Brief guide to US higher education

Higher education system in US: Public universities and colleges are under the purview
of state, not federal government. Institutions are delineated as being public or private.
Each institution has the autonomy to determine its own program requirements,
typically following broad degree guidelines set by the states or by specialized
accrediting agencies. The U.S. higher education system is a high-cost, high-aid system,
and financial aid structures are extensive and complicated. American colleges and
universities access and success for students from both low-income families and
communities of color, concepts commonly and collectively referred to as “equity and
inclusion” is becoming increasingly important. Undergraduate students account for the
majority of total U.S. postsecondary enrollment. Accreditation by private
organizations ensures the quality of higher education institutions and academic
programs to students, the postsecondary education. Often charged with multiple
missions, higher education associations can represent institutions as a group,
administrative areas in higher education, or professional fields or academic disciplines.

Institutional Leadership and Operation: Private institutions retain significantly higher

levels of autonomy than public ones. As a result, institutional leadership structures and
operations also vary based on institutional size, mission, and organizational culture.

The Student Experience: The student experience does not only happen in a classroom
and through an official academic curriculum.

The Road to Academic Excellence

This book brings together nine case-studies, telling the story of 11 institutions
undergoing a complex transformational process as they strive to become world-class
research universities, either by following the “upgrading” or the “starting a new” path
to academic excellence. The case studies suggest that establishing a new institution is a
relatively faster and more effective approach to becoming a world-class research
university. Still, new research universities face special challenges. Another significant
finding from this book is the fact that outstanding research universities do not operate
in a vacuum.
This book also show that even top research universities find it hard to achieve a
harmonious balance between equipping their students with technical skills and
rigorous methodologies while imparting the ethical values needed to pursue scientific
inquiries in a socially responsible manner. Research universities is one component of a
comprehensive tertiary education system.

Chapter 1: Governance and Management

Good boards must be competent stewards. Boards must understand the complexity of
their responsibilities by fully grasping and appreciating the mission, the organizational
structure, their role within shared governance, the need for outreach to a wide array of
constituencies, and the necessity of defining their governance role carefully and
sensitively. Governance requires the sublimation of individual and collective egos,
with clear rules to put aside distracting questions about who has “too much power.”
Management is the glue that links governance to strategy. Management requires a
clear line of authority with rules that engage and bind.

Chapter 1: Historical and Structural Framework of Governance

Each university has a unique story. Trustees need to know the history and purpose of
their own institution. Those responsible for trustee appointments should select
members who are knowledgeable about the purposes of higher education and ideally
are without an uncompromising ideology or partisan position. The structure of board
governance can change according to the push of institutional heritage and the pull of
environmental forces. These forces include individual demands from students and their
families, societal pressures, and the influence of both private and public patrons.

Chapter 1: Quality Engines

Almost all education institutions share a common undergraduate structure and

purpose:

• The first is an academic core, composed of a group of faculty guilds that have
primary responsibility for the academic content and quality of the enterprise.
• The second is an administrative shell, responsible for the acquisition and distribution
of resources and for the management of the enterprises that support the faculty guilds
as well as the interaction with external governance of boards and political institutions

Quality of Research universities are the highest level and the greatest amount of
internal academic quality possible. The goal is to gather inside the university the most
research productive faculty, the brightest students, and the highest quality academic
and cultural environment achievable

Chapter 2: Management

These are core principles that define successful academic management: Money
matters; Performance counts and Time is the enemy.

These two highlight the significant challenges of managing universities:

• The university as a charmed place of pure thought and free inquiry, driven by the
pursuit of truth and nurtured by the open exchange of conflicting ideas.

• The university is an efficient generator and transmitter of the useful knowledge that
creates the American economic dream of a good life for individuals and international
leadership for the nation

Chapter 2: Understanding Academic Organization

Three main factors have contributed to university permanence: historical antecedents

that established strong intellectual traditions, the application of democratic principles
that has encouraged individualism in the expression of educational ideals, and the
richness of diversity among those who claim legitimacy in the execution of the
organizations’ missions. Attempts to understand and characterize organizations,
academic and otherwise, focus on common elements: environment, strategy and goals,
work and technology, formal and informal structures, and people. Theories About
Academic Organizations are organized anarchies, loosely coupled systems, and
professional bureaucracies. The culture and climate of a specific college or university
often are a function of the relationship between its faculty and administration, for
which there is an inherent natural tension flowing from the incompatibility of
professionalization and formalization.
Chapter 4: Characteristics

Higher education in America is an endlessly complex industry. These institutions have

diverse missions and compete in many highly differentiated markets. When Americans
talk about higher education they often use the words colleges, schools, and universities
interchangeably. Ranking of American colleges and universities has reached epidemic
proportions. The goal of ranking has been to identify university or college
characteristics assumed to be of interest to the public, often aimed at prospective
students and their parents. Universities and nations believe that one of the key
elements in the dynamism of American business and industry has been the
achievements of its university- based research establishment.