International Higher Education (IHE) publishes insightful, informed, and high-quality commentary and analysis on trends and issues of importance to higher education systems, institutions, and stakeholders around the world.

The question of whether guns should be permitted on college and university campuses in the United States reflects the tension between two competing perspectives. America has both a robust gun culture and an equally robust (if less well known) gun-control culture. The gun culture is as American as apple pie: There may be as many as 300 million civilian guns in the US, or about one for every person (Winkler, 2011a). The gun-control culture also has a long history in the U.S. The issue of guns on college campuses is presently a subject of vigorous debate, stimulated by newspaper and on-line headlines. This article asks the question: Does either the MoreGuns or the BanGuns position improve public safety? Two major national studies have used similar data to examine the relationship between gun ownership and degree of criminal activity--and they reached diametrically opposed conclusions. One found that allowing citizens without criminal records or histories of significant mental illness to carry concealed handguns deters violent (Lott & Mustard, 1997). The other concluded that statistical evidence that these [concealed-carry] laws have reduced crime is limited, sporadic, and extraordinarily fragile, and it suggested that making it easier to get a firearms permit is associated with higher levels of crime (Ayres & Donohue III, 2003). Any successful proposal to either permit or restrict the presence of guns on campus must be consistent with both the U.S. Constitution and the constitutions and laws of the states. Since the ostensible purpose of campus firearms policies is to improve campus safety, describing the actual incidence of crime on campus might help clarify the issues over which the MoreGuns/BanGuns camps are contending. Such data are available because the Student Right to Know and Campus Security Act of 1990 authorizes the Department of Education to collect and analyze incidents of crime on every U.S. college campus. This law, known as the Clery Act, requires each institution to annually report and disclose, among other things, the number of alleged campus incidents of criminal activity reported to the campus or local police agencies. This is the source of the numbers reported in this article, even though Clery Act data have been criticized because institutions may differ in their interpretations of the self-reporting requirements and may fail to report some offenses in order to protect their reputations. In addition, students may be reluctant to report crimes, and campus counseling centers may withhold information based on confidentiality concerns. The data reported in this article are based on all reported on-campus incidents in U.S. degree-granting, not-for-profit campuses. Three analyses are presented. The first is the incidence of specific types of campus crime in 2010; the second, comparative rates of violent criminal behavior on campuses and in the general population; and the third, campus and general-population data related to the two violent crimes of murder and manslaughter. Additional resources are provided. Language: en

Abstract This chapter employs an interpretation of human evolution to argue that leadership is collectively and misleadingly used, and then provides the word leadership with a more precise meaning. The development of the potential for human influence is then reviewed. Evolutionary processes empower the brains of species with similar adaptations needed for their survival and reproduction. Considering the development of cognitive modules as prehumans and humans moved from the Forest to the Gardens and then to the State can offer novel ways of thinking about the evolution of human leadership. The development of language, theory of mind, culture, and morality decrease reliance on the hierarchy to control the behavior of others. An evolutionary view confirms that human influence is connected to genetic predispositions, individual differences, environments with various characteristics manifested under different circumstances, the nature of others in the group, and the culture in which these all exist.

"Speaking of Higher Education: The Academic's Book of Quotations." The Journal of Higher Education, 78(4), pp. 486–487

Proposals to make governance “more efficient” by reducing or limiting the faculty role in shared governance are likely to diminish institutional effectiveness.

The first three chapters of the 2001 edition of The Uses of the University, originally published in 1963, are among the most brilliant, literate, and insightful essays in the higher education literature. The more recent chapters gathered in this fifth edition are informative but, for the most part, lack the sweep and poetry of the originals.

Would recruiting presidential candidates from nontraditional sources increase the gender and ethnic diversity of college presidents? Based on data from American Council on Education surveys, this study develops four career trajectories to the presidency and how they are related to the demographic and professional backgrounds of presidential incumbents in different types of institutions. The study suggests how presidential aspirants and higher educational institutions may increase the gender and ethnic diversity of the pool from which successful; applicants are selected.

Policy scholarship and policy-making are, and ought to be, two distinct knowledge-producing activities whose insights may inform, but are not dependent on, each other. Criticisms that higher education scholarship is not valuable to practitioners is based on a misleading linear view of how social knowledge influences behavior. Policy interests are ultimately better served when scholars determine their own long-term research agendas, rather than attempt to respond to policy makers' current: issues.

Institutions of higher education are always under pressure to become more efficient and effective. In response, many have attempted (either voluntarily or under mandate) to adopt new management systems and processes that were originally designed to meet the needs of (presumably) more efficient business or governmental organizations. One contemporary observer, referring to "the hum of corporate buzzwords" in the academy, has commented that "a person would be hard pressed these days to find a college that doesn't claim to be evaluating or reshaping itself through one of these approaches" (Nicklin, 1995, p. A33). This "hum" is not new; it has been a feature of the higher education landscape for at least the past forty years. Among the first of these processes was the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS), initially developed by Rand for use by the Defense Department and adopted by many higher education institutions in the early 1960s. Among the most recent are Business Process Reengineering (BPR), and Benchmarking. In between, business management scholars have documented over two dozen management innovations that were proposed between 1950 and 1990 (Pascale, 1990), some of which were adopted by institutions of higher education. The development and advocacy of new management approaches in both nonacademic and academic management continues, and at an increasing pace. In the business sector these new ideas are often "presented as universally applicable quick-fix solutions--along with the obligatory and explicit caution that their recommendations are not quick fixes and will require substantial management understanding and commitment. As many managers will attest, the result has been a dazzling array of what are often perceived as management fads--fads that frequently become discredited soon after they have been widely propagated" (Eccles & Nohria, 1992, p. 7). Many of these management innovations, when adopted by higher education, also exhibit the characteristics that led Allen and Chaffee (1981) to define them as fads; they are usually borrowed from other settings, applied without full consideration of their limitations, presented either as complex or deceptively simple, rely on jargon, and emphasize rational decision making. Following Allen and Chaffee, I use the term "fads" to refer collectively and non-pejoratively to certain higher education management innovations enjoying brief popularity, a use consistent with the definition in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (p. 444) of a fad as "a practice or interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal." Not all management innovations are fads. Some (for example, fund accounting) may diffuse and be adopted rapidly through institutional networks to become an accepted part of the system. On the other hand, fads, by definition, are ultimately not widely adopted throughout an organizational system. This study is grounded in two basic propositions: first, that it is possible to use the literature to trace the evolution of a management fad from the time of its creation to its eventual abandonment and second, that management fads may diffuse between nonacademic and academic systems. These are not novel notions. Informal observations of one or both of them have been noted previously by higher education scholars. For example, commenting on the movement of management innovations between the nonacademic and academic sectors, Baldridge and Okimi (1982) said "Every six months, it seems, a new fad sweeps through management circles. First it strikes the business community, then government, and finally education. Think back a few years and the mind stumbles on the carcasses of fads once touted as the newest 'scientific' way to manage an organization." These fads may "arrive at higher education's doorstep five years after their trial in business, often just as corporations are discarding them" (Marchese, 1991, p. 7) . Once the fad has been introduced into higher education, a standard sequence is suggested: "First, the system will be widely acclaimed in the higher education literature; institutions will eagerly ask how best to implement it. …