The President’s remarks on his free community college proposal didn’t address the concerns raised by higher-ed analysts; in fact, it simply created new ones. When he initially unveiled the plan, President Obama stated that free community college would be limited to students who maintain a 2.5 GPA and make good progress towards completing their degrees. However, […]
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Moody’s Investors Service has a new report on the state of American public higher-education, and it isn’t pretty. Among the negative trends it discusses: The decline in enrollment. Moody’s reports that more than half of America’s public universities saw no growth or declines in fall 2013. The growing importance of tuition. Tuition now constitutes almost half of public […]
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What does the state of on-campus housing tell us about the state of American higher-ed? A lot, as it turns out. Last week NBC News described the growth of a market in palatial student dormitories. Critics have long known that in promoting themselves, colleges tend to highlight their luxurious facilities—not their academic programs. Students, in […]
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When student activists tried to block some commencement speakers this year, conservatives generally denounced these efforts as censorship. Sure, these protesters were mostly aligned with the campus left, a group that has historically attempted to stifle free speech. These efforts were consistent with the decades of illiberality on our college campuses, a subject we and […]
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President Obama announced today an executive order that will make the student loan program a worse deal for taxpayers. Though the federal government already allows some students to cap their loan repayments at 10 percent of their monthly incomes, the President hopes to expand the program. Students who borrowed before October 2007 or who haven’t borrowed since […]
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Do you need a college degree to get elected president? Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who doesn’t have one, wants to know. As Walker begins contemplating his 2016 presidential bid, John Fund reports, his incomplete education is raising concerns among Republicans. Walker started college at Marquette University but dropped out to join the Red Cross. […]
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Here’s some more evidence for those who wonder whether a college degree is “worth it.” The online job portal CareerBuilder announced last week that more employers are requiring their employees to hold an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. 27 percent of the surveyed employers said that they increased “educational requirements” for obtaining a job in the past five years, […]
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If you’re interested in the worrisome growth of student debt, check out my new essay for National Affairs. I explain how the student debt crisis came about, explore some of the suggested reforms, and offer my own solution. In short, I argue that the federal government should stop calculating loan awards on the basis of individual colleges’ cost of […]
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“What is it about Berkeley that stands out?” asks a woman who appears to be a professor at the beginning of Frederick Wiseman’s new four-hour documentary At Berkeley. She talks about making quality education available to all and transforming the future of both California and the country’s “diverse population.” But she is not identified. At Berkeley does not […]
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Are American colleges really the best in the world? One group that really matters–the business leaders who want to hire college graduates–seem skeptical. A recent poll conducted by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation found that while 37 percent of business leaders believed that the United States has the best system of higher-education, a sizable 32 […]
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Cross-posted from E21 President Obama delivered a mixed performance on higher-education issues in his State of the Union address. As college tuition continues to grow, debt loads increase, and delinquency and default rates on that debt rise accordingly, it’s more important than ever that students come out of college with promising employment prospects. To that […]
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The victories in the fight to reform higher-ed are often dispiriting because they remind us of the enormity of our challenge. Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) announced that it had successfully pressured the University of Colorado to reinstate a course that CU had cancelled on the grounds that the professor, Patti […]
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The Chronicle of Higher Education has kindly validated our complaints about higher-education excess. According to the Chronicle’s analysis, 42 private college presidents received over one million dollars in total compensation in 2011, while the median compensation was $410,523. Though many of the top earners preside over some of the largest and most prestigious institutions–Chicago, Penn, […]
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As the higher-ed bubble bursts, the biggest losers are graduate students, who train for years for a profession with rapidly dwindling employment prospects. As enrollments decrease, tenure-track jobs vanish, and universities hire more administrators than faculty, these students want to protect their investment in higher-ed. So many push for unionization. Grad students achieved a significant victory yesterday, when the NYU administration recognized NYU and NYU-Poly’s graduate student union. NYU withdrew recognition […]
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Christina Paxson, Brown’s president, is displaying an admirable commitment to free speech in the wake of the Ray Kelly heckling incident. In contrast to college presidents who let censorious protests slide, Paxson is calling for a serious investigation into the events of October 29, when Brown students and Providence community members prevented Kelly from speaking. […]
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Student journalists from George Washington University have uncovered a piece of stunning news: Despite GW’s claims to the contrary, its admissions office has begun to favor wealthier students in the admissions process. Essentially, students who do not rank among the top applicants are wait-listed if admissions officers are unsure whether GW can “afford them.” Students […]
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The Department of Education released new information about student loan defaults yesterday, and it isn’t pretty. A dismaying 10 percent of student borrowers are now defaulting on their student loans within two years of repayment, and nearly 15 percent are defaulting within three years. These are the highest default rates since 1995. The data bear […]
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Buzzfeed has a must-read story about the challenges facing colleges that seek to undermine the higher-ed status quo. Altius Education, a for-profit education company, partnered with the non-profit Tiffin University to create “Ivy Bridge College,” a program within Tiffin that offered associates degrees in practical fields. Atius and Tiffin designed Ivy Bridge hoping that its […]
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Though Mitch Daniels has recently made news for attempting to remove Howard Zinn from Indiana’s classrooms, it’s his own institution that merits closer attention. A parent of a current Purdue student wrote into the Wall Street Journal today to reveal that the school is requiring all its students to read “No Impact Man,” an extreme […]
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Spring is always a riveting time for observers of American higher education. Indeed, the end of the school year portends two time-honored rituals for our colleges: the announcement of embarrassing information they hope students will forget over the summer and commencement. The latter is especially exciting because it lends higher education an imprimatur that has […]
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Gallup reports today that most Americans understand the higher-ed crisis at least partially. Indeed, a new survey shows that 59% “strongly agree” that colleges and universities should “reduce tuition and fees.” While they’d be crazy not to think this, it’s reassuring that a large percentage of the population recognizes that higher-ed institutions are mostly to […]
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The Association for Asian American Studies just made news by becoming the first American academic organization to support a boycott of Israeli universities. In case you were wondering, the AAAS did not also call for a boycott of any other Asian universities located in countries with less-than-stellar human rights records. They seemingly believe that Israel is […]
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Originally run as a Manhattan Institute Policy Brief. The growth of student-loan debt has raised a vexing question: Is a college degree still a good investment? No segment of American higher education has faced greater scrutiny than for-profit colleges and universities. For-profits differ from traditional institutions in important respects. They are accountable chiefly to […]
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Another day, and another awful consequence of our student debt problem has come to light. The New York Fed just released data showing that growing levels of student debt have impacted homeownership and car purchasing patterns. In the past, 30-year-olds who at some point owed student debt were more likely than those who didn’t to […]
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If you’re worrying about your child’s student debt obligations, you might want to check up on your parents, too. The Chronicle of Higher Ed reports that adults over 60 have the fastest growing student-loan debt and that their growing delinquencies are leading the Department of Education to garnish Social Security checks. Stung by the Great […]
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The Manhattan Institute has just published my new report on the promise of for-profit colleges. I argue that though these institutions face greater scrutiny than any other sector of the higher-ed industry, we should celebrate their potential to accommodate untraditional students. I acknowledge for-profits’ shortcomings; however, I conclude that if the Department of Education is concerned about loan repayment, completion […]
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To the careful observer of American higher education, the questions Neil Gross raises in Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? might seem self-explanatory. Indeed, such an observer could reason, everyone knows that American universities are run by left-wing academics who bar conservative students and faculty from moving up the ranks. In addition, he might say, […]
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Peter Sacks’s recent piece attacks a straw man. He argues against advocates for eliminating all federal aid to colleges, a powerless faction if there ever was one. In so doing he sidesteps the very real failings of our higher-ed policy. Sacks claims that capitalistic systems requires educated citizens. Far from controversial. However, he contends that since […]
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Though many commentators have expressed skepticism over the future of traditional higher-ed, at least one group anticipates a bright future: real-estate developers. The Wall Street Journal reports today that some of the largest developers in the United States are gobbling up land to make way for palatial student dorms. Why? As it turns out, student housing is basically recession-proof: […]
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In an attempt to buck conventional wisdom, Nicole Allan and Derek Thompson of the Atlantic are tackling what they call “The Myth of the Student-Loan Crisis.” In a neat little infographic, they argue that both the cost of tuition and student debt obligations are lower than we think, that college is always and everywhere a wise investment, […]
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