I just met with Terry Smith, executive vice president and dean for academic affairs at Columbia College (Missouri). He liked my ideas on how to boost retention and encouraged me to share them with you on this blog.

So, here’s the smorgasbord I presented to him. Perhaps you might find one or two items worth tasting:

Attract the sorts of students likely to persist at your college. And here, I’m going beyond high school GPA and SAT:

Step 1. Identify a pool of your college’s seniors who are happy at your institution. One low-cost way to recruit them is to use the cap-and-gown order form. Simply attach a request for volunteers to be interviewed.

Step 2. Hire an excellent interviewer. Rather than a retention consultant, use an ethnographic researcher or journalist to interview each of those students to answer this question: What made Columbia College such a good fit for you and a good...

Of course, no one set of criteria can apply to all courses or instructors, but I thought I’d share with you the four questions I usually ask myself when developing a course:

Will it substantially improve my students’ skills in general reasoning, writing, and oral communication?

Especially in an undergraduate class, my most important goal is to help my students grow in those crucial skills, which will serve them for a lifetime, in and outside their career.

Does the course optimize the ratio of student benefit to instructor time?

Sure, my students would benefit more if I created an individualized program for each student, gave lots of writing assignments on which I provided careful line-by-line feedback, and made myself available outside of class 24/7. But the opportunity cost to me of that would be too great.

At the other extreme, I could just trot out off-the-cuff lectures...

Now that we’ve entered June, many of us finally feel we can take a deep breath and slow down a bit.

Leave it to me to flog you back into action, at least for a little while.

I’m going to put on my faculty developer’s hat here. (I was on the POD national core committee for three years.) Now, when perhaps you’re not as harried by exigencies as during the school year, may be a good time to muse about how you could take the courses you’ll teach this summer or fall to new heights.

Just imagine if all your students were rapt, fully engaged in your lessons and assignments. At the end of the course, not only did they learn much of enduring value, they stood as one, and awarded you a standing ovation (and superlative student evaluations).

Of course, there’s no magic formula for achieving that, but here are a few low-tech tips that may boost your odds:

++ Often, the best ideas for...

Following publication of America’s Most Overrated Product: A Bachelor’s Degree, I received a fat packet from a Harry Stille, who, after retiring from the South Carolina Legislature, started the Higher Education/Policy Center.

That packet contained a variety of statistics on the four-year colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live. I was particularly saddened to see that, except for UC-Berkeley, which attracts an unusually high-performing student body, the graduation rates, especially at the public colleges, is frighteningly low.

Of course, the term “four-year” college is a misnomer. Most students at such institutions don’t graduate in four years … if at all. Here are the six-year graduation rates for these colleges and the 25th %ile of their students’ SAT scores.

San Francisco State: 880 SAT, 40 percent...

Have you ever met someone — perhaps at a conference — like this? He or she is just a little too eager to befriend you. And before long, you know why: The person is looking for a job or otherwise wants something from you? I don’t know about you, but I usually find myself then wanting to resist. My unconscious thought is something like, “This person doesn’t like me, s/he’s just trying to network me. And if s/he were that good a job seeker, she wouldn’t need to do that.”

So, whether you’re trying to land a job or otherwise profit through networking, you might want to remember the ancient Chinese aphorism, “If you ask before a proper foundation is laid, it will not be granted.”

Or if you feel you don’t have the time to lay much of a foundation, actor Spencer Tracy’s advice pertains. He said, “Never let ‘em catch you acting.” I say, “Never let ‘em catch you networking.”

My Chronicle article America’s Most Overrated Product: A Bachelor’s Degree argued that four-year colleges should not admit underprepared students.

A number of posters to the Chronicle Forum disagree. Here are their arguments and my responses:

Criticism #1: Marginal students struggle even with a college degree. Why would you discourage them from getting even that?

My Response As my article documented, every year, four-year colleges enroll hundreds of thousands of students who graduated in the bottom half of their high-school class, the large majority of whom learn little, acquire much debt, and have only a 1/3 chance of graduating even if given 8 1/2 years.

Those students will likely learn more and have a brighter career future if they choose an option other than four-year college: an apprenticeship program, community ...

A few weeks ago, the Chronicle published my article, America’s Most Overrated Product: A Bachelor’s Degree.

One of that article’s contentions is that each college’s student recruitment materials be required to include a report card containing such information as graduation rates and average student growth in thinking skills, writing, etc. disaggregated by SAT score bands.

I’ve been pleased that the article has generated national interest: It has been republished in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Dallas Morning News, and I was interviewed about it on a number of shows including National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation. I’ve received so many supportive emails from professors, administrators, students, and former students.

The article has...

I’m delighted to be a guest blogger here. After all, you have so much potential for making a difference. I’ll do my best to make my posts worth your time.

I’ll be writing about:

- Improving higher education: Why we must, how we should.

- How to make the most of a career in higher ed.