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In the last year, advocacy groups have churned out reports on how all kinds of students--those who work, are minorities, attend less-selective colleges, or come from low-income families--struggle in higher education. They have talked about the needs of the modern workforce, and how the United States is falling behind. All coalesced around the same point: Not enough students are graduating from college. Another thing the studies had in common: All were paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The reports are part of an aggressive push by the foundation to convince the public that the U.S. has a college-dropout problem. People have been so focused on access, and had this mentality of students' right to fail, that there's little understanding of how much churn hurts institutions and the students they're trying to serve. Changing that is part of the three-pronged strategy that has emerged since the foundation officially entered the postsecondary sphere, in late 2008. It casts the organization as both vocal critic and white knight. Not all those in higher education are sure they want the Gates foundation's brand of rescue. Few people openly criticize the foundation, but privately some worry that its approach to postsecondary reform is too top-down and too systematic. The most outspoken critics of the foundation's education work, however, have faulted its market-based approach to elementary and secondary schools. Others, of course, welcome the help. Many college leaders say the foundation is bringing attention to a neglected sector of higher education. The Gates foundation aims to double the proportion of low-income Americans who earn a postsecondary credential by age 26. To get there, the philanthropy is focusing grants on community colleges, where more than half of students come from families earning less than $40,000 a year. The foundation is also supporting efforts to increase low-income students' access to financial aid and information about attending college. And it is financing work to identify and test practices that improve students' outcomes, particularly in remedial math. Throughout, the philanthropy is exploring how technology could enhance quality and reduce costs. While gathering evidence of good practices is a piece of its work, the foundation is not pushing for a uniform system. Much of its money is going to expand programs started on campuses themselves. It's easy to see the group's move into higher education as a natural extension of its work in high schools. There, the foundation has focused on improving teaching but also on increasing options for families. Higher education in the U.S., however, is already a market, and its primary federal support looks a lot like vouchers. But the foundation has concluded that the market isn't working because students don't have enough information--and because many lack real choice.

Since 2003, more than 40 athletics programs have joined the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) ranks. Membership now represents about 500 colleges and the group's executive director expects to keep adding colleges. Membership in the association began declining slightly in the early 1990s, as private two-year colleges, many of which were struggling financially, cut their athletics programs or closed altogether. The recent growth in numbers is being fueled mostly by public colleges, some hoping to attract more students and others trying to satisfy a growing number of 18- to 24-year-olds who are demanding a traditional college experience, including athletics. In this article, the author suggests that a college president must consider the following key issues before adding varsity sports: (1) paying for the programs; (2) athletic scholarships; and (3) reasons for competition.

The service learning movement has gained new energy with the election of President Obama, who has made increasing service a central plank of his higher-education agenda. But across the board, colleges and universities struggle with service learning's twin goals of providing meaningful help to the community and academic rigor to students. The challenge is to focus not only on the quantity of volunteers but also on the quality of the work they are doing. At Wagner College, on Staten Island, Civic Innovations, connects entire academic departments with single agencies on the island, a setup that enables the college to draw up a financing proposal for a soup kitchen rather than just serve meals. Faculty members and their partner agencies meet several times before each semester to develop syllabi for courses together to ensure a clear connection between the soup line and the sociology theme on poverty. Like any partnership, comfort levels must be established on both sides. Wagner has hired a director for the college's Center for Leadership and Service, a go-to person for questions that may be less academic (Can you send a few extra volunteers to this one-day event? Could Wagner students help round up 30 turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner? Is there temporary storage space available on the campus?), but on which successful LONG-TERM relationships rely.

Obamamania has swept across college campuses. Students, it seems, are out campaigning, registering people to vote, singing the Democrat's praises far and wide. This article reports that a new poll of college students in four battleground states--Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania--conducted by CBS News, UWIRE, and "The Chronicle" provides a more nuanced view. Most of those students weren't out knocking on doors or persuading family and friends to vote for their candidate. And they appeared to actually be paying less attention to the election than the average American does. Still, a whopping 94 percent of students at four-year colleges in the battleground states said they were registered to vote. Barack Obama had a two-to-one edge in their support over John McCain. And the vast majority of students said they definitely planned to vote.

Several months ago, the Educational Testing Service began planning a campaign to encourage more college juniors and seniors to consider graduate school--and to take its Graduate Record Examination. The timing may prove fortuitous. David G. Payne, executive director of the GRE, says the campaign seeks not only to expand students' options, but also to increase the pool of domestic talent for graduate schools. In particular he hopes the ads will grab the attention of underrepresented minorities and low-income students, who are in short supply in the graduate-school pipeline.

When the playful, 84-page viewbook showed up in the University of Dayton last fall, not everybody was impressed. Some faculty members were taken aback. The student newspaper, the "Flyer News," pronounced it a "fully color, glossy orgy," unbefitting a Roman Catholic college. The admissions office, it said, had hit an "astonishing all-time low." Daniel J. Curran, the university's president, thought it hit just the right note. It got people talking. The conversation was not just about the viewbook, but about how Dayton could create a distinctive identity in a sea of sameness. Its leaders were looking to fashion a modern brand that would speak not only to potential students, but also to parents, alumni, donors, businesspeople, and other universities. In this article, the author discusses how the Roman Catholic college had embarked on a splashy campaign to update its image and reach more students.

The bull market for admissions is nearing its end. The number of new high-school graduates in the United States has increased steadily each year since the mid-1990s, and colleges have seen the number of applications climb right along with it. As the last of the baby boomers' children make their way through high school, the number of new graduates is expected to peak this year, at 3.34 million. It is then expected to decline gradually until 2015, when the growing Hispanic and Asian populations will begin pushing it to new highs, according to the most recent estimates from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. The number of white graduates, however, is expected to decline for the foreseeable future, from 1.9 million this year to 1.59 million by 2022. During that same period, the percentage of graduates with no family history of attending college is expected to rise. In short, the pool of students who are most likely to attend college--white, with college-educated parents--is shrinking fast. This article describes how admissions officers are preparing for a shrinking pool of traditional applicants.

A recently-released analysis of population data has confirmed the acknowledged trend of major diversification in America's higher education student body. After this year's high-school seniors receive their diplomas, the number of graduates nationwide will begin a slow decline until 2015, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. At the same time, the number of minority graduates is expected to grow rapidly. As Americans continue to migrate to the Sun Belt, states such as Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas will be particularly challenged to make progress towards ensuring that all students are ready for college. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

This article reports on the findings from the 2007 Community College Survey of Student Engagement. The survey determined the services that students need but are not receiving in their first four weeks of college. It finds that many new community-college students receive little or no attention from advisers in their first four weeks of class. The survey, commonly known as Cessie, also found that more than half of students did not discuss educational goals with an adviser in the first month and that about one-third did not attend orientation. Cessie has revealed several persistent issues since it began in 2001. Students have consistently rated academic advising as the most important service community colleges can provide. Yet a third of students continue to say that they rarely or never use advising. Cessie has also consistently shown that students who are academically underprepared are generally more engaged than academically prepared ones. Underprepared students are much more likely to take advantage of student services like tutoring, skills-development labs, and computer labs. That finding reflects the fact that, not only do underprepared students have to work harder to succeed, but that only the most dedicated high-risk students make it to the spring semester, when Cessie is conducted. To learn what happens to community-college students who don't make it to the second semester, a new project was started this fall, the Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE). The results from that survey are due out in Spring 2007. (Contains 1 figure.)

As community colleges have matured, many presidents' jobs--especially at the largest colleges in the country--have grown to become those of college president, entrepreneur, lobbyist, global ambassador, county leader, and fund raiser rolled into one. Their compensation has grown as well. At the largest two-year colleges and college systems in the country, median total compensation now tops $250,000, according to "The Chronicle"'s first comprehensive look at presidential pay at those institutions. A handful of seasoned presidents make more than $350,000 a year. "The Chronicle"'s survey also found that presidential compensation at community colleges isn't just about salary and retirement anymore. Like universities, many two-year colleges have begun offering their presidents housing and car allowances, deferred compensation, and an array of bonuses. Still, community-college presidents' compensation has not reached the level of that at four-year institutions. The presidents at the 68 largest two-year colleges, districts, and systems make much less than their counterparts at the 182 largest public four-year institutions in the country, according to "The Chronicle"'s survey. At those universities and four-year systems, median compensation is now almost $400,000 a year, $150,000 higher than at community colleges. Their pay also pales in comparison to the chief executives at private institutions-- despite the fact that most of the two-year colleges are many times larger than the private four-year institutions. (Contains 2 tables.)

Community colleges pride themselves on their open-door policies. For decades, access and enrollment, especially of traditionally underserved students, were their key markers of success. In recent years, lawmakers, accreditors, and the institutions themselves have begun demanding more. It is no longer enough for community colleges to get students in the door. Now they must get more of them out the door with a degree or a ticket to a four-year university. This shift has created a renewed focus on students. Community colleges across the United States are taking a hard look at what happens to students once they enroll. They are experimenting with new teaching methods, better advising, and creative financial-aid programs to help more students succeed. This article interviewed four students who faced a variety of obstacles, including poverty, poor academic preparation and the need to work full time, but managed to stay in college. They cited career counseling, financial aid, and nontraditional academic programs, but each also mentioned at least one professor who had been a mentor.

Of the 300 or so native languages once spoken in North America, only about 150 are still spoken--and the majority of those have just a handful of mostly elderly speakers. For most Native American languages, colleges and universities are their last great hope, if not their final resting place. People at a number of institutions across the country are working to document the languages so they do not become a lost part of American history. Where possible, they are trying to revitalize indigenous languages by teaching them to undergraduates, training schoolteachers, and creating language-learning materials. Here, the authors describe some of these efforts to preserve cultures by saving words.

Since 2003, more than 40 athletics programs have joined the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) ranks. Membership now represents about 500 colleges, and Wayne Baker, the group's executive director, expects to keep adding colleges. Membership in the association began declining slightly in the early 1990s, as private two-year colleges, many of which were struggling financially, cut their athletics programs or closed altogether. The recent growth in numbers is being fueled mostly by public colleges, some hoping to attract more students and others trying to satisfy a growing number of 18- to 24-year-olds who are demanding a traditional college experience, complete with athletics. Ashburn touches on key issues to be considered before adding varsity sports, including: (1) Paying for the programs; (2) Athletic scholarships; and (3) Reasons for competition. "If it's your goal to build a powerhouse and have a national championship, then you're going to have to recruit all over the country," says Robert C. Keys, president of Rockingham Community College, in Wentworth, N.C. "But that exceeds what is typically the community-college mission, which is that local kids have an opportunity to attend and play sports in their own backyard." Officials at Iowa Central Community College are using sports to attract local students, but are also interested in recruiting from out of state. "It's about enrollment," says Dee A. Brown, head coach of the men's and women's cross-country and track teams. A winning program has helped recruiting. That's important, Mr. Brown says, because he isn't just looking for bodies. "I'm trying to improve the quality of the programs," he says. "We're getting better kids. They're successful. They're working hard and doing well in school." Legislation passed by the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Board of Directors in April 2007 may send more top-notch athletes to community colleges in coming years. The rule, which was designed to crack down on fraudulent preparatory schools, says students can count only one core course they take after graduating from high school toward the academic requirements they need to play college sports. Some college-sports officials think the change, which takes effect August 1, could lead more high-school athletes with poor academic records to attend two-year colleges instead of preparatory schools. If those athletes choose community colleges, they will find many institutions vying for their attention.

Skepticism among lawmakers in Congress that colleges are adequately trying to control costs may hinder legislation that would extend tax breaks for higher education, according to the chairman of the influential Senate Finance Committee. Senator Max S. Baucus said skepticism on Capitol Hill has been fueled by anger over multimillion-dollar coaches' salaries, huge endowment gains, and the student-loan scandal. Senator Baucus said he would push legislation to combine the two existing tuition tax credits, the Hope and Lifetime Learning credits. He also cited growing momentum to make those credits refundable, which would benefit lower-income families that do not owe taxes. The Finance Committee will consider several proposals to overhaul the tax benefits, Senator Baucus said. Plans to expand the credits and the federal income-tax deductions for college expenses carry substantial costs, with Senator Baucus's proposal priced at up to $25-billion over five years. Under pay-as-you-go-budgeting, those costs would have to be countered with new revenue or budget cuts, with at least some of the cuts coming from higher-education benefits. Senator Baucus would not discuss what those offsets "might be, because he said they had yet to be finalized and that "groups will line up against them" if specific proposals are announced. He also said that costs could be made up at least in part from elsewhere in the budget. "I don't expect the brunt" of the cost-countering provisions, Senator Baucus said, to be "directly education-related." Cost savers rumored to be on the table include limits on the tax-free tuition benefits that colleges give their employees and possible taxes on college endowments.

Turtle Mountain Community College was established to serve Chippewa Indians, but, in any given year, roughly 10 percent of its students are not members of any federally recognized tribe. Many of the 34 other public tribal colleges and universities in the United States have similar makeups. In all, such institutions educate about 5,000 non-Indian students each year, most of them white, accounting for more than 15 percent of their total enrollment. The U.S. government, through the Tribally Controlled Community Colleges Act, provided $5,001 per student this year for the colleges' Indian students, but it does not provide money for the other students they serve, students who cannot afford to pay more than $1,000 or $2,000 a year in tuition and fees. So over the years, rather than raising tuition, tribal colleges in these largely rural, impoverished areas have turned to state legislatures for money to cover the costs of serving non-Indian students. These attempts have met with mixed success. Although some lawmakers believe that states should support tribal colleges as providers of higher education to people who otherwise would not have a shot at it, other legislators argue that they should support only state institutions. Only three of the 14 states that have tribal colleges provide money for non-Indian residents to attend them. North Dakota adopted a law last month that will make it the fourth. It has been a long, hard road: similar bills had been defeated in seven sessions since 1989. "The state and state legislators were ignorant in their understanding of this issue," says Cynthia A. Lindquist, president of Cankdeska Cikana Community College. "There was this idea -- this is an Indian issue, and the federal government takes care of that." Many legislators also thought that tribal colleges were not accredited (they are) or authorized by the state to operate (they are). To combat those misperceptions, college leaders courted the state's newspapers and traveled repeatedly to the capitol. The tribal colleges also had the state's teachers lobby and the North Dakota University system in their corner. Although the North Dakota tribal colleges count the state's recent legislative sessions as a success, they acknowledge that $350,000 a year, shared by five institutions, will not go far. Turtle Mountain President Jim L. Davis, who plans to use the money granted to his school to improve technology on the campus and increase graduation rates by providing more tutoring and advising services, points out that, concentrated on one or two things, it can make a difference, and the tribal colleges need to act quickly. The money the legislature gave the tribal colleges is a one-time appropriation. In two years, tribal-college leaders will have to fight for support all over again. It should be easier the second time around, they say, but they will have to show that they have put the money to good use.

Fourteen years ago, Bruce A. Jackson was doing his postdoctoral work at the Boston University School of Medicine and working nights teaching at nearby Roxbury Community College. But his exhausting shuttle between two colleges was about to come to an end. Mr. Jackson, a biochemist, had recently received word from the National Science Foundation that he had won his first research grant. He would be able to set up his own laboratory at Boston University and quit his night job at Roxbury. Then, just a few weeks after he heard about his grant, the president of Massachusetts Bay Community College, in Wellesley, called with an offer for him to start a biotechnology program there. After much deliberation--and his supervisors' assurance that he could continue his research at the medical school--he took the job at Massachusetts Bay. He has straddled the worlds of university research and teaching at community colleges ever since. In addition to the biotechnology program, he has built undergraduate programs in forensic science and marine biotechnology. At a time when both two-year and four-year institutions are struggling to graduate enough Americans in the sciences, almost all of the students majoring in biotechnology, forensic science, or marine biotechnology at Massachusetts Bay graduate. This article describes how Mr. Jackson succeeded where others have failed.

On paper, Mariella Castillo's family makes her likelier than other students to drop out of college. Her mother left school after the fifth grade, and her father has only a middle-school education. Her parents speak little English, and Castillo, who was born in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, spoke her first words in Spanish. Numerous studies have shown that students who, like Castillo, are the first in their families to attend college are likelier than others to need remedial math and English, to struggle in their courses, and to lack awareness of campus support services that could improve their chances of graduating. Many first-generation students also have parents who do little to help them stick with their studies. As such, college leaders have begun exploring ways to bring Hispanic families, among others, into academic life--cultural events, parent orientations and counseling sessions, and, now, asking family members to participate in classes. In this article, the author describes how various colleges such as the Dallas County Community College District, the University of New Mexico-Valencia, and Palm Beach Community College developed programs that tap into the families of Hispanic students to help them stay in college.

In 2003, the Lumina Foundation for Education assembled several dozen of the nation's leading experts on community colleges. They wanted to discuss raising transfer and graduation rates, particularly those of minority and low-income students, at two-year colleges. They wanted to build a campus-based movement to increase community colleges' graduation and transfer rates and decided to provide financial support to dozens of institutions across the country, creating a network of colleges that could share information with each other and eventually influence nearby colleges. To judge effectiveness, the foundation would closely track students before and after the interventions. While some ideas would fall short, the colleges would know what worked and what did not. The project, which began in 2004, was named "Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count," grew from 27 colleges in five states to 58 colleges in nine states. This article describes the research findings of the project. The Achieving the Dream researchers examined the historical data from the 35 colleges participating in the project by 2006 and found that in the fall of 2002, 61% of the students at the those colleges were required to take at least one remedial math course. The project's research also showed that if colleges could get students to complete at least one developmental course in their first semester, they were more likely to stay, and to pass their courses, than any other group of students, including those who did not need remedial work. The success of cooperative learning, a teaching method requiring students to work in small groups for five to 10 minutes in most class periods, is also examined in this article.

Adult students are not well documented, are frequently left out of discussions of higher-education policy, and are not fully understood by the colleges they attend, says a report ("Returning to Learning: Adults' Success in College is Key to America's Future") released this week by the Lumina Foundation for Education. As a result, those students often have no clear, viable paths to earning bachelor's degrees and establishing careers. A key flaw, the report says, is the gap between noncredit study--like remedial education and job-related training--and degree programs. Many adult students start in noncredit, skills-related programs and, after months and even years of effort, make no progress toward earning associate or bachelor's degrees. Moreover, many adult students get lost in a "hidden college" of noncredit courses, where their goals and educational achievements are a mystery to policy makers and colleges alike. No national data exist on the number of students enrolled in noncredit programs or what courses they take, and most colleges do not track those students. What is already clear, says the report, is that the aid policies of colleges, states, and the federal government typically do not do well in serving adult students in noncredit and continuing-education programs. Most financial-aid programs are designed with full-time students who are recent high-school graduates in mind. The 2004 National Study of Continuing Education, conducted as part of the Emerging Pathways Project, found that a majority of continuing-education students--who were 33 years old, on average--did not receive financial aid. Only a third of the students surveyed received student loans, and less than a third received private scholarships or state and federal grants. In addition to revamping financial-aid policies, the Lumina report says, higher-education leaders must throw out old notions of traditional and nontraditional undergraduates.

This article describes the issues addressed at this year's American Association of Community Colleges' annual convention. The discussion centered on student success, including how colleges measure it, promote it, and are held accountable for it. One of the chief concerns expressed at the meeting was the gap between the retention, graduation, and transfer rates of minority students, particularly black men, and those of other student groups. Researchers who spoke at the conference called the gap a "clear and present crisis" in higher education, and said reducing it should be community colleges' top priority. Members of the group also said that any accountability system for community colleges should focus on six elements: access, students' success in remedial courses, retention, progress toward earning degrees, students' goals, and general learning "outcomes," such as developing critical-thinking skills.

The National Labor College was created to increase educational opportunities for union members, and its bachelor's-degree programs, like labor studies and the political economy of labor, focus on material that is immediately applicable to workers' day-to-day union roles. The idea is to make those blue-collar workers more effective at negotiating, and to give them valuable credentials if their jobs on the production line or at the construction site disappear. The college's mission has become increasingly urgent as employers like General Motors and Ford, which long provided an entryway to the middle class, shed union jobs. At the same time, manufacturers that are hiring are often looking for highly skilled workers. Though the National Labor College is a niche institution, graduating about 100 to 120 students a year, it grapples with many of the same work-force training issues facing mainstream institutions: helping blue-collar workers compete in a global economy, providing companies with the right type of workers for their needs, and moving adult students through in a timely fashion. Most students enter the institution with credit for about two years of college-level work, in part because the institution grants credit for many trade-apprenticeship programs and for certain types of life experience. To get credit for life experience, students must take a three-credit "educational planning" course in which they create a detailed portfolio documenting competence in certain areas, such as contract negotiation and mediation, in which the college offers courses. It is a process that has been approved by the State of Maryland and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which accredited the college in 2004.

Since Jennifer L. Gigliotti was in elementary school, the 70-acre Ford Motor Company plant in northwestern Ohio has been a constant in her life. Her mother and father have worked the production line at the Maumee Stamping Plant for almost 60 years combined, making bumpers and body panels for generations of Ford vehicles. So when her father's name came up in a plant lottery allowing him to nominate her for a job, she applied and landed a production position that paid $21 an hour. Last September, Ford announced that it would be closing the Maumee Stamping Plant in 2008. Employees had two months to decide if they wanted to take a buyout package or try to transfer to another plant. She was one of 38,000 Ford workers nationwide who took the buyout. To politicians, corporate executives, and college officials, the solution to the situation here and in dozens of other factory towns nationwide seems simple: have the workers go back to school, learn different skills, and get a new job. This article discusses the problems facing both the higher-education institutions trying to enroll displaced workers and displaced workers who have little interest in going to college.

For years administrators at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, in Richmond, Virginia, had a hunch that students were not taking full advantage of the college's advising services. Still, they were disappointed two years ago, when the Community College Survey of Student Engagement revealed that their students rarely used career services and only occasionally sought academic advising. So in the summer of 2005 the college rolled out a new orientation program that features a campus tour, career counseling, and academic advising prior to registration. The advising office now schedules follow-up meetings with students each semester until they attain second-year standing, at which point they switch over to faculty advisers in their disciplines. Preliminary data suggests that students who participate in the orientation are more likely than those who do not to stay in college beyond their first semester. J. Sargeant Reynolds's experience is not unique. The 2006 engagement survey, indicates that colleges across the country need to take a serious look at their advising operations.