Higher Education

Curriculum

All students in the Higher Education Program (HEP) are required to take eight courses. These must include the four Higher Education Program Core Courses and two additional higher education or higher education-related courses. The remaining two courses are electives of the student's own choosing.

Higher Education Core Courses

The four Higher Education Program Core Courses offer students a strong foundation in higher education administration, governance, and policy. They strengthen students' understanding of the origins and complexity of contemporary issues and practices and enhance students' professional skills. In addition, because all students take these courses together, the core courses foster close relationships between students and faculty and create an intellectually and professionally invigorating higher educational community.

A-702: Proseminar on Higher Education

Offered exclusively to students in the Higher Education Program, examines the core values, structures, processes, language, and personnel of American higher education; increases students' understanding of critical issues facing colleges and universities; and increases students' repertoire of strategies and management skills for tackling these issues.

The diversity of the academic and professional interests of students is evident in the topics they choose to investigate for research papers in courses. View a sample of abstracts of student papers from the Proseminar in Higher Education. (34KB pdf)

A-704: Colleges as Organizations

Offered exclusively to students in the Higher Education Program addresses, primarily through case studies, specific policies and practices that shape the nature of colleges and universities as organizations and as places to work.

A-412: The History of American Higher Education

Offers an overview of the development of American higher education from the colonial period to the present, giving students an understanding of the origin of contemporary practices and dilemmas.

A-709: The Economics of Colleges and Universities

Examines the critical higher education trends and funding issues facing colleges and universities today. It explores how price, cost, and value shape what is provided and who goes to college from the perspective of institutions.

View all Higher Education and Higher Education-Related Courses

View the HGSE Course Catalogue