from across the country and around the world. Nine of these students will be on full assistantships, with four others coming to Athens to work Incoming fall ‘08 students meet with Christopher Morphew for orientation full-time and study part-time at the Institute. IHE students are also a significant presence at national Jennifer Olson, an entering student from Iowa who meetings, with six students attending the November 2007 just completed a masters degree in higher education from Association for the Study of Higher Education meeting in the University of Oslo, explained her choice to study at the Louisville, among the most of any program in the nation. Institute. “Being at one of the handful of top programs in Lisette Montoto, entering her fourth year and spending the higher education, including recognition in the U.S. News & coming year in Panama completing her dissertation fieldwork, World Report rankings, is a great opportunity, and I look was student representative to AERA Division J. forward to beginning my studies at such a dynamic time at the The Institute graduated nine students in 2007-08, Institute.” maintaining a completion rate “The appeal of the Georgia doctoral program to me was above 85 percent. “Higher its unusual focus on policy, strategy, and management,” said “Being at one of the education is a great field in which Barrett Taylor, a second-year student from Texas by way of handful of top programs to work — full of important issues a masters degree at the University of Alabama. “The faculty in higher education... to address, great colleagues, and members certainly come from a variety of disciplinary, is a great opportunity, wonderful students,” states Matt theoretical, and methodological perspectives in their writing and I look forward to Thompson, who was named vice and teaching, but there is also a significant degree of alignment beginning my studies at president and dean of student between them. The Institute has a particular point of view such a dynamic time at development at Florida Southern about higher education that I find to be both relevant and the Institute.” College upon earning his Ph.D. exciting.” —Jennifer Olson, student in summer 2008. “I relish the The Institute has 37 Ph.D. students studying full-time, time spent at IHE, including my including six from overseas. “We enjoy working with students assistantship at the Institute for Leadership Advancement — it from other countries,” noted Christopher Morphew, associate has prepared me well.” professor and graduate coordinator, “and having full-time, fully The Institute is exploring establishing a doctoral program funded students from China, Ecuador, South Korea, Uganda, in higher education management directed toward senior and Vietnam makes our classroom discussions richer.” administrators, offered in an executive format akin to an Twenty-four Institute students have assistantships, eMBA program. Participants would convene in both Athens either working with IHE faculty on research projects or at an and at the Terry College of Business facility in the Buckhead administrative office. Research projects include work funded section of Atlanta. by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes The program, which would enroll approximately 15 for Health, and various private foundations. IHE graduate students biennially, would also include two extended sessions assistants are employed across campus at the Graduate abroad, one in Europe and one in Asia. Subject to gaining School, Institutional Research, Service Learning, International various approvals, the Institute will admit students in early Public Service and Outreach, with the Chief Information 2009, with the program beginning in summer of that year. Officer, the Small Business Development Center, Admissions, “The Institute has long served students attending partand Financial Aid. Adam Wyatt, a second-year student time,” noted IHE director Libby Morris, “The new program from the University of Southern California, worked with will address the needs of the public universities in Georgia as Associate Provost Bob Boehmer in the Office of Institutional well as those nationally and even worldwide, enabling those in Enhancement: “I appreciated being part of the team working — or who are ready to move into — the most senior positions with Dr. Boehmer, being directly involved with our SACS across higher education to take an advanced curriculum on an reaccreditation process and other projects on which I can accelerated, intensive schedule.” apply what I am learning in my classes.”
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Autumn 2008
New and ongoing research plays a vital role in the collective momentum of the Institute
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he Institute of Higher Education secured nearly $2.2 million in funding for research and other projects for the coming academic year, providing funding for 13 Ph.D. students and attracting three major grants totaling $1.5 million. ■ Sheila Slaughter and Larry Leslie will extend their work on academic capitalism in a project funded by the National Science Foundation. The $400,000 grant will enable them to examine the relationships between resource deployment in U.S. universities and outcomes important to U.S. economic growth. In a $450,000 project funded by the National Institutes of Health, Slaughter and former IHE faculty members Maryann Feldman and Scott Thomas are in their final year of exploring universities’ trustees, intellectual property, and conflicts of interest. Slaughter is also concluding an NSF-funded project launched when she was on the University of Arizona faculty on how information technology affects academic work. She is working with Amy Metcalfe of the University of British Columbia on a three-year study, funded by the Canadian Social Science Research Council, on the intersections between academic capitalism and the experience of women. Slaughter and Metcalfe have signed a contract with the Johns Hopkins University Press for a book on women in the entrepreneurial academy. Slaughter continues to organize workshops for the National Science Foundation on social science and innovation, maintains an active speaking schedule both in the U.S. and abroad, and publishes widely on the impact of academic capitalism on institutions and society. In 2009, she will be an Erasmus Mundus Fellow at Hedda, University of Oslo, funded by the European Union. ■ Larry Leslie spoke to system personnel at the University of Puerto Rico on new developments in higher education finance, markets and higher education. He also presented the program to the Territorial Higher Education Commission. During spring semester he taught a course on dissertation development for advancing IHE students preparing for their final step in the Ph.D. program. ■ In another new project, Libby Morris has been awarded funding from the Watson Brown Foundation to establish the University of Georgia as a member of the National College Advising Corps, headquartered at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The initial four-year funding provides an opportunity to improve college going in Georgia while establishing a laboratory for Institute students to explore issues of college access and K-16 education. Morris will also continue her research with the Advanced Learning Technologies unit of the University System of Georgia Board of Regents. Since 2002, the partnership — led by Catherine Finnegan, IHE senior fellow — has supported
IHE Report
graduate assistantships and research into teaching and learning online. In late 2007, she and Dr. Finnegan completed a white paper for NACAC, Technology in the College Admission Process, and they are developing a chapter on administrative and program issues for a volume on virtual universities. Dr. Morris is also the editor of Innovative Higher Education, a Springer peer-reviewed international journal. ■ James Hearn has begun work on a project on state science and technology policies that leverage university resources to foster economic development. This new research, being done in collaboration with Maryann Feldman, is supported by a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Over the past year, Jim has focused his research in two areas: emerging organizational transformations in postsecondary institutions and the dynamics and impacts of state policy reform in higher education. Among his works on organizational change were a research presentation to the European Association for Institutional Research, a research report for the TIAA-CREF Institute, and a forthcoming monograph to be published by the American Council on Education, to be titled Higher Education’s New Economics: The Risks and Rewards of Emerging Operational Reforms. His recent analyses of state policy reform, produced with Michael McLendon of Vanderbilt University and others, have led to an article in the Journal of Higher Education, and an article to appear soon in Research in Higher Education. Hearn, along with Chris Morphew and Scott Thomas, organized the Institute’s May 28-30 Research Forum on theoretical developments relating to higher education organization. ■ Scott Thomas’ work has appeared in a number of areas over the past year. These include chapters in Lois Weis’ Education and Class coauthored with recent Institute graduate, Angela Bell; John Smart’s Higher Education: Handbook of Theory & Research coauthored with Richard Flacks; and a chapter with Laura Stapleton in Multilevel Modeling of Educational Data. Several coauthored journal publications coming out of his recently completed College Access Policies Project, funded by the Lumina Foundation can be found in Educational Policy, Journal of Higher Education, and Review of Higher Education. Thomas worked with Jim Hearn to deliver the 2007 IHE/OxCheps Higher Education Seminar (in partnership with the International Centre for Higher Education Management) at New College, Oxford. ■ Christopher Morphew completed a project funded by the Lumina Foundation on the Western Undergraduate Exchange program. He is working with Maryann Feldman and the University of Illinois’ Janet Bercovitz on a $145,000 Kauffman Foundation-funded project in 2008-09 to evaluate the NSF’s Partnership for Innovation program. His edited book (with Peter Eckel of ACE) titled Privatization in Public Research Universities will be published in spring 2009 by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Another
IHE Fellows, 2008 edited book, The International Handbook on Higher Education, (with Malcolm Tight of Lancaster University, Ka Ho Mok of the University of Hong Kong and Jeroen Huisman of the University of Bath) will be published by Taylor and Francis in 2009. Morphew published an article in Change questioning the appropriateness of fixed tuition pricing, and has two forthcoming articles in the Journal of Higher Education, one with Matthew Harley of the University of Pennsylvania on their views of books on research and the other on institutionaltype changes in the U.S. higher education system over the past 30 years. He also published an article in the Journal of Educational Finance (with Bruce Baker of the University of Kansas) on the utility of national datasets in estimating instructional costs for academic degree programs. Morphew was also elected to the board of directors of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE). ■ Doug Toma has a small grant from the Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice to further his research on institutional aspirations and strategies toward accomplishing them. The Johns Hopkins University Press is slated to publish his book on strategic management and systems approaches for higher education in fall 2009. The National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), supported the work on the project. In addition, Toma completed his seven years of service to ASHE as its legal counsel. Toma and Morphew also had a contract earlier this academic year with Makerere University to develop a training program for their doctoral students studying higher education management. ■ Mel Hill, the Robert G. Stephens Jr. senior fellow in law and government, coauthored a monograph with James Reap of UGA for the National Park Service titled Law and the Historic Preservation Commission: What Every Member Needs to Know. He coauthored a book chapter with LaVerne Williamson Hill on Georgia in The Constitutionalism of the American States, published by the University of Missouri Press, and is a section editor on the forthcoming Handbook of Engaged Scholarship with the Michigan State University Press. Hill edits the Journal of Higher Education, Outreach and Engagement. ■ The newest member of the Institute faculty, Karen Webber, led the UGA Faculty Activity Repository (FAR) project, supported by Provost Arnett Mace. She is currently editing a forthcoming monograph for New Directions for Institutional Research to be published by Jossey-Bass in December 2008. She continued to incorporate facets of institutional research into her daily IHE work and her discussions with students, including the study of such issues as faculty productivity, grade inflation, student engagement, and benefits of undergraduate research.
Fellows from a wide variety of disciplines and institutions enrich the multi-disciplinary intellectual community at the Institute. 2008 Fellows include: Senior Fellows Christopher Cornwell Professor of Economics
Jerry S. Davis Education Research and Policy Analysis Consultant Delmer Dunn Vice President for Instruction Emeritus and Regents Professor Emeritus Anne Proffitt Dupre J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law Catherine L. Finnegan Director of Assessment and Public Information Advanced Learning Technologies Board of Regents, University System of Georgia Susan H. Frost Consultant and Adjunct Professor Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University Karen E. Holt Director, Fanning Institute Edward J. Larson Hugh & Hazel Darling Professor of Law Pepperdine University Larry L. Leslie Distinguished Visiting Professor of Higher Education Senior Fellow-in-Residence David Morgan Former Assistant Vice Chancellor Academic Affairs/Deputy Board of Regents, University System of Georgia Kenneth E. Redd Director of Research and Policy Analysis Council of Graduate Schools Edwin G. Speir Professor and President Emeritus Georgia College & State University Joseph Stevenson Executive Director and Distinguished Professor Jake Ayers Institute for Urban Higher Education Jackson State University Geoffrey Thomas President Emeritus, Kellogg College University of Oxford
Fellows
Elizabeth DeBray Pelot Associate Professor Educational Administration and Policy Program Joseph C. Hermanowicz Associate Professor of Sociology Denise Gardner Director of Institutional Research Pamela B. Kleiber Associate Director, Honors Program David Mustard Associate Professor of Economics College of Business
Autumn 2008
Louise McBee (right) with McBee Professor Sheila Slaughter
Louise McBee’s far-reaching career invests in women, education, and Georgia citizens
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hen Okim Kang received the Louise McBee Scholarship, she decided to contact the woman for whom the award is named. “She was the first nonnative American to get the scholarship, and the first recipient ever to call me,” said McBee. “She was just first rate.” During the three and a half years Kang, who’s from South Korea, was working on her Ph.D. in language and literacy education, McBee got to know her well, and also her husband, Jin Hee Yi and their daughter, Dain Yi. And Kang, like many other women at UGA, found a mentor as well as a friend. “Sometimes after Louise would visit, I would feel this positive energy in the room,” Kang said. “She has a presence.” McBee was with her when she took her orals. She hooded Kang at graduation in May of this year. And she celebrated when she learned both Kang and her husband had found positions at Arizona State. This is typical of Louise McBee, now on her second retirement and still very involved in community affairs. Interested in other people, she takes time to invest in those who display potential, and she remains loyal, helping them better themselves. These traits, along with her competence and affirming personality, carried McBee safely through sometimes-turbulent waters during 25 years as a UGA administrator. “I would have to say that what I’m most proud of is that during my whole career at Georgia, I fought for women,” said McBee. “I fought for equity in salaries, for hiring more women faculty members, even for admitting more women students. It used to be that high school girls needed a higher GPA than boys did to get in. I didn’t think that was fair, but it didn’t change for years.”
IHE Report
She saw the beginning of integration, the end of in loco parentis, a vast expansion of the campus, and the doubling both in enrollment and the number of faculty members. McBee weathered protests and sit-ins, segued smoothly from student affairs to academic affairs, and kept the university on course during the fallout from the Jan Kemp trial in the 1980s. She spearheaded an effort to make students more successful at UGA and beyond with programs informing them about campus resources and about possible career choices. Along the way, she mentored numerous young women—those in school, and those starting their careers at UGA, from faculty members to technicians to secretaries. “There was a whole group of us who worked for Louise,” said Claire Swann, former director of undergraduate admissions. “She was organized, she was fair and she knew what she was doing.” Throughout her tenure, McBee functioned as an effective, forthright administrator, respected for her honesty, integrity and sense of fairness and loved for her caring and compassion. Former Athens Mayor Gwen O’Looney met McBee in the 1960s, when McBee was dean of women and O’Looney was a UGA co-ed. Young women were chafing under various restrictions and limitations, including curfews and a strict dress code. O’Looney was one of several students who lobbied McBee to make changes. “She calmed us down and guided us through the process of making recommendations,” O’Looney said. “She turned a group of angry people into an effective group of negotiators making as much progress as was possible at the time.” Years later, the two met again on a community-wide committee studying the unification of Athens and Clarke County. O’Looney went on to become mayor of the unified government, and McBee would serve, very effectively, 14 years as a state representative from Athens. “There was no one in the General Assembly who didn’t recognize her wisdom, competence and leadership,” O’Looney said. “She’s my mentor.” McBee has lived in Athens for 45 years, but she hasn’t lost her distinctive East Tennessee accent. After leaving her
native Strawberry Plains, she attended East Tennessee State, Columbia University and Ohio State, where she earned her Ph.D. She taught in high school and college—receiving a Fulbright to teach in Holland—and then moved into administration. She came to UGA in the early 1960s. “My role model was the dean of women at East Tennessee State,” McBee said. “That’s why I went into administration. I taught one course in psychology at Georgia, but you can’t teach and be an administrator effectively.” She served as dean of women at Georgia four years, until that position morphed into associate dean of student affairs. In the early 1970s, she was named dean of student affairs, a job that placed her in an elite group. She was one of four women in the U.S. holding top jobs in student personnel in schools with more than 10,000 students. In 1987, in the aftermath of the Jan Kemp trial, some high-level UGA administrators left their jobs. Interim President Henry King Stanford asked McBee to become interim vice president for academic affairs. She had been working in academic affairs for 12 years. She accepted. Appointing McBee “was a brilliant choice,” said retired UGA administrator Carol Winthrop. “She restored order and credibility.” A few months later, when Chuck Knapp became UGA president, he looked to McBee for help in understanding the campus. He prevailed on her to stay in her position for a year, he said, “and she was invaluable to me, with so much institutional knowledge and love for the university.” After retiring in 1988, McBee joined Stanford on an expedition to Mount Everest, making it to a base camp at 17,500 feet. Three years later, she attained another lofty goal, winning a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives, where she served 14 years. Her UGA years gave her the authority to help set state policy in higher education. She was also the pivotal figure in establishing the highly successful Governor’s Teaching Fellows Program, said Tom Dyer, former director of the Institute of Higher Education. About 300 faculty members, drawn from Georgia’s many colleges and universities, have completed this development program. “Louise is at once a visionary and a realist,” said Dyer. McBee’s contributions to the University of Georgia and to education in the state of Georgia have been immense. She has been a guiding star in the lives of so many that her influence is hard to calculate. But the comments of Carol Winthrop, who worked with McBee for years, seem typical: “Anything good in my career that happened to me, Louise McBee was part of it,” she said. “She’s the best citizen soldier I know. She has always done what needed to be done.”
By Rebecca McCarthy
President of ACE to deliver 20th McBee Lecture November 14, 11 a.m. in the UGA Chapel
olly Corbett Broad is the twelfth president of the American Council on Education (ACE) and the first woman to lead the organization since its founding in 1918. Broad served as president of the 16campus University of North Carolina from 1997 to 2006. She led UNC through a period of unprecedented enrollment growth—enrollment grew at more than double the rate of the overall student body during her tenure, and special state funding allowed for significant improvements at the system’s historically minority campuses. Broad has written and spoken widely on strategic planning for higher education, K-16 partnerships, information technology, globalization and biotechnology. She currently holds seats on the boards of RTI International, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Institute for Defense and Business, PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service) and Internet 2. The twentieth annual lecture will be held in the UGA Chapel at 11:00 a.m. on November 14.
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Autumn 2008
Charles Knapp named by Governor to co-chair group on education reform
FAR
Faculty Activity Repository
Karen Webber leads the Faculty Activity Repository (FAR) project Several key events, including the upcoming SACS review and an increase in the use of faculty workload data for academic planning, highlighted the need for a FAR system at the University of Georgia. IHE faculty member Karen Webber has served as the lead campus coordinator for the FAR Project since its inception. Current SACS guidelines require the university to demonstrate its ability to electronically present a variety of data related to faculty credentials and outcomes assessment. The FAR system will enable UGA officials to collect annual data on each faculty member’s teaching, research, publishing, and service activities. In addition, the system will store outcomes assessment plans and results that can then be used for program and departmental improvement. Karen chaired the FAR Working Group that explored best options for information collection and then worked with an advisory group (mainly associate deans) on needed FAR features. The associate deans in each school or college are acting as coordinators and overseeing implementation of the project. The FAR is an important step in UGA’s pursuit of better data management and data-driven decision making.
Benefits of FAR: It will serve as a centralized online repository for the collection of information on faculty activities and accomplishments as well as unit/school/college outcomes assessment It will create an integrated source for assessment of student learning outcomes and the production of assessment reports, and facilitate data-driven decision making for department heads, deans and senior administrators It will provide efficient, flexible and consistent reporting capabilities to satisfy internal and external needs and improve the accuracy of data stored in the university’s existing authoritative data sources It will give faculty a single place to go to review, revise, and add CV data and avoid the end-of-year evaluation scramble while providing campus administrators easy access to data needed for showcasing faculty accomplishments for award nominations, etc.
IHE Report
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overnor Sonny Perdue appointed Charles Knapp and Dean Alford as co-chairs of a working group to identify the policy changes that should be implemented in order to make Georgia’s educational system more innovative and competitive in a global economy. The working group will focus on several areas of education policy reform:
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Moving students to postsecondary-level work as soon as they demonstrate the necessary ability
Charles Knapp
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Enhancing the quality of preschool education opportunities
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Improving P-12 teacher quality
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Creating high performance school systems (in collaboration with the State Board of Education)
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Improving the academic performance of underachieving students
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Further enhancing and supporting a world-class P-12 curriculum
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Ensuring the efficient use of the financial resources Georgia devotes to education
Knapp serves as chairman of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, http://www. skillscommission.org/knapp.htm), part of the National Center on Education and the Economy, which produced the report Tough “I believe the experts Choices or Tough Times. The serving on this group working group will build on the fully understand commission report to determine the urgency of the how Georgia might reform its challenges we face in educational policies and practices to education in Georgia.” produce needed change. —Gov. Sonny Perdue Perdue commented, “I believe the experts serving on this group fully understand the urgency of the challenges we face in education in Georgia. I am confident that they will create a blueprint for change that will facilitate higher achievement.” Recommendations are expected in time for the 2009 session of the General Assembly.
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Excerpt from Press Release (7/10/08) Governor’s Office
Instructional Technology Seminars explore new modalities in education
Participants in the May conference traveled from as far away as England to discuss new ideas in higher education organization
IHE research conferences draw scholars from around the nation and abroad
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etty Collis, professor emeritus at the University of Twente and consultant with the Collis Learning Technology Consultants, addressed a large audience on March 19 on what higher education and corporate education can learn from each other. Dr. Collis is a specialist in the application of technology for strategy, learning and change in educational organizations and corporate training.
May 2008 The convening of “Organization of Higher Education: Emerging Theories and New Research” by Institute faculty Jim Hearn, Christopher Morphew and Scott Thomas brought together leading scholars to share research and to debate emerging theories of organization and higher education change worldwide. Invited presenters included: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
David Baker, Pennsylvania State University Jeannette Colyvas, Northwestern University Woody Powell, Stanford University Jeroen Huisman, University of Bath Evan Schofer, University of California, Irvine Mitchell Stevens, New York University IHE doctoral student Barrett Taylor, as co-presenter with Christopher Morphew
Discussions focused on institutional theory, system change, technology-based economic development, governmental research and science policies, and knowledge building in higher education and society. April 2008 Joe Hermanowicz, Institute fellow and associate professor of sociology, organized a State of the Art Conference. Researchers discussed shifts in the demographics of academia, the implications of technological change and professional jurisdiction, student and faculty expectations, and structural changes of faculty roles, scholarly learning and academic freedom. Presenters included:
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n April 18, Jim Morrison, professor emeritus of educational leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discussed the transformation in educational technology (by year 2018) towards a practical and sustainable ed-tech paradigm. Dr. Morrison stated that “A change of instructional paradigms . . . such as project-based learning, problem-based learning, or inquiry-based learning is clearly needed.”
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Jack H. Schuster, Claremont Graduate University Roger L. Geiger, Penn State University Lowell Hargens, University of Washington Ann E. Austin, Michigan State University Anna Neumann & Katie M. Conway, Columbia University Gary Rhoades, University of Arizona Steven Brint, University of California, Riverside Edward J. Hackett, Arizona State University Alan E. Bayer, Virginia Tech University Sheila Slaughter, Institute of Higher Education Doctoral students Patrick Crane & David R. Johnson
The conference was funded by the Office of the Provost. The papers will appear in a forthcoming book from Johns Hopkins Press, The American Academic Profession: Changing Forms and Functions.
Autumn 2008
Higher Education’s New Business Models:
How Colleges and Universities Are Changing the Ways They Work
James C. Hearn 10
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conomic, political, social, and technological changes are placing growing pressures on traditional college and university operations. Stakeholders are pushing for accountability regarding quality and economic returns. Government funding is slowing in growth. Costs for salaries, benefits, infrastructure, and maintenance are rising. Dramatically new enrollment patterns are emerging on many campuses. In response, numerous campus leaders are reforming their core operations to improve institutional flexibility, adaptability, and efficiency. Belying the traditional view of campuses as changing only slowly and at the margins, some leaders are pursuing fundamental rather than incremental changes in their institutions’ core structures, policies, and practices. While these operational changes appear to be growing in both incidence and scope, substantive knowledge about them tends to remain largely limited to home campuses and systems, and the trends themselves are seen at the national level as somewhat disconnected. Recently, support from the American Council on Education (ACE) has provided me an opportunity to examine in detail several significant operational reforms emerging on campuses around the country. This IHE Report article selectively summarizes a much more comprehensive publication for ACE (Hearn, forthcoming), available now at http://www.acenet.edu/programs/cpa/reports/neweconomics.
Four Key Reforms
Higher education leaders are reacting to the changing landscape by pursuing a number of noteworthy reforms. Some changes are familiar and well recognized. Revenue diversification is an increasingly familiar strategy and one that continues to burgeon. Large-scale, highly integrated management information systems and educational-delivery systems, often termed “enterprise systems,” are being implemented in more and more institutions. Institutions are refining their organizational structures to adjust to shifting marketplace conditions. Partnerships with the private sector are increasing. And, in the policy arena, performance reporting, funding, and contracting are popular. But a separate set of operational reforms seems especially prominent and important now. Drawing on published sources and on documents not widely disseminated, this essay presents rationales for and potential risks and rewards of reforms in four arenas: pricing, budgeting, employment, and compensation. What follows is an overview of the individual features, risks, and rewards of reforms in these four arenas.
Pricing. In recent years, institutions have developed pricing
schemes that discount, unbundle, and differentiate tuition and fees in new ways. Historically, institutions’ undergraduates tuition and fees have been rather uniform. As costs and public concerns have risen dramatically, however, and as policymakers have begun to place growing emphasis on market-oriented solutions, a proliferating variety of pricing innovations has emerged. The most visible and most discussed innovation has
been offering students discounts on tuition and fee charges. Discounting reflects the intentional variation of students’ net costs (i.e., remaining charges after the award of student aid), based on institutional enrollment priorities. By systematically targeting aid to students sought for their academic talents, distinctive social-cultural characteristics, or high (or low) levels of financial need, institutions can direct economic incentives toward building the undergraduate classes they desire. Interestingly, the cost-effectiveness of tuition discounting is unclear: some new evidence suggests that discounting may decrease the amount of aid for lower-income students, have no substantive effects on raising student quality, and fail to raise net institutional revenues. While tuition discounting tends to make printed tuition rates overstatements, another pricing innovation frequently makes those rates understatements: the differentiating and unbundling of tuition and fees to tie them more closely to students’ specific activities. Much of this effort is devoted to increasing student and family discretion in the local campus marketplace, but it also reflects institutional desire to tie costs and revenues to the “transaction level” in their management information systems, thus aiding internal decision making. The most prominent aspect of this trend is differentiation of tuition levels, i.e., when institutions vary core academic charges based on the student’s actual educational experiences. Among the many ways tuition may be varied are by number of credits taken (lowering per-credit tuition charges when fulltime students add a credit to their semester course loads, e.g., moving from 13 to 14 credits), by the student’s major field, by the field of the particular course being taken (e.g., chemistry versus sociology), by the student’s grade level, by the size of the class, by the degree level or rank of the instructor, by the location of the class, and by the time of the class (certain terms, days, or times of day being more expensive). Moves toward greater price differentiation create new incentives. For example, colleges can encourage students to take larger class loads by charging less per credit for students undertaking a greater number of credits in a term. Or, colleges can limit enrollment in a field by pricing it higher. In this way, expanding price differentiation involves considering the extent and nature of cross-subsidization across programs on campuses. Notably, charging the same price for higher-cost and lower-cost areas (e.g., engineering and social work) can implicitly subsidize the higher-cost areas, in that revenues from lower-cost areas may be used to support the higher costs of other areas. Students would have fewer incentives to enroll in higher-cost areas if their prices were raised to reflect their higher costs. Thus, when tuition charges for higher-cost areas are raised, those areas are disfavored to some degree in the competition for students. Still, active tuition and fee differentiation can bring appealing financial returns as well as risks. In the domain of fee unbundling, institutions have increasingly begun to break out individual charges for different services, e.g., via activities fees assessed separately for technology, athletics, information services, student .
See Goral (2003).
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organizations, and so forth. Taking this approach aids managerial decision making by tying revenues to costs more directly. Arguably, the approach also provides consumers a sense of where their money is going. This strategy also may hide de facto price increases: conceivably, while the advertised tuition level at a school might rise by only 4 percent in a year, the total of tuition plus required fees might rise by substantially more.
Budgeting. Historically, colleges and universities have vested in central administrators substantial authority over who can spend money, how much they can spend, and to what ends they should spend it. The recent movement toward decentralizing budgetary authority to the levels of individual academic units such as academic departments is a development directly reflecting the increased interest in encouraging accountability and entrepreneurialism at all levels of institutions. The most prominent trend in this domain is “responsibility-centered budgeting,” but there are other systems as well, all best captured by the phrase “incentives based systems” [IBS]. Because some institutional activities generate no direct revenues, no institution has adopted a “pure” incentives-based system. Support units, units without instructional missions, and central-administration units require special treatment under an incentives-based system. Usually, a broad “tax” is imposed at the central level before revenues are allowed to accumulate at the unit level. The primary emphases of the IBS approach have been characterized as (1) proximity: the closer the decision maker is to the implementation point, the better the decision will be; (2) proportionality: the larger an organization, the more it can benefit from decentralization of authority and accountability; and (3) knowledge: decisions will be better in an environment that has accurate and timely information (Whalen, 1991). Striking an appropriate balance regarding centralization is critical to efficiency and effectiveness. Too much centralization may lead to missed local opportunities. Too much
Key Reforms: Pricing Budgeting Employment Compensation
decentralization, however, may bring inefficient duplication of internal activities and externally offered services, as well as inattention to critical institutional goals. “Best” comes to be defined in unit rather than institutional terms. Not surprisingly, the decentralized and incentives-based budgeting approach has stimulated controversy. Proponents like the market sensitivity of this strategy and even argue that IBS, although decentralized in orientation, may provide superior support for central-administration efforts to shape institutional objectives, establish priorities and policies pursue long-term planning and strategy, and coordinate activities among organizational units. Critics counter that under IBS, unit’s missions or purposes can be compromised, incentives for collaboration can be lowered, and students can suffer from competition among units. And, all else being equal, certain units, especially programs in the arts and humanities, can be disadvantaged by IBS’s focus on generating revenues via enrollments. Most fundamentally, opponents of IBS have noted that there is little evidence as to the benefits of this approach for learning and educational performance on campuses. As Priest et al. (2002) have noted, decentralized and incentives-based decision approaches are very much a work in progress. One may legitimately question whether academe’s own version of corporate “profit centers” will endure or simply join the graveyard of failed imports from the for-profit sector. At its worst, the approach favors corporate over academic values and can be ruinous to the academic fabric holding institutions together. At its best, however, early evidence suggests some promise in re-energizing activity and attention toward efficient, effective operations.
Employment. The pursuit of organizational agility, flexibility, and cost savings has driven growing numbers of institutions to pursue alternative approaches to faculty labor. “All or nothing” retirement policies, for example, have given way to more flexible approaches allowing institutions and faculty to negotiate individualized, mutually rewarding paths for ending faculty careers. The most prominent human-resource reform, however, has been the declining commitment to full-time, tenure line faculty positions. Because faculty are usually the most significant cost category for institutions, and because student demand and external labor-market conditions change over time, tenure and long-term, full-time employment contracts can reduce institutional discretion and adaptability. As costs and external financial constraints rise, institutions have turned to new, more flexible employment arrangements as an obvious, albeit controversial, solution. The trend in these directions has been dramatic. Since the 1970s, the proportion of faculty members in the United States who are tenured or on a tenure track has shrunk from about 57 percent to about 35 percent, and the percentage part-time of all U.S. faculty has grown notably in all sectors. Tenure is . .
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For a fuller review of the controversy, see Hearn et al. (2006). See American Association of University Professors [AAUP] (2006) and Ehrenberg & Zhang (2005).
not on the verge of extinction, but the majority of new fullA prominent aspect of this trend has been the appearance on time faculty hires are now being made for tenure-ineligible campus of salary bonuses for faculty. By providing special positions. rewards for faculty who are notably successful in research or Colleges’ and universities’ increasing reliance on partother activities, institutions are seeking to attach incentives time and nontenure-track faculty may be bringing significant to valued performance and retain those faculty likely to be changes in educational processes and outcomes in U.S. subject to “raids” by competing institutions. higher education. Some studies have reported evidence that, Some salary reforms are even more aggressive. In the with other factors held constant, increasing reliance on part1990s, in response to growing financial pressures posed by time and nontenure-track faculty reduces graduation rates managed-care organizations and health reform legislation, at four-year colleges as well as student persistence into the a number of university medical schools began to break up second academic year. Others have noted that the movement faculty members’ salaries into a guaranteed “core” or “base” arguably reduces not only the numbers but also the influence component and a second “flexible” or “at risk” component.12 and motivation of tenure-track faculty, increasing the power Under such schemes, a professor’s pay is unbundled into a of administrators, and undermining academic freedom. Such foundational element and a supplemental element based on two-tiered faculty systems also may marginalize nontraditional the level of clinical or funded research revenues he or she faculty by poorly integrating and socializing them into the generates, either alone or with colleagues. While the first organization. Some observers have even argued that the portion of salary is “hard money” and thus ensured from trend threatens the traditionally high status of the academic year to year, usually with an inflation adjustment, the second profession and, indeed, the basis for academic varies annually depending on financial success. community.10 Now, the core/supplement salary approach Some observers have is being considered for academic units Yet, the potential benefits of the even argued that the outside of medicine. Its widespread adoption phenomenon should not be ignored. trend [increasing would represent a radical change in campus Institutions can not only more flexibly reliance on part-time employment relations. attune their workforce to emerging needs in and non tenure-track In pursuing this approach, institutions education and research, but also potentially faculty] threatens need not immediately reduce faculty salaries in save money that might in turn be directed the traditionally high nominal terms (an action that could raise legal toward preserving tenure-line, full-time status of the academic or professional challenges). Rather, they can positions over the longer term. With the profession... provide only for cost-of-living raises or less nontraditional option in place, institutions can each year, thus reducing faculty purchasing hire for full-time tenure-line positions more power (i.e., real salaries after adjustment for inflation) over selectively: many units in high-demand fields (e.g., business) time. Then, institutions can follow a practice of allocating have experienced tenure-line positions going unfilled because remaining funds on an incentives-driven basis. Faculty of an absence of strong candidates, but the development of successful in supporting all or part of their regular salary alternative positions allows those units to continue to offer through grants and contracts for research or training might be their programs while awaiting the best tenure-line candidate. paid additional compensation based on that support. Finally, the provision of part-time and periodically full-time In a variations of the approach, supplementary or bonus positions (that is, positions that move between full-time and pools can be directed to units rather than individuals. Under part-time status) can enhance connections to local labor such a scheme, faculty become responsible for generating markets as well as the attractiveness of teaching work to wellqualified potential instructors unable or unwilling to take on income on the unit’s collective behalf, so the approach may full-time positions. There is evidence that what are commonly have the added benefit of producing more cohesiveness in called “contingent” positions may in fact become quite stable academic units. and secure over time, and attractive to talented, capable The core/supplement approach can make financial candidates.11 sense for institutions, by providing them greater flexibility to move resources from one area to another, while encouraging Compensation. Many institutions have begun shifting from individual faculty initiatives toward generating external a history of minimal variations in pay across faculty fields and revenues. On the other hand, the approach raises potential levels of performance toward devising compensation systems threats to faculty’s financial security. Faculty failing to secure that provide financial incentives for entrepreneurial activities. sufficient funding from teaching or research activities are forced to adapt to fewer resources or leave. . Schuster and Finkelstein (2006).
“
. . . . . 10. 11.
See Ehrenberg and Zhang (2005) and Bettinger and Long (2005). Bess (1998); Haeger (1998). Rhoades (1996). Curtis & Jacobe (2006). Gappa & Leslie (1993). E.g., see Finkelstein, Seal, and Schuster (1998). Ehrenberg (2006).
Conclusion
The four reform arenas reviewed above focus squarely on the heart of colleges and universities: how students pay for higher education, how the money is distributed within 12. See Mangan (1996).
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an institution, who does the work of higher education, and how they are paid for that work. In each of the four arenas, recent institutional actions raise dramatic contrasts with past approaches on campus. Taken as a group, the reforms may constitute a rather coherent emerging new approach to campus operations, stressing flexibility, accountability, transparency, entrepreneurship, and professional “ownership.” Clearly the reforms are oriented toward viewing students and families as discriminating consumers of services, toward viewing administrators and faculty as accountable decision makers, and toward adapting policies and practices to address emerging markets. Higher education’s contemporary stakeholders seek greater efficiency, clear and meaningful indicators of performance, and evidence of greater effectiveness. In this context, the pursuit of the reforms reviewed here is understandable on both internal (campus) and external (resource provider) grounds. Of course, if pursuing these kinds of reforms simply pushes faculty and their units headlong toward activities generating better “bottom lines,” without raising parallel attention to the reforms’ implications for institutions’ enduring cultures, values, and commitments, little will be gained and much could be lost. Encouraging a reform-oriented, entrepreneurial, strategically directed mindset, while remaining mindful of their institution’s foundational mission, is a crucial charge to academic leaders. Unblinking deference to established business models is likely a prescription for failure.
Goral, T. (2003, August). Is discounting dangerous? University Business, 22–26. Haeger, J. D. (1998). Part-time faculty, quality programs, and economic realities. In D. W. Leslie (Ed.), The growing use of part-time faculty: Understanding causes and effects (pp. 81–88). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Hearn, J. C. (forthcoming). Higher education’s new economics: The risks and rewards of emerging operational reforms. Report for the American Council on Education. Washington, DC: American Council on Education. Hearn, J. C., Lewis, D. R., Kallsen, L., Holdsworth, J. M., & Jones, L. M. (2006). Incentives for managed growth: A case study of incentivesbased planning and budgeting in a large public research university. The Journal of Higher Education, 77(2), 286–316. Mangan, K. S. (1996, July 26). Medical schools are reining in the salaries of faculty members. Chronicle of Higher Education, 42, pp. A16, 18. Priest, D. M., Becker, W. E., Hossler, D., & St. John, E. P. (Eds.). (2002). Incentive-based budgeting systems in public universities. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Press. Rhoades, G. (1996). Reorganizing the workforce for flexibility: Part-time professional labor. The Journal of Higher Education, 6 (6), 626–659. Schuster, J. H., & Finkelstein, M. J. (2006). The American faculty: The restructuring of academic work and careers. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Whalen, E. L. (1991). Responsibility center budgeting: An approach to decentralized management for institutions of higher education. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
References
American Association of University Professors (AAUP). (2006). AAUP contingent faculty index. Washington, DC: Author. Bess, J. L. (1998). Contract systems, bureaucracies, and faculty motivation: The probable effects of a no-tenure policy. The Journal of Higher Education, 69(1), 1–22. Bettinger, E., & Long, B. T. (2006). Help or hinder? Adjunct professors and student outcomes. In R. G. Ehrenberg (Ed.), What’s happening to public higher education? Westport, CT: ACE/Praeger Series on Higher Education. Curtis, J. W., & Jacobe, M. F. (2006). Consequences: An increasingly contingent faculty. In AAUP contingent faculty index (pp. 5–16). Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors. Ehrenberg, R. G. (2006). The changing nature of the faculty and faculty employment practices. In R. Clark & M. D’Ambrosio (Eds.), The new balancing act in the business of higher education (pp. 103–117). Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Press. Ehrenberg, R. G., & Zhang, L. (2005). The changing nature of faculty employment. In R. Clark & J. Ma (Eds.), Recruitment, retention, and retirement in higher education: Building and managing the faculty of the future (pp. 32–52). Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Press. Finkelstein, M., Seal, R. K., & Schuster, J. H. (1998). The new academic generation: A profession in transformation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gappa, J. M., & Leslie, D. W. (1993). The invisible faculty: Improving the status of part-timers in higher education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
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James C. Hearn is professor of higher education at the Institute of Higher Education and adjunct professor of sociology at the University of Georgia.
Two new Senior Fellows enhance Institute’s faculty strengths
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dward J. Larson, Hugh and Hazel Darling Professor of Law at Pepperdine University, has been appointed a senior fellow at the Institute of Higher Education. Prior to joining the Pepperdine School of Law, Larson was the Russell Professor of History and Talmadge Professor of Law at the University of Georgia. He has also served as counsel to the U.S. Department of Education, the congressional Committee on Education, and the Washington State House of Representatives. Larson earned his Ph.D. in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. Larson specializes in issues of science, medicine, and law, to which he brings an historical perspective. He is the author of seven books, including Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (1997), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, and his most recent, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign (2007), which led to a private meeting with President Bush in the White House. Larson has lectured in nearly 20 countries, taught in Austria, China, France, and New Zealand, and taken part in more than 300 radio and television interviews. In the summer of 2007 he accompanied IHE faculty members Christopher Morphew and Doug Toma and doctoral student Jennifer Frum to Uganda where they formalized the partnership between the East African Institute for Higher Education Strategy and Development (EAIHESD) and the IHE. “As senior fellow, I can continue my association with UGA,” says Larson, “and I would really like to get on board with another IHE project.” Larson is the recipient of numerous awards including the Templeton Prize, the George Sarton Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Christ-Janer Award for outstanding research in the humanities from the University of Georgia.
K
enneth E. Redd, Director of Research and Policy Analysis at the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, DC, has been appointed a senior fellow at the Institute of Higher Education. Redd is an expert on student financial aid and enrollment trends in higher education. In 2005, the Chronicle of Higher Education named him one of the ten up-and-coming “New Thinkers in Higher Education.” Before moving to his current position at CGS, Redd served as director of higher education research at the Lumina Foundation for Education (previously the USA Group Foundation), and director of research and policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. Prior to that he was a senior research associate at Sallie Mae, research and policy analyst at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the Office of Research and Policy Analysis at the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, and the Congressional Research Service. Redd has worked on several projects with IHE faculty members James Hearn, Christopher Morphew, Scott Thomas, and J. Douglas Toma. “I have enjoyed working with the IHE faculty,” said Ken Redd, “and I look forward to future collaborations including the Oxford program.” He has authored numerous publications on financial aid, college costs, participation and retention including Future Shock! How Immigration and Demographic Trends Could Affect Financial Aid and College Enrollment; Financing Graduate and Professional Education: 2003-2004; Lots of Money, Limited Options: College Choice and Student Financial Aid; and Discounting Toward Disaster: Tuition Discounting, College Finances, and Enrollments of Low-Income Undergraduates.
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Ireland
IHE Aroun Canada Sheila Slaughter received a three-year grant from the Canadian Social Science Research Council, with Amy Scott Metcalfe (University of British Columbia), to study Gender and Academic Capitalism: Men and Women of the Entrepreneurial Academy.
Sheila Slaughter will deliver the keynote address entitled “The Professionalisation of the Humanities Scholar” at the University College Dublin (UCD) in September 2008. The symposium is co-organized by the UCD Humanities Institute of Ireland and the Centre for Public Culture Studies at the Dun Laoghaire Institute for Art, Design and Technology (IADT). J. Douglas Toma attended the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER) conference in Dublin.
Mexico
United Kingdom
In September 2007, IHE graduate students Lisette Montoto, Angela Bell, and Patrick Crane, faculty members James Hearn and Scott Thomas, and IHE senior fellow Ken Redd of the Council on Graduate Schools participated in the annual higher education seminar at Oxford University, England. The seminar featured participants from the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Europe, and was held at New College, Oxford, in partnership with the University of Bath’s International Center for Higher Education Management.
Austria
“Higher education as a Public Good” was the title of the presentation given by Sheila Slaughter at the magisterial conference in September. The conference, held at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, was entitled Higher Education in the Beginning of the 21st Century.
Puerto Rico
Larry Leslie made presentations to the systems personnel at the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, and the Territorial Higher Education Commission on the changing financial environment in higher education, its effects and remedies. Sheila Slaughter also gave an invited lecture on “Intellectual property and copyright” to the systems personnel.
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Faculty members James Hearn and J. Douglas Toma attended the annual conference of the European Association for Institutional Research in Innsbruck, Austria. Hearn, with Michael McLendon of Vanderbilt University, presented a paper on recent developments and implications of reforming the core operations of tertiary institutions and Toma discussed the different strategies adopted by U.S. universities as they position for prestige.
Croatia Three IHE faculty members, Director Libby Morris and Professors Tom Dyer and J. Douglas Toma, conducted a seminar on higher education management for faculty and administrators at the University of Zagreb. The impetus for this six-year partnership is Croatia’s desire to join the European Union, a process which began in 2003.
und the World
Hungary
Sheila Slaughter presented a paper entitled “Globalization, Higher Education and the Politics of Knowledge” at the Politics of Academic Knowledge in a Global Era: Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Market Values Conference, which was organized by the International Center for Advanced Studies at NYU and the Institute of History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest.
Uganda
Finland IHE faculty members Christopher C. Morphew and J. Douglas Toma attended the meeting of the HEEM (Higher Education European Masters) program in Tampere, Finland, in May. They worked with HEEM students and discussed a joint research project with faculty from the program and other European partners. They also conferred about plans for cooperation in providing academic programs, potentially leading to student exchanges between the IHE and various European partners.
Norway Sheila Slaughter has been named Erasmus Mundus Fellow (2009) and will work with Peter Maassen at Hedda, the European association of research centres, institutes and groups with expertise in higher education research, at the University of Oslo.
Taiwan
Georgia
A group consisting of rectors from Georgian Universities (including Georgian Institute of Public Affairs, Ilia Chavchavadze State University, Batumi State University, and Gori University) visited the Institute in March 2008 to discuss a range of topics including fundraising among American higher education institutions and higher education fina nce. Faculty members Chris Morphew, Doug Toma, and Libby Morris met with the group.
Continuing the partnership between the Institute of Higher Education and the East Africa Institute for Higher Education Studies and Development at Makerere University launched in December 2006, nine doctoral students were resident in Athens for three weeks in June and July 2008.
China Taiwan IHE Alum Sherry Sun (’86) shared photos from the Taiwan National Digital Archives Program, a collaboration of government, industry, and education to preserve their rich cultural history and promote international exchange. Dr. Sun is co-principal director of the Archives project, professor in the Department of Library and Information Sciences, and director of the University Press, National Taiwan University. (April 2008).
In May, Director Libby Morris and Professor J. Douglas Toma continued the Institute’s efforts in China, visiting our partners at the National Center for Education Development Research, and meeting with officials in the national education ministry and higher education faculty members at Peking University and Beijing Normal University. The purpose of the visit was to build cooperation in IHE graduate programs, research, and professional development activities. Haixia Xu, an IHE doctoral student, coordinated the visits, which also included meetings with senior officials at the China Scholarship Council, the China Association for International Education Exchange, and the National Academy of Education Administration. Toma also made a return visit to Jilin University.
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Students reap academic rewards from 2008 Oxford Higher Education Seminar
T
Governor’s Teaching Fellows return for Teaching and Learning Conference On January 25th, 2008, the Governer’s Teaching Fellows Program held its third Reunion and Teaching and Learning Conference. The Institute of Higher Education facilitated lectures, roundtable discussions and presentations on a variety of topics all related to the renewal of effective teaching and learning. One participant proclaimed, “You have created a life-changing network in the state!” IHE Director Libby Morris relates stories of her publishing experiences at a GTF lunch discussion.
GTF Coordinator Marguerite Koepke speaks to the fellows during the Teaching & Learning Conference keynote address.
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he annual IHE Oxford Higher Education Seminar took place at Oxford University’s New College from August 31 through September 2, 2007. The Institute partnered with the University of Bath’s International Centre for Higher Education Management. Admission to the seminar was competitive and the 13 participants selected to participate represented a truly global cast with students from the US, Canada, the UK, and throughout Europe. Participants began working with faculty mentors Scott Thomas (UGA), Jim Hearn (UGA), Ken Redd (Council on Graduate Schools), and Jeroen Huisman (University of Bath) in February of 2007 as they developed papers that would be presented at the seminar. “The seminar experience was extraordinary!” exclaimed Sharon Weiner from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. “I think it was the best learning environment I have ever experienced.” Among the participants were UGA doctoral students Angela Bell, Lisette Montoto, and Patrick Crane. Guest faculty at the seminar included Professor Malcolm Tight (Lancaster University) and David Palfreyman (director of OxCHEPS and bursar The Old Quad at Oxford’s New College at New College). The seminar is designed to engage students in critical dialogue about their papers and to help them refine their work to a point that each will be submission ready for an appropriate peer-reviewed journal. One measure of the seminar’s success is the proportion of papers that make it into print in competitive peer-reviewed journals. A second measure of success is the degree to which participants make new connections that will facilitate their post-degree career advancement. In addition to several papers from the seminar that are now in review at top higher education journals, a number of the seminar participants have since completed their degree programs and are now working in their first faculty positions. Reviews of the seminar were very positive and included the following testimonial: “I learned so much, I don’t know that I will ever recover from Oxford! I think the seminar was a triumph of both content and organization and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to have been included.”
International students share their perspectives on American higher education
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he Institute of Higher Education is different in several respects from when Haixia Xu arrived in 2001. “The Institute is not only increasingly active internationally, including in China, where I am from, but has also recruited more international students.” Six International Students, Three Continents, Five Countries. Thus describes the international students currently enrolled in the Institute’s Ph.D. program. In addition to Haixia, who works in International Public Service and Outreach and will defend her dissertation this fall, there is Yang Yang, a thirdyear student from China; Kangjoo Lee from South Korea who works in Admissions; Khoi To, a second-year student from Vietnam; Jaynefrances Nabawanuka, who was a lawyer in her native Uganda, and Mauricio Saavedra from Ecuador who works in the Office of Institutional Research. All agreed that the hardest adjustments are the language difficulties, closely followed by missing familiar food, family, and friends. Kangjoo, however, said that missing familiar food was not a problem for him, “There is a large Korean population in the area and there are numerous Korean groceries and the international farmers market in Atlanta.” For Haixia, cultural differences were another barrier in her first years. She talked fondly of the almost daily assistance given by Institute staff and faculty, as well as fellow students. Educational Differences. The students from Asia noted that they came from very centralized education systems with university admission based on the results of one entrance exam, although an exception is made for “elite students who win international prizes.” The same is true of Uganda, where education is based on the British system (a legacy of its colonial past). Jaynefrances wants “African countries to learn from the U.S. system and use students’ GPA and performance in high school, as well as exam results, when deciding university admissions.” Mauricio’s experiences in Ecuador were slightly different. “Only the top universities have entrance exams. We have no sports or electives and very few funds for research.
My experience at the Institute has instilled in me a passion for research and the ability to engage in critical thinking, which I hope will result in a job at a top South American university.” Why the Institute? The students are very grateful for the chance to be studying at the Institute. Most of them hope to work in the U.S. for a year or two after graduation to gain experience that will benefit their future careers. Fluency in English is one of the most sought-after skills in today’s global market. Kangjoo and Yang noted that in Korea and China “prestigious universities give incentives to professors who can teach in English.” Jaynefrances said that “studying at the IHE has been enriching. I came into a new field of study from law, I have acquired so much, I have learned theoretical frameworks, and I am thinking of things broadly. I believe I can make a contribution to higher education in Uganda.” For Yang, her U.S. experience built her confidence. “I have more independence, I meet lots of different people and I have become more open minded and less shy.” Khoi agreed, “Living in the U.S. provides me with a different way of thinking and seeing things. In our ever-changing world, understanding different cultures and being flexible is crucial for success. Getting a degree from a top-notch program like the one offered at the IHE will equip me with the necessary knowledge and professional skills to get a good job.” Moving into the Future. As she gets ready to graduate, Haixia appreciates the strong support system she had at the Institute and what it will mean for her future. “My academic training at the Institute has given me the opportunity to work full-time on campus while finishing my degree. It has made me part of the internationalization occurring in higher education. This unique experience, together with a Ph.D. from the Institute’s nationally ranked program, makes me confident that I will land a promising position in my home country.”
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IHE faculty help build a global network linking higher education programs
A
Uganda’s Makerere University sends nine students to IHE for summer studies
C
ontinuing the partnership between the Institute of Higher Education and the East Africa Institute for Higher Education Studies and Development (EAIHESD) at Makerere University launched in December 2006, nine doctoral students were resident in Athens for three weeks in June and July 2008. The students, accompanied by Beatrice Sekabembe, a Makerere lecturer, focused on advancing their own research, working with Professors J. Douglas Toma and Christopher C. Morphew, while attending daily sessions on research methods and issues in higher education management and policy. In addition to their work with Toma and Morphew, the group met with 14 other affiliates of the Institute, including several more advanced doctoral students, Tom Jackson, Austin Lacy, Patrick Crane, Welch Suggs, Stephanie Hazel, Mauiricio Saavedra, Anthony Jones, Adam Wyatt, and Barrett Taylor. The group also visited Agnes Scott and Morehouse Universities in addition to several UGA academic and administrative units. “I enjoyed the opportunity to work with the Makerere group and learned a great deal from them and the experience,” Lacy said. “The issues they are confronting in Ugandan higher education, while seemingly removed from our situation in the U.S. on the surface, are really much more similar.” “Our partnership with James Nkata and his colleagues at Makerere University is off to a particularly satisfying start,” noted Toma, “and we are looking forward to our students having the opportunity to work with the academic staff at EAIHESD.” Morphew added that the Makerere partnership also envisions collaborations in research and training programs focused on building capacity within higher education in East Africa. Jaynefrances Nabawanuka, an Institute doctoral student from Uganda entering her second year in Athens worked closely with the visitors, as did Micki Waldrop, an IHE administrative assistant. In summer 2007, a delegation of six academic staff, including Professors Nkata and Sekabembe, visited the Institute for a week. Toma and Morphew, along with IHE senior fellow Ed Larson and doctoral student Jennifer Frum visited Makerere in December 2006. 20
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s the international network of leading centers and institutes devoted to the study of higher education coalesces, the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia has been increasingly involved in relationships and partnerships abroad. ■ In June, Professors J. Douglas Toma and Christopher C. Morphew attended the planning meeting in Tampere, Finland convened by the three partners of the European Masters Programme in Higher Education (HEEM), the University of Oslo (Norway), the University of Aleiro (Portugal), and the University of Tampere. Before earning their masters degree, students from around the world have residencies at each institution and complete their degrees at one of them. The European Union funds the program through the Erasmus Mundus initiative, which is intended to advance cross-national student mobility and institutional cooperation within Europe. “We at the Institute look forward to participating in the next iteration of HEEM, when the program adds the Universities of Dijon (France) and CHEPS at the University of Twente (the Netherlands),” Toma stated. “Working with the HEEM students in Athens and elsewhere – and giving our students the opportunity to become involved in the network – is particularly exciting. Peter Maassen, the program director, and his colleagues have developed the premier program of its type worldwide.” While in Tampere, Toma and Morphew also discussed a cross-national partnership involving the HEEM institutions, plus the University of Toronto (Canada), Peking University (China), and the University of Melbourne (Australia), in doctoral education. The program would enable doctoral students to work both at a home institution and several others and envisions offering degrees jointly between institutions. Toma and Morphew also participated in the development of a research proposal to the European Science Foundation coordinated by Maassen and involving several European partners, including those within the Hedda network, which includes the major higher education centers in Europe. Maassen visited Athens in March to discuss various opportunities for collaboration between IHE and the HEEM and Hedda networks. ■ Sheila Slaughter will be resident in Oslo in spring 2009 as an Erasmus Mundus fellow. Institute faculty also connect with their European colleagues as participants in the European Association for Institutional Research (EAIR) and Consortium for Higher Education Research (CHER) meetings each fall. The University of Oslo also works with Makerere University in Uganda, the leading university in the region, enrolling several students from there in its masters programs.
■ The Institute has been establishing its partnership with the East African Institute for Higher Education Studies and Development (EAIHESD) at Makerere for the past two years. EAIHESD has been designated by the Inter-University Council of East Africa as the exclusive center for higher education research and development in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda). It has built a sizable and impressive faculty, with twenty academic staff members, including twelve full-time faculty. The collaboration is intended to develop EAIHESD’s research, instructional, and public service roles, and will include regular exchanges between EAIHESD and IHE faculty and students. The first such exchange occurred in July 2008 when nine Makerere doctoral students were resident in Athens for three weeks (see story on previous page). The Institute has also deepened its involvement with China over the past year. Libby Morris, the IHE director, Toma, and Haixia Xu, a doctoral student at the Institute and Chinese national, visited Beijing in May 2008. The delegation laid the foundation for a formal partnership with the higher education groups at Peking University and Beijing Normal University and strengthened its longstanding relationship with the National Center for Education Development Research at the National Ministry of Education. ■ The Institute will host various Chinese partners during the coming academic year, seeking to formalize and advance our work together in research, training and consultancy, and graduate student exchange. Upon returning from the May trip, Libby Morris commented that she “left with a better understanding of China’s higher education sectors.”
■ Finally, the satisfying partnership launched in 2002 between the Institute and the universities in Croatia continues. With funding from the U.S. Department of State, through the embassy in Zagreb, 30 participants from universities across the region will convene at the University of Split from October 2729 to consider building a foundation, both conceptually and practically, for fundraising within Croatian higher education. Four representatives from the University of Georgia will serve as facilitators at the meeting, both in small group exercises and in sessions with the entire group: Tom Landrum, senior vice president for external affairs; Garnett Stokes, dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences; Linda P. Bachman, assistant dean for external affairs at Franklin; and Toma. Vlasta Vizek-Vidovic, professor and former vice rector at the University of Zagreb, continues as co-convener, joined this year by Jasmina Havranek, director of the Agency for Science and Education in Croatia and former professor and dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Zagreb. VizekVidovic was resident at IHE for a week in June 2008. Toma, who was a Fulbright lecturer-researcher at the University of Zagreb during spring and summer 2007, worked with Professor Vizek-Vidovic in organizing successful seminars in fall 2007 on decision support and in fall 2006 on ethics. Morris and Tom Dyer, the former IHE director, also facilitated the 2007 Varazdin meeting, and Morris, Morphew, and UGA law professor and IHE senior fellow, Anne Dupre, served as facilitators in Zagreb in 2006.
Autumn 2008
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Education Policy Seminars 2007-08 The Education Policy Seminars bring distinguished scholars to the Institute to address critical policy issues and cutting-edge research in higher education. McBee Professor Sheila Slaughter organizes the seminars, which are open to the entire campus.
Michael Bastedo, assistant professor of education at the University of Michigan, whose research focuses on the governance, politics, and organization of public higher education in the U.S. and overseas, led a discussion on “The Politics of University Governance: Trustee Dynamics and Presidential Responses.� Barbara Townsend, professor of educational leadership and policy analysis and director of the Center for Community College Research at the University of Missouri, examined state and national policy changes that are reframing the role of community colleges, transforming many of them from two to four-year institutions, and addressed the challenges that the community college system will face in the future.
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IHE Report
Wei Hong, visiting scholar in the department of sociology at the University of Illinois, Chicago, discussed the decentralizing process of knowledge transfer at Chinese universities between 1985 and 2004. Her research concerns the geographic dimension of knowledge flows from university to industry in China, and comparative analyses of science and innovation policy and bioethics.
Robert Toutkoushian, associate professor in the department of education leadership and policy studies at Indiana University, presented the study he did for the Georgia Board of Regents on salaries and salary compression. He analyzed all institutions in the Georgia system, with an emphasis on the University of Georgia, and compared them with peer institutions in other states. He found that Georgia improved dramatically in 2000, but had fallen behind in recent years, however, salary compression was not a problem at most Georgia institutions.
Amy Metcalfe, assistant professor of higher education and co-director, Centre for Policy Studies in Higher Education and Training at the University of British Columbia. Her seminar addressed recent postsecondary education system reviews and recent reform efforts in several Canadian provinces. She discussed how increasing public-sector emphasis on global economic competitiveness and the role of higher education in economic development has permitted and promoted intra-sector competition between universities, colleges and technical institutes.
Peter Maassen, professor at the University of Oslo and the Higher Education Development Association (Hedda), spoke on university dynamics and European integration. He questioned whether higher education in Europe is in a serious crisis or offers a “European alternative” to the U.S. market model, a choice between becoming “marketized or marginalized.”
Paula Stephan, professor of economics in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, discussed her recent work on the mobility patterns of new PhD students in science and engineering who plan to work in industry, whether they remained in-state after graduating, the process by which knowledge moves across institutional boundaries in the economy, and the role that federal policy should play in financial support for graduate education.
Autumn 2008
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Fall Events 2008 Lumina-IHE Reception
November 5, 2008 Association for the Study of Higher Education annual conference, Jacksonville, Florida
Louise McBee Lecture
November 14, 2008 Molly Broad, president of the American Council on Education
Education Policy Seminars September 24, 2008 David E. Shulenburger, vice president for academic affairs, NASULGC “Ensuring that Public Higher Education Remains Affordable” October 17, 2008 KerryAnn O’Meara, associate professor of higher education, University of Maryland “From Constraint to Growth: Reconsidering the Narrative in Studies of Faculty” November 19, 2008 Glen A. Jones, associate dean and professor of higher education, University of Toronto “The Internationalization of Higher Education in the Context of Canadian Federalism”
Patrick Callan, founding president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, delivered the 2007 Louise McBee lecture “American Higher Education: Public Purposes and Public Policies” on October 31.
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IHE Report
Honor a mentor; support a student: a message from Libby Morris
I
n a recent gift to the Institute, an alumnus wrote, “I am so glad the Institute continues to thrive, and I’m happy to help honor Tom (Dyer). He has been an important part of my life since the early 1970s as both friend and teacher.” Throughout the year, former students and friends of the Institute sent letters and emails bringing us up to date on their careers and activities, and many include donations to honor a specific person or to support IHE’s programs in general. While I sent a personal note to every donor, I cannot say thank you often enough for your gifts. Without your support, many of the programs described in this issue would not be possible. The educational policy series, the students’ federal policy trip to D.C., the Oxford program — all depend on your gifts. In December 2006, on the occasion of his retirement, the Institute established the Thomas G. Dyer Academic Fund to honor his lasting impact on the University of Georgia, the Institute, and hundreds of students in history and higher education. This fund supports the IHE doctoral program, visiting scholars, and student programs and activities. Many of you have responded generously. As a former student of Dr. Dyer’s noted, “I enjoyed reading the recent IHE magazine and the feature on Tom Dyer. I want to contribute to the new Academic Support Fund in honor of my helpful (and demanding) dissertation adviser.” The Louise McBee Professorship honors Louise McBee and her distinguished service to the university as a faculty member and administrator, and the fund supports the McBee professorship as well as the annual lecture series in the fall. Please join us on November 14th in the UGA Chapel for the lecture by Molly Broad, president of ACE. The Zell and Shirley Miller Fellowship is awarded annually to a promising doctoral student in higher education. The award supports the professional development of an advanced student and honors the Millers’ longstanding commitment to higher education in Georgia. We continue to solicit funds to support our work and to honor Professor Dyer, Dr. McBee, and the Millers. We are honored to have funds in their names located in the Institute. Gifts may also be made to the Institute of Higher Education’s General Arch Fund for unrestricted use. This fund provides resources to purchase books for the IHE Fincher Library, support travel for visiting scholars, support faculty in innovative program development, and meet many other critical needs. These gifts are essential to our continued growth in reputation and quality. If you wish to join others in making a tax-deductible contribution to one of the funds listed above, please use the envelope in this issue or visit our website, http://www.uga.edu/ihe/ giving.html. Contact me by email, lvmorris@uga.edu, if I may answer any questions. I look forward to your notes keeping us informed of your activities, as well.
nd
IHE
Faculty
Arthur N. Dunning
Professor of Higher Education and Vice President for Public Service and Outreach
Patricia L. Kalivoda
Adj. Assistant Professor, Higher Education; Associate Vice Pres. Public Service and Outreach
Christopher Morphew Associate Professor of Higher Education and Graduate Coordinator
Tom Dyer
Libby V. Morris
Director and Professor of Higher Education
James C. Hearn
Vice President for Instruction Emeritus and University Professor Emeritus
Professor of Higher Education and Adj. Professor of Sociology
Charles B. Knapp
Marguerite Koepke
Distinguished Public Service Fellow, Professor of Economics, and President Emeritus
Sheila Slaughter
Louise McBee Professor of Higher Education
Melvin B. Hill, Jr.
Robert G. Stephens Jr. Senior Fellow of Law & Government
Larry L. Leslie
Adj. Associate Professor, Higher Education
Distinguished Visiting Professor of Higher Education and Senior Fellow-in-Residence
J. Douglas Toma
Karen Webber
Associate Professor of Higher Education and Adj. Associate Professor of Law
Associate Professor of Higher Education
Zagreb, Croatia
The IHE has provided ongoing expertise to Croatia over the past few years. The impetus for this six-year partnership is Croatia’s desire for membership in the European Union, which includes meeting the tenets of the Bologna Accord through which 40 European countries agreed to standardize higher education systems in Europe. Meeting these standards means major restructuring of Croatia’s education system, which is currently hampered by highly decentralized management, limited resources, and financial challenges.
Institute of Higher Education Meigs Hall Athens, GA 30602-6772 www.uga.edu/ihe