Higher Education Policy

This article examines the rise and fall of a golden age of engagement between American and Chinese institutions of higher education. We assess the political context, examine institutional and demographic variables associated with successful initial joint efforts, and explore why current relationships are unraveling. The authors do not assume alignment in the interests promoting initial cooperation between the United States and China but a convergence of mutual interests. The paper discusses operational realities underpinning support for engagement (a need for coordination in organizational...

This article is a follow-up to a recent ROPS article on strategic budgeting at colleges and universities. In recent years, several colleges and universities have explored alternative strategies for developing operating budgets. In part, this exploration was driven by the desire for transparency among various constituent groups and the need to tie budgeting to campus strategic planning. While developing a new budgeting process can be a very intense and involved process, the ability to implement a new budget process requires the same level of commitment and involvement. A successful...

The COVID-19 pandemic is all-absorbing, requiring university leaders and academic staff to deal with major transitions in teaching to online formats, probable declines in revenue, hiring freezes and lay-offs and attempts to plan for what lies ahead.

To navigate this difficult path, universities need to intensify their institutional data collection and analysis. Yet most universities, especially outside of the United States and a few other countries, have limited formal policies and strategies for gathering institutional data and for employing trained staff to generate the...

All universities and colleges in the United States were deeply and immediately affected by the sudden appearance of Covid-19. Two-year public community colleges suffered the same fate as their university neighbors: the immediate needs were to close up operations, shift instruction to online and distance modalities and keep students engaged and focused when all around them collapsed. But the community colleges suffered under constraints not shared by many of their university neighbors: limited discretionary, little or no funding from endowments to fall back on and students whose limited...