Peter Salins is University Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University and director of its graduate program in public policy.
Lots of applause greeted Governor Andrew Cuomo’s January 3rd announcement, with Senator Bernie Sanders at his side, that New York’s City and State Universities would be “free” for all New Yorkers from families earning $125,000 a year or less. The Excelsior program, as it is known, billed as the first in the nation, has been […]
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Politicians and pundits who argue that college today is financially unsustainable and functionally obsolete are not just arguing for greater efficiency and more reliance on educational technology, they are pushing for a kind of higher education rationing. They may not have the courage to say it outright, but what they are really envisioning is a […]
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In the United States and every other advanced society today, the share of the population with some level of postsecondary education (college in ordinary parlance) is a key indicator of its educational stature. Here, as in every other aspect of formal education, America once led the way. Sadly, today America is losing its edge. We […]
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Almost lost in the welter of legislation to make it through the New York State government policy mill in its closing minutes was some help for New York’s two public universities – CUNY and SUNY. Having endured hundreds of millions of dollars of cuts in state support over the last three years, they are finally […]
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Governor Andrew Cuomo proposes giving the four SUNY research universities (Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo and Stony Brook) $140 million in economic development funds and – perhaps, if the legislature agrees – permission to levy higher tuition. The governor is right in viewing SUNY campuses, and especially its most senior ones, as economic engines; indeed, outside of […]
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Overshadowed by the big political confrontation in Wisconsin is a higher-education story of note: The highly regarded “flagship” Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin seeks permission to secede from the rest of the state public higher education system (yet remain under the state’s oversight and subsidization). While this is being justified now by the […]
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Fiscally beleaguered presidents of public universities around the country like to wisecrack: “public universities used to be publicly funded, then they were publicly assisted, now they are publicly named.” While easy to dismiss as a self-serving whine, there is something to their complaint, at least as it applies to the two public university systems in […]
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Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University is a short, provocative book that raises many more questions than it answers. Its greatest contribution is that it clearly delineates the development of the American university from its origins in the late 19th century to the many absurdities that characterize it […]
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The Obama administration – along with many in the opinion elite – is looking to the nation’s two-year community colleges as the primary vehicle to ramp up future Americans’ level of post-secondary educational attainment. A down payment in this direction are the billions of dollars of direct and indirect community college aid included in the […]
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One of the hottest debates roiling American campuses today is whether the SAT and other standardized tests should continue to play a dominant role as a college admissions criterion. The main point of contention in this debate is whether the SAT or equivalent scores accurately gauge college preparedness, and whether they are valid predictors of […]
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What are we to make of the decision by a growing number of “highly selective” colleges to scrap the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) as a criterion for college admission, something brought to our attention recently when another pair of semi-elite schools (Smith and Wake Forest) joined these ranks? The New York Times story of May […]
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