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State spending for higher education in the US grew at the fastest rate during the 2005-2006 fiscal year, allowing most colleges in the nation to regain their financial balance after a series of tight budgets for five years. A new analysis by the Center for the Study of Education Policy, at Illinois State University reported that the total general-fund appropriations post-secondary education rose by 5.3 percent to $66.6 billion from 2005.

Employers value a four-year college degree, many of them more than ever. Yet half of those surveyed recently by "The Chronicle" and American Public Media's "Marketplace" said they had trouble finding recent graduates qualified to fill positions at their company or organization. Nearly a third gave colleges just fair to poor marks for producing successful employees. And they dinged bachelor's-degree holders for lacking basic workplace proficiencies, like adaptability, communication skills, and the ability to solve complex problems. What gives? These days a bachelor's degree is practically a prerequisite for getting one's resume read--two-thirds of employers said they never waive degree requirements, or do so only for particularly outstanding candidates. But clearly the credential leaves employers wanting. While they use college as a sorting mechanism, to signal job candidates' discipline and drive, they think it is falling short in adequately preparing new hires. The tension may lie partly in changes in the world of work: technological transformation and evolving expectations that employees be ready to handle everything straightaway. And perhaps managers are right to expect an easier time finding employees up to the task--after all, three times the proportion of Americans have bachelor's degrees now as did a generation or two ago. While some institutions tout their career centers, internship offerings, and academic programs designed with industry input, others argue that workplace skills ought to be taught on the job. Higher education is meant to educate broadly, not train narrowly, they say: It is business that is asking too much. And if college graduates are not up to scratch, some campus leaders ask, why do employers keep hiring them? The unemployment rate for Americans with bachelor's degrees, after all, is less than 5 percent; for those with only high-school diplomas, it is nearly double. Well, because even though employers may kvetch about college graduates, they generally make better employees than those who finished only high school. If nothing else, having gone through four--or five or six--years of schooling proves that they can stick with a task.

American colleges have to be in India. After all, no other country in this century, save China, is likely to be as important geopolitically, financially, demographically, or culturally. Globally savvy students ought to study here. There are research opportunities for political scientists and public-health specialists, economists, and ethnomusicologists. And, simply put, India, where half of the 1.2-billion-and-growing population is under 30, needs help--building enough universities, wiring enough classrooms, and training enough teachers. American colleges seek to build campuses, partnerships, and research opportunities in India, but red tape, poor facilities, and other problems keep getting in the way. Opening Indian universities to international collaboration will continue to be a demanding chore, and preparing Americans to work here a challenge.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was in the university-building business. The elite institute is back in the university-building business. In addition to the thousands of faculty research collaborations around the globe, the university over the past five years has once more engaged in ambitious efforts to create new, independent institutions, this time in Abu Dhabi, Russia, and Singapore. Other such projects, in Asia and Latin America, are also on the table.

Economists in both India and China see signs of slackening economic activity, from currency fluctuations in India to a falloff in imports, electricity consumption, and real-estate sales in China. A weakening of the economies in the two countries could be worrisome news for American colleges, for which an uptick in full-paying foreign students has been the one bright spot amid recent budgetary woes. China and India are by far the two largest sources of international students in the United States; together, they account for more than a third of all foreign students on American campuses. Mark W. Harris, president of ELS Educational Services, a language-instruction provider, remains bullish about the flow of international students. But he cautions that colleges need to be savvier about their overseas recruiting instead of relying so heavily on certain countries. Many educators, however, hesitate to draw a strong connection between the economy and international enrollments--and history is on their side.

Students in the University of Rhode Island's International Engineering Program (IEP) spend a semester studying at an overseas university and another six months interning at a company abroad; at the end of five years, they earn two degrees, in engineering and a foreign language. Despite the extra academic demands, nearly a third of Rhode Island's undergraduate engineering students, about 300 over all, enroll in the IEP. By contrast, fewer than 4 percent of engineering students nationally study abroad, according to the Institute of International Education, a rate far lower than that of their classmates in the humanities, social sciences, and even business. While other colleges have considered cutting foreign-language programs, Rhode Island's have grown, due in large part to the IEP. Only the University of Michigan graduates more German majors each year, and Rhode Island is one of just seven institutions with a federally recognized national center for intensive language instruction in Chinese. There have been other, less-anticipated benefits of the IEP: Women have enrolled in engineering in increasing numbers and the academic quality of Rhode Island's engineering students has improved. More than half of all IEP students receive the university's top academic scholarship.

In the 2009-2010 academic year, women accounted for nearly two-thirds of the 270,600 American students going overseas. Indeed, the proportion of men studying overseas has remained the same--or flatlined, to put it less charitably--for more than two decades. Sending a broader cross-section of majors abroad has not made a dent in the gender gap because, it turns out, women in those fields study overseas at rates disproportionate to their numbers. From its inception, more than a century ago, study abroad has had a reputation as a female pursuit, the lasting image one of Seven Sisters students steaming overseas for a grand European tour of art and culture, a refining gloss for a marriageable young woman. "Women were sent overseas to be culturally educated ladies who could entertain their husbands' business partners," says James M. Lucas, of Michigan State University, who has written extensively about men and study abroad. "The mantra became that study abroad is feminized and a dalliance." Recent research suggests that the two sexes respond to different messages, and different messengers, when deciding to study abroad. Whatever the cause, the trend worries many in the field, who say an international experience has become even more valuable for students. Mr. Lucas, assistant to the dean for international academic student life at Michigan State organizes short study-abroad programs for incoming freshmen. He writes different letters to male and female students to promote the trips. Women get the "traditional" message, which highlights the cultural and experiential benefits of going overseas, while the letter to men "makes it sound more like a privilege," he says. "I tell them, 'This is how you are going to distinguish yourself at a big university and, later on, in a global work force.'"

Several stumbles by American colleges in setting up programs with foreign partners have called attention to problems inherent in making such arrangements. State University of New York Empire State College has allowed a university in Albania to deliver diplomas in its name. In North Dakota, state auditors issued a scathing review of dual-degree programs at Dickinson State University, reporting that they had admitted hundreds of unqualified students, mainly from China, and awarded them degrees even when they failed to meet graduation requirements. Then there is Houston Community College, which has been in the midst of its own desert storm. Students at the Community College of Qatar, in the tiny Persian Gulf emirate, protested after learning that they would not earn degrees from the Texas college, as they had expected to. Those degrees would allow them to transfer to four-year universities. Houston officials maintain that they were working with Qatar's first community college only in an advisory role, but that students could earn Houston diplomas by submitting their transcripts for review. These incidents have renewed concerns about whether, in embarking on ambitious international ventures, American colleges are putting themselves at risk, legally, financially, and reputationally. In their quest for global prestige and, often, dollars, are they rushing abroad without doing their homework? After all, experts note, even internationally savvy institutions, like George Mason University and Michigan State University, have occasionally misstepped in their efforts overseas.

Sun Yat-sen University's East-meets-West curriculum is distinctive, but its embrace of liberal education--education across disciplines, meant to provoke broad thinking--is far from unusual. At a time when China and its East Asian neighbors are trouncing U.S. students on international exams, educators in these countries are nonetheless adopting, and adapting, that quintessentially American approach to learning. Some of the top institutions in the region, like Sun Yat-sen and Taiwan's Tunghai University, are setting up selective liberal-education programs. In South Korea, a declaration by the late Apple chief Steve Jobs that equal parts liberal learning and technological know-how were critical to the computer giant's success has kindled interest in the humanities. This coming fall, all university students in Hong Kong will be required to take a new, fourth year of general-education courses. These undergraduate-education reforms, promoted by government officials and business leaders as well as educators, stem from a basic economic calculus: The countries' current educational systems have produced stellar test takers but few innovators and inventors. The global economy is placing new demands on international hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore and opening up China's once-closed markets to overseas investment. Not only do new hires in these places have to collaborate with counterparts around the globe, they're also competing for jobs. And they're not faring well, dinged for inflexible thinking, inability to work in teams, and lack of creativity. A survey of Hong Kong employers rated local graduates far inferior to those educated abroad. In mainland China, more than one in 10 graduates have yet to find a job a year later, even in a booming economy. Casting their eyes West, reformers have latched onto American-style liberal, or general, education as a way to foster more nimble and adaptable thinkers. But although the efforts share the goal of broadening out the narrow, professionally oriented degree programs favored by local institutions, they may have little in common with the U.S. model, and even less with one another. Some take a canonical Great Books approach, others emphasize interdisciplinarity, while still others are a hodgepodge of courses in public speaking, foreign languages, and computer literacy--in short, anything outside major requirements. Curriculum is just one of many challenges raised by the push toward liberal education.

Over the last two years, University of Georgia students and faculty members have worked with community leaders in Sandersville and surrounding Washington County to tackle some of the area's most pressing problems, among them, reversing a doctor shortage and improving air quality to meet federal standards. Their work is part of an effort, now in seven Georgia counties and soon to expand to an eighth, to link local communities with the university's vast resources. At a time when land-grant and research institutions across the country are seeking deeper engagement with their states and regions, the University of Georgia has repurposed the traditional agricultural-extension model for community and economic outreach. Its Archway Partnership takes the university into the community, where full-time staff members stationed in each participating county work with civic leaders to identify local needs and connect towns with expertise across the university and the state-university system. University officials say that Archway, which recently won a regional outreach award from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and now is up for a national prize, has significant benefits for faculty members and students as well, providing them with opportunities for research and hands-on experience through internships and service-learning projects. "Land-grant institutions were founded on the notion that scholarship could matter in daily life," says Arthur N. Dunning, the university's vice president for public service and outreach. "We're building on that heritage." Georgia is not alone in rethinking what it means to be a 21st-century land-grant university. The push to reinvigorate the mission of these institutions, founded to provide practical training in fields like agriculture and engineering to students of all economic classes, dates back nearly a decade to the release of a report by the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities. It called for a new "covenant" between public research universities and their surrounding communities and for making engagement central to the whole institution, not just a handful of departments or colleges.

Once named one of the nation's most economically distressed cities, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has since revived its fortunes, repopulating its vacant downtown with offices and restaurants and capitalizing on its strength as a state capital to build a more stable employment base. Now, in the next stage of its economic rebirth, the city wants to reinvent itself as a college town. In 2005, after local community and business leaders pressed for the creation of a local college closely tied to regional work-force needs, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology opened. This spring the private, nonprofit institution, supported largely by city and state grants and local philanthropy, graduated a class of 13, its first with students who started as freshmen. Its advocates believe the university can help stanch an outmigration of college graduates and end an underproduction of science and technology degrees. The university's business backers--who helped draft the curriculum and who teach many of the courses--also hope it can build up the local high-tech labor force. But Harrisburg University also has its skeptics, who question whether an upstart institution is needed when 20 other colleges, including Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg, in nearby Middletown, sit within easy reach of the city center. Complicating matters is the continuing national economic slump, which has threatened the financial well-being of many established colleges, never mind a fledgling university without a large endowment. Indeed, campus leaders do not expect the university to hit its break-even enrollment of 500 students for another year. Amid challenges, however, the institution has won over some former skeptics. "They're still young," says Don L. Francis, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania, "but I think they've done a good job of developing a niche."

Global education has become a big business, as evidenced in the exhibit hall at the annual conference of Nafsa: Association of International Educators, where hundreds of vendors pitch a wide range of products and services. The world has become a kind of global classroom, with greater numbers of students flowing across borders each year. The number of students who study outside their home countries is projected to grow from three million this year to eight million by 2025. Both colleges and governments have become more aggressive about tapping into that market, resulting in a big increase in recruiting services, image advertising, and data-driven market research. American students have come to expect that their colleges will offer them a range of international experiences. However, many colleges lack the capability, the capacity, and, often, the cash to undertake such efforts on their own. That is where outside vendors, both for-profit and nonprofit, come in. "International education is a sector that combines the ideals and ethics of higher education with the imperatives of an intensely competitive business environment," says Markus Badde, chief executive of ICEF, an international-education consulting and training company. The rapid growth of international education, and the companies it has spawned, has brought new scrutiny to the industry. The 2007 study-abroad investigation by Andrew M. Cuomo, New York's attorney general, in which more than two dozen colleges and independent providers were issued subpoenas, helped accelerate a movement toward professionalization. As a result, colleges are likelier than before to take a close look at the business arrangements they make with study-abroad providers and others.

Reports of swine flu have led some colleges to pull students and faculty members out of Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak, and to cancel study-abroad programs there. But even as the number of new cases appears to be falling, the health scare offers some lasting lessons for colleges, says Gary Rhodes, director of the Center for Global Education at Loyola Marymount University. Just as they learned from the London subway bombing, earthquakes in China, and other incidents, colleges can use this latest episode to strengthen their response to hazards encountered in overseas work, says Mr. Rhodes, whose Los Angeles-based organization supports an online clearinghouse for information about health and safety in education abroad. "Working your way through this outbreak," he says, "can prepare you to respond, whether swine flu gets worse now or whether you're reinforcing the health and safety of your study-abroad program in all aspects." This article offers suggestions for colleges on how they can respond to challenges such as swine flu scare.

Just 1 percent of East Carolina University undergraduates study overseas. But thanks to a pair of enterprising faculty members, a growing number of students are having international experiences without ever leaving the Greenville, North Carolina campus. The university's Global Understanding program uses inexpensive and relatively unsophisticated technology--a low-bandwidth video link and e-mail chat--to connect East Carolina students with counterparts at 23 institutions in 17 countries and five continents. While other colleges have made use of computer hookups to bring a global perspective into the classroom, the East Carolina model is distinctive in that it links each participating class with partners at several foreign universities, exposing students to multiple points of view. Its low-cost, low-tech approach has allowed the university to build relationships with institutions in less-well-off countries like Namibia and Moldova and to sustain such partnerships even as budget constraints have forced many institutions to curtail their travel, both overseas and out of state. In just five years, the program has gone from a one-time pilot, hatched over a coffee break, to a mainstay of the university's general-education curriculum. Freshman-level Global Understanding course sections consistently fill up during the first hours of registration, says Rosina C. Chia, assistant vice chancellor for global academic efforts, and other faculty members are adapting the model for use in their own teaching.

For the first time in decades, the economic headlines are hitting Hanover residents where they live. In February, Dartmouth College, a member of the Ivy League and the region's second-largest employer, announced it was laying off 60 workers, all in nonfaculty positions, and eliminating another 90 jobs through early retirements and attrition, part of aggressive cost-cutting measures after the college's endowment was thrashed in the stock market. Many public universities and poorer private colleges, of course, are being forced to slice much more deeply than Dartmouth, which will excise $72-million from its budget through 2011. Still, Dartmouth's predicament, and that of other top colleges stung by the stock-market slump, has a certain resonance: How is it that the recession is being felt here, at this wealthy and storied institution? What effect will it have on the ambitions and expectations of a place that, by any measure--the growth of the endowment, the caliber of the faculty and students--was on a clear upward trajectory? After all, wasn't higher education supposed to be recession-proof?

This article describes how a university tackled some of the basic challenges of internationalizing its campuses. The University of Washington created the Global Support Project, a one-stop shop for faculty and staff members doing research or running programs abroad. The project is run by senior administrators but relies on designated go-to people in key offices who can offer expert advice in dealing with obstacles overseas. The Global Support team also identifies potential impediments to international work. Its members developed new job codes and tailored benefit rates to better suit international hires. It established a new, university-affiliated, nonprofit organization to help Washington projects register in foreign countries, a common requirement for hiring employees, opening bank accounts, and leasing space.

A number of Iraqi-American academics, meeting this month for a conference on how to rebuild Iraq's battered higher-education system, said the Iraqi government's plan to send thousands of students abroad annually would lead to a "brain drain" of a new generation of the nation's top talent. Prime Minister Nuri al-Malaki has proposed spending a portion of Iraq's oil wealth to send 10,000 students abroad to Britain, the United States, and elsewhere each year for the next five years to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees. This article reports on the goal of the Iraqi Academic Conference which was to draw together Iraqi and American academics to discuss ways to improve and support Iraqi higher education and to develop collaborations between universities and faculty members in the two countries. Depleted of resources and isolated during the years of Saddam Hussein's rule, Iraqi higher education came under further siege during 2006 and 2007, years of heavy sectarian violence that followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Hundreds of Iraqi professors were killed, and thousands more fled the country. Classes were rarely held. The security situation has since improved, but Iraq needs help to restore its once-flourishing higher-education system. Universities must cope with outmoded laboratories and libraries that are short of needed books and reference materials. Research has languished, and many academics who remained in the country are unfamiliar with the latest pedagogical and technological developments. American academics could form review teams to assess the current state of Iraqi medical schools or other colleges or programs in Iraqi universities. They could make recommendations, provide continuing advice, and even help set up laboratories. The focus could not be solely on building up the capacity of Iraqi faculty members and students. Iraq also needs help restoring its academic resources, like its libraries and museums.

Many college leaders are coming to understand that, in a global economy, they need to produce graduates and develop faculty members with strong international skills. The recognition has led them to take new, more deliberate approaches to work abroad. In the past, individual faculty members have had connections with colleagues overseas, but those relationships rarely advanced beyond specific research interests and have had little institutional impact. U.S. colleges are now getting serious with partners overseas: a growing number of college leaders say they want arrangements that involve multiple departments and disciplines, square with institutional goals, and tackle global challenges like sustainable agriculture or clean energy. Universities with significant resources may focus on developing select strategic relationships; others may nurture existing faculty and department partnerships; others may need to be prepared when unique opportunities present themselves. All colleges, however, can be more thoughtful and tactical in working overseas.

Across the U.S., colleges like Anne Arundel Community College (Maryland) are devising strategies and designing curricula to meet the demands created by the substantial troop shifts. They are adding degree and certificate programs and refashioning or expanding others, in areas as diverse as network security, procurement and contracting, and nursing. The colleges are attempting to anticipate the midcareer training needs of military personnel and government contractors who are moving. They are trying to prepare local residents to fill positions vacated by defense workers who opt not to make the move. In places where the armed forces are scaling down or pulling out completely, they are stepping in to teach workers new skills and counsel small businesses that have relied on a military clientele. Those familiar with the armed forces' national base-realignment process, which is commonly known as BRAC, say colleges--in particular community colleges, with their experience in work-force education and their ability to build up programs quickly--will play a vital role. This article discusses the role colleges play in military's restructuring and in readying both communities and individuals for the change.

Educational exchanges and fellowships are not new; the best known, the Fulbright Program, is more than 60 years old. But the Community College Summit Initiative Program, as this fledgling effort is known, reflects a growing recognition among American government officials that the United States must do a better job in its public-diplomacy outreach to those who are not members of their countries' socioeconomic elite. The program, now in its second year, also underscores the view that community colleges, with their expertise in work-force education, may often be the best places for future leaders in developing economies to get training. The program grew out of the first U.S. University Presidents Summit on International Education, in January 2006, at which Karen P. Hughes, who was then under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, announced plans to double the number of foreign students attending community colleges in the United States. Community Colleges for International Development, a national consortium of two-year institutions also known as CCID, then submitted a successful proposal to run the program, which covers students' tuition and fees, housing, and other study-related expenses while they complete a one-year certificate or a two-year associate degree.

This article reports that the number of American students traveling overseas to study continued to rise in 2006, capping a decade of unprecedented growth. The increase amounted to 8 percent, according to the Institute of International Education, which tracks such figures in its annual "Open Doors" report. Over the past 10 years, the number of students participating in overseas-study trips for academic credit has increased nearly 150 percent, to almost 241,800 in the 2006 academic year. Some study-abroad advisers question whether the upward trend can be sustained amid the global economic downturn. The institute's data also suggest that Americans are opting for less traditional study-abroad destinations. While Western Europe continues to be the most popular choice, the number of U.S. students studying in Argentina, China, Ecuador, India, and South Africa each increased by more than 20 percent over the previous year. China now ranks as the fifth-most-popular destination for American students, more than 11,000 of whom studied there in 2006. Some study-abroad advisers hypothesize that the continuing, worldwide financial crunch could accelerate current trends, leading students to select less expensive destinations or shorter programs.

When NetJets, a private aviation company, announced it would keep and expand its operational headquarters in Ohio, Richard T. Santulli, chairman and chief executive, didn't give credit to tax breaks or any of the other incentives states and cities typically use to woo or retain corporations. Instead, he said the critical factor was the state's higher-education system. Leaders of Ohio's public colleges persuaded the company that they had the breadth and depth of expertise to meet NetJets's needs, including aircraft-maintenance training at Columbus State Community College, logistics specialists at Wright State University, and a top-ranked culinary program at the University of Cincinnati. So in March, after months of considering suitors like Raleigh, North Carolina, and Fort Worth, Texas, the private-jet service announced that it would create 800 new jobs and invest in a $200-million expansion at the international airport in Ohio. Ohio's success in keeping NetJets is part of an aggressive, coordinated, and highly ambitious campaign to transform the state's higher-education system into a driver of economic growth. Ohio's success can be largely credited to two men: Eric D. Fingerhut, chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, who devised the plan, and Governor Ted Strickland, who appointed him to the post almost two years ago and has been a strong supporter of higher education to the state legislature.

This article reports that at Rollins College, a liberal-arts institution, professors are paid to get away for overseas travel so that their students will learn to be more globally minded. The college's president, Lewis M. Duncan, has pledged to send every faculty and staff member with teaching duties abroad once every three years. Since 2006, 128 Rollins employees, about two-thirds of those eligible, have used the $3,000 grants to conduct individual research projects or to travel internationally with faculty-led groups to destinations including China, Ecuador, and Tanzania. Rollins is among a growing number of colleges across the country that are trying to create more-global campuses by cultivating a faculty of internationalists. Indeed, a recent report by the American Council on Education pointed to the expansion of support for faculty members to study or conduct research abroad, or to lead overseas programs, as a bright spot in colleges' otherwise uneven efforts at internationalization.

Many public-university administrators are watching from the sidelines as the nation's credit markets seize up, trying to assess the impact on universities' and state bonding agencies' ability to issue debt. Already, California and Massachusetts have asked for federal help to cope with bills because municipal-bond markets remain largely closed. Interviews with finance and facilities administrators at more than a dozen state universities or college systems across the country suggest that, thus far, few public colleges have been forced to scale back, delay, or cancel long-term construction projects because of the current financial turmoil. In addition, most of them say they expect to be able to borrow to pay for future construction, albeit at higher interest rates than in recent years.

Over the past decade, partnerships between a university and a private company to recruit and educate foreign students in a college-preparatory program have become a commonplace in other English-speaking countries. The reason is clear: pathways programs enable colleges to tap into a much broader pool of students, including those who may not qualify on their own for admission because of language difficulties, incomplete course work, or limited study skills. The partnerships are not without controversy, however. Critics argue that they outsource core educational functions and that academic standards may well be compromised in pursuit of profits. For universities, where state-budget woes have limited international recruiting, a deal with a deep-pockets partner seemed the only way to get foreign-enrollment numbers up.

After decades of neglect, African universities have become the focus of intense interest by U.S. universities, foundations, and donor agencies convinced that without stronger higher education, the continent's development prospects will remain bleak. This attention is notably different from such efforts in the past in sub-Saharan Africa, which have often been limited in scope and, many say, reflected American, not African, priorities. American universities and other partners say they are determined to build long-term relationships that will allow African universities to guide their nations in this century, in much the same way Asian universities helped fuel phenomenal regional growth in the 1990s. The National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges is leading one of the most ambitious efforts. Along with several other educational and humanitarian groups, its members are looking at ways to build collaborations of a decade or more between U.S. and African colleges. The partnerships, which could involve multiple institutions, would focus on critical fields such as agriculture, health care, and teacher training. They would also seek to strengthen the African collaborators in areas like institutional management, fund-raising capacity, and faculty and curriculum development. The U.S. Agency for International Development has announced that it will provide $1-million for 20 grants of $50,000 apiece to begin planning partnerships. And more than 130 senior international officers from U.S. research universities and other institutions are meeting this week in New Hampshire to talk about how best to build long-term collaborations. African university leaders and other higher-education experts say they are eager for such partnerships to develop, provided that they are true collaborations. However, these collaborations are faced with several challenges, such as financing, infrastructure and limited resources. Despite the challenges, many educators say it is worth pressing ahead.

Goucher College's picturesque campus, on 290 leafy acres just north of Baltimore, plays well in college-admissions materials. Officials at this private liberal-arts institution, however, hope students will also be attracted by the opportunity to get away. Two years ago, Goucher began requiring all students to earn some academic credit abroad, one of possibly just two American colleges to make overseas study mandatory. Eric Singer, associate dean of international studies, says Goucher officials wanted to "convey in no uncertain terms that a cross-cultural experience is critical." They also hope that the requirement, which comes with a $1,200 voucher to help defray some of the expense, will make the college distinctive to prospective students. With academic, business, and political leaders in agreement that international study is one of the best ways to produce globally literate citizens, administrators at other institutions say they are closely following Goucher's experience as they seek to increase their own foreign-study participation rates. Administrators have wrestled with concerns over cost and capacity as they seek programs of sufficient variety and quality to accommodate growing demand. In this first phase, at least, Goucher has found itself relying on short, faculty-led trips as it begins the slow process of vetting longer-term programs. Some faculty members and students, however, have questioned the educational value of such brief stints abroad. A number of professors say they sometimes feel in over their heads as they struggle to be both academics and travel coordinators. Faculty buy-in is important, international-education experts say. Without it, foreign study risks becoming disconnected from the rest of the college experience.

What does it take to run an international-education office? A detailed understanding of obtuse federal regulations, the ability to recruit foreign students on a shoestring budget, and a talent for creating study-abroad programs that are both academically rigorous and highly popular. That was the message in dozens of sessions last week at the annual conference of Nafsa: Association of International Educators. The meeting, which drew more than 9,300 people to Washington, illustrated the increasing complexity of the field for international educators. The discussions ranged from the pragmatic to the lofty. One session on the finer points of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, more commonly known as Sevis, drew hundreds of attendees eager to hear government officials explain new and existing regulations for how international students are registered and tracked in the United States. Other workshops focused on how colleges can and should develop study-abroad programs that create "global citizens," draw nontraditional students, and are less damaging to the environment.

In economically struggling communities, small private colleges are helping generate development projects in large part as a matter of survival. Unlike research universities and land-grant institutions, which have long viewed regional economic development as central to their missions, most liberal-arts colleges are relative newcomers to this work, and they face real constraints. In contrast to powerhouse institutions like the University of Pennsylvania, which is largely credited with remaking West Philadelphia, these smaller colleges may not have the wealth to make upfront investments or to absorb the risk incurred in such deals. King's College in northeastern Pennsylvania purchased and renovated a nearby building, turning it into a student residence. In old mill towns and declining manufacturing centers, in the Rust Belt's former company towns and in the rural South, small, private liberal-arts institutions like King's are assuming a greater responsibility for community and economic development. They and their alumni are raising money to purchase abandoned buildings. They are relocating college facilities, like bookstores and residence halls, to buoy up urban cores. They are working to better connect faculty experts with local entrepreneurs. Civic leaders say they are looking to colleges not simply to spruce up their city centers but also to help position them in an economy that values smarts more than strength. Because they operate on thin financial margins, without the buffer of a large endowment, leaders of small, private colleges say they have to be especially cautious in taking on economic-development projects, and they also take care not to undertake projects that deviate too far from their core educational missions.

Elite colleges have made headlines in recent years with financial-aid plans aimed at enrolling more low-income students. Despite those efforts, the proportion of financially needy undergraduates at the nation's wealthiest colleges and universities actually dropped between the 2004-2005 and 2006-2007 academic years, according to a "Chronicle" analysis of federal Pell Grant data. Pell Grants are awarded to students from families with annual incomes of less than $40,000. This article examines this trend and reports the efforts made by colleges to increase admission of low-income students.

With the dollar's continued swoon and grim news on the job front, American economic competitiveness has become a central theme in the presidential election. Stumping in Ohio and Pennsylvania, old-line industrial states hit hard by the flight of manufacturing jobs, Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have called for renegotiating the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, to help American workers. (John McCain, the Republican nominee, supports the 14-year-old trade pact.) Scholars, too, say the economy is at a critical juncture, but many worry that the increasingly isolationist rhetoric on the campaign trail could prove a distraction from efforts to stimulate innovation and improve the country's competitive position. In this article, several scholars were asked to weigh in on the major policy debates concerning economic competitiveness, including globalization, America's competitive position, and educational investments.

Three reports on last April's shootings left Virginia Tech under a mountain of recommendations--roughly 400 in all. So far the university has dealt with some of the most significant ones. Virginia Tech established an emergency-notification system, created a team to assess at-risk students and employees, and hired additional police officers and mental-health counselors. University officials, who have already spent more than $10.4-million on such efforts, say they will make more changes in the coming months. Those actions have earned praise from some observers, including the chairman of a state panel that investigated the shootings. Others worry, however, that instead of wrestling with the thorniest challenges, like reducing bureaucratic obstacles or sharing information about troubled students, Virginia Tech has concentrated on safety enhancements like installing locks on classroom doors. Virginia Tech officials say they are weighing many changes. Last fall the university named students, administrators, and faculty and staff members to a pair of committees that have now sifted through the recommendations from the state and federal investigators, and Virginia Tech's own review panel. The two committees--one of which focused on security and infrastructure, the other on "human dimensions"--culled the suggestions, which ranged from highly specific to vague. The university had already made some of the proposed changes, such as creating a cellphone-alert system, says Richard E. Sorensen, dean of the college of business and head of the security group. The university has enhanced its security and mental-health staffs, adding 11 new police officers, three new counselors, and three case managers; and has also created a threat-assessment team, comprising officials from counseling, legal affairs, and other key offices.

For colleges in the United States seeking a foothold in South Korea's formerly insular higher-education sector, the lure seems to be part location, part alumni lobbying, and part desire to be part of the country's rapid transformation. The South Korean government's newfound openness to overseas universities is helping persuade American college leaders to take a closer look at forming joint educational ventures in the country, frequently spurred by local alumni groups of Koreans who have studied abroad. Rather than rushing to set up overseas campuses, most American colleges are adopting cautious approaches, seeking first to expand faculty collaborations, sending more students to study in South Korea, focusing on graduate programs and on forming research alliances with high-tech companies. One university president, however, feels that South Korea is often overlooked as American colleges surge into other Asian countries, advocating that Koreans' entrepreneurial nature makes them a solid match for American higher education: "it's a natural fit."

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the ambitious $10-billion research institution that Saudi Arabia plans to open in 2009, has signed agreements with three leading universities to help it design a curriculum and hire faculty members. The agreements, with Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Univeristy of Texas at Austin, are the first of several such deals the institution expects to announce with foreign colleges in the coming weeks. Under the arrangements, the three American universities will each receive $10-million over five years to collaborate on research projects with Saudi faculty members, along with another $10-million apiece that the participating departments can spend as they choose. The deals were signed despite worry among some faculty members at the California institutions about potential limits at the Saudi university on academic freedom and possible discrimination against women and others in Saudi Arabia, a religiously and socially conservative kingdom. Officials at the American universities, however, and their Saudi counterparts play down such concerns, saying that members of the teaching staff at the Saudi institution, known as Kaust, will have the academic and cultural freedoms of professors at other international research universities.

A lawsuit that challenges the policy of Wheaton College, in Massachusetts, to charge its regular tuition to students studying abroad on less-costly independent programs is the latest sign of scrutiny into the finances of overseas education. Wheaton officials say the tuition policy is stated online and in program materials, maintaining that charging home-school tuition, while providing financial aid puts study-abroad opportunities in reach for many more students and is similar to those in place at many other institutions. Overseas-study costs also are often bound up in broader tuition debates, particularly at private institutions, where tuition and financial aid are closely linked. As foreign study expands in popularity and prestige, many observers say colleges need to do a better job of explaining their policies to students and their parents. The Forum on Education Abroad, a consortium of American and overseas colleges and independent providers, is expected to issue guidelines that emphasize such openness.

This article illustrates the importance of preparation for professors who take students overseas. A University of Washington study-abroad program in Ghana that was cut short last summer after the medical evacuation of half of its participants highlights the potential hazards associated with programs led by individual faculty members who may lack the experience of seasoned study-abroad administrators. Such risks are of increasing concern to colleges. Short-term, faculty-organized trips are proliferating, as colleges see them as a way to expand access to, and participation in, study abroad. Risk-management experts and campus study-abroad administrators say the success of such programs often depends on the expertise of their faculty leaders and, particularly in developing countries, on the support of local partners, who provide educational opportunities, housing, or other services. They also say that risk can be greatly diminished through proper training of faculty members and careful vetting of overseas providers. Seventeen students enrolled in the for-credit program and traveled in August to a remote, rural village where they were to work with a local nongovernmental organization on projects like HIV-AIDS and malaria prevention, livestock management, and microfinance. Students said the conditions in Ghana were not what they expected.

Virtually every college today feels the pressure to prepare its graduates for an increasingly international world, one in which an understanding of other cultures, economies, and political systems is critical for success. Traditionally, American higher education has relied on study-abroad programs to supply students with many of those perspectives, but institutions are starting to take a hard look at what they're teaching their students on the campus, and realizing they're coming up short. In a survey conducted for the Association of American Colleges and Universities, more than 60 percent of employers polled said recent graduates lacked the skills to succeed in a global economy. This article describes how colleges and universities are instituting new international-education requirements or seeking to infuse a global perspective in once-insular disciplines, like engineering and some of the sciences, in response to this gap. They are using technology to connect with classrooms abroad and trying innovative ways to involve their international students and professors more deeply in campus life. They are also connecting with internationally oriented local businesses and community groups to provide service-learning opportunities with an international flavor.

This article reports on the findings of the state panel on the Virginia Tech massacre. A state panel that investigated last spring's massacre at Virginia Tech has issued a harshly worded report that says the university erred in the way it handled a mentally disabled student who became a killer and in how it dealt with the immediate aftermath of the shootings. The report was one of several developments involving the shootings in the last several weeks, including the release of an internal review by the university. The panel found that the Virginia Tech police made a mistake in "prematurely concluding" that the first two murders on April 16, which occurred in a campus dormitory room, resulted from a domestic dispute and that the killer had probably left the campus. The report said the university waited much too long--about two hours--to issue a campuswide alert about those murders. While it found fault with the response to the attack, and made many recommendations for improvements, the panel did not call for the firing of any officials.

Educators, mental-health officials, and law-enforcement officers often do not share information about troubled students because they are confused by what they can disclose under complex and overlapping privacy laws, according to a report on the Virginia Tech shootings. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and two other Bush cabinet secretaries worked on the report. The "Report to the President on Issues Raised by the Virginia Tech Tragedy" called on the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services to issue guidelines clarifying how colleges, police departments, and social-service agencies can share information legally under current federal laws governing student records. The federal agencies should study whether the laws should be changed to balance students' privacy with safety concerns, the report said. A chief finding of the presidential report is that restrictions on information sharing pose a significant hurdle to identifying potential threats on campus. The report said it is the differing interpretations of federal law that must be clarified. The laws have exemptions for health and safety, but the report found that campus, law-enforcement, and mental-health officials have "differing interpretations and confusion about legal restrictions." Among other recommendations, the report said state and federal agencies should do a better job at ensuring data is entered into the federal database used to approve gun purchases. Just 23 states, including Virginia, currently provide any information about people disqualified from possessing firearms for mental-health reasons. The report says the federal government should encourage states to provide additional information but did not propose any specific changes in federal gun laws.

When Mary Cullinan became president of Southern Oregon University in September, the 5,000-student public university in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains was in dire financial shape. A $4-million shortfall had forced university officials to dip deep into its financial reserves, draining them to perilously low levels. The path back to financial health will not be easy. A budgetary retrenchment laid out by Cullinan in March cuts 22 academic programs, eliminates the German major, and merges three colleges into one. Cullinan says that several years of tight state budgets, combined with declining enrollment, left Southern Oregon with few options. Southern Oregon is not the only university in the state to face cutbacks. Six of the Oregon University system's seven campuses--all but the University of Oregon--had their budgets reduced during the last two-year budget period. This article discusses how Oregon colleges and universities are responding to these budget cuts and addresses the question of whether budget downturns truly cause regional institutions to struggle more than flagship universities.

This article describes Fisk University's drive to improve its graduation and retention rates. Fisk's six-year graduation rate is more than 10 percentage points above the national average for four-year institutions. Seventy percent of Fisk alumni go on to graduate or to professional schools. No other institution produces as many black doctorates in the natural sciences. At Fisk, low-income and first-generation students receive special support services, financed through the Department of Education's TRIO program for disadvantaged students. Advisers in the Leadership, Development, and Academic Enrichment program monitor the academic progress of the 200 participating students, identify scholarship and internship opportunities, and maintain a lending library for students unable to afford textbooks. Other programs focus on certain at-risk groups. One provides extra academic advising for students on endowed scholarships. Another, Fisk Fellows, is meant for male students, who make up just 30 percent of the student body and who, administrators believe, have a harder time adjusting to college than women do.

This article deals with issues of community-college transfers of students from Alamance Community College to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This article discusses the involvement of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation in the issue of community-college transfer. The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, based in Lansdowne, Va., near Washington, helps bright but needy students go to college and graduate school. In its research, the foundation has found that top colleges often overlook community-college students. To encourage elite institutions to take advantage of the community-college talent pool, the foundation awarded $6.8-million to eight colleges, both private and public, to develop or expand programs to improve their recruitment and retention of low-income students from community colleges. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the grant recipients, will work with community-college advisers to identify academically able students and provide them with specialized counseling and programs to prepare them to transfer. In this article, the author discusses some of the future plans and forthcoming projects of the foundation.

In this article, the author discusses the Democratic victories that have raised expectations on college campuses in part because a number of the gubernatorial candidates, including Deval L. Patrick, emphasized themes of access and affordability in their campaigns. Mr. Patrick, the governor-elect of Massachusetts, traveled to the University of Massachusetts system's flagship campus, in Amherst, and made a vow: He would champion the state's public colleges. In Arkansas and Iowa, the incoming governors have called for the expansion of need-based student aid. New York's new governor, Eliot Spitzer, has said he will provide the state's two public-university systems with more money so that they can raise their academic quality and become more affordable. After a number of lean years, many college officials are hoping that newly elected leaders will open an era of greater interest in and support of higher education. Moreover, an analysis of a decade's worth of data compiled by Illinois State University shows that, when it comes to spending state tax funds on higher education, states with Democratic governors differ little from states with Republican leaders.

Legislatures are set to convene in January in 43 states. This article presents the key issues that are expected to be debated by legislatures in states this year. These issues include: (1) Annulment of a controversial law in Texas that guarantees students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes admission to any public college in the state; (2) Tuition increases; (3) Governance and accountability in higher education; (4) Student preparation; (5) Educational benefits for immigrants; and (6) Support for controversial research involving stem cells.

Colorado's College Opportunity Fund is an educational program that affords public universities greater administrative freedom while diminishing financial support from the state. Under the new system, students receive stipends from government while universities are allowed greater freedom setting tuition and issuing bonds. This article discusses the details of the program while addressing the concerns of supporters and critics.