This is the first Chronicle Research Services report in a three-part series on what higher education will look like in the year 2020. It is based on reviews of research and data on trends in higher education, interviews with experts who are shaping the future of colleges, and the results of a poll of members of a Chronicle Research Services panel of admissions officials.

After Tom Ketchum had been sentenced to death for attempting to hold up a railway train, his attorneys argued that the penalty was “cruel and unusual” for the offense charged. The appeal failed and he became the first individual—and the last—ever to be executed for a crime of this sort. He was hanged in 1901; in a macabre ending to his life of crime, his head was torn away by the rope as he fell from the gallows. Tom Ketchum was born in 1863 on a farm near the fringe of the Texas frontier. At the age of nine, he found himself an orphan and was raised by his older brothers. In his mid-twenties he left home for the life of an itinerant trail driver and ranch hand. He returned to Texas, murdered a man, and fled. Soon afterwards, he and his brother Sam killed two men in New Mexico. A year later, he and two other former cowboys robbed a train in Texas. The career of the Ketchum Gang was under way. In their day, these men were the most daring of their kind, and the most feared. They were accused of crimes that were not theirs, but their …

John Gregory Bourke kept a monumental set of diaries beginning as a young cavalry lieutenant in Arizona in 1872, and ending the evening before his death in 1896. As aide-de-camp to Brigadier General George Crook, he had an insider's view of the early Apache campaigns, the Great Sioux War, the Cheyenne Outbreak, and the Geronimo War. Bourke's writings reveal much about military life on the western frontier, but he also was a noted ethnologist, writing extensive descriptions of American Indian civilization and illustrating his diaries with sketches and photographs. Previously, researchers could consult only a small part of Bourke’s diary material in various publications, or else take a research trip to the archive and microfilm housed at West Point. Now, for the first time, the 124 manuscript volumes of the Bourke diaries are being compiled, edited, and annotated by Charles M. Robinson III, in a planned set of eight books easily accessible to the modern researcher. Volume 4 chronicles the political and managerial affairs in Crook’s Department of the Platte. A large portion centers on the continuing controversy concerning the forced relocation of the Ponca Indians from their ancient homeland along the Dakota-Nebraska line to a new reservation in the …

Ensemble concert presented at the UNT College of Music Concert Hall.

Ensemble concert presented at the UNT Winspear Hall.

Ensemble concert presented at the UNT Winspear Hall.

Ensemble concert presented at the UNT Winspear Hall.

Ensemble concert presented at the UNT Winspear Hall.

Ensemble concert presented at the UNT College of Music Kenton Hall.

Concert Band concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Jazz concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Performance Hall.

New Music concert performed at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall.

Trombone studio concert performed at the UNT College of Music Concert Hall.

Concert Choir concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Orchestra with student soloists concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Jazz concert performed at the UNT College of Music Kenton Hall.

Wind Symphony concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Fifth Grade Honor Choir performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Symphonic Band concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Trombone studio concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Percussion ensembles concert performed at the UNT College of Music Concert Hall.

UNT and guest chorus concert performed at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall.

New Music concert performed at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall.

Concert band concert performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.