Cuyahoga Community College expects to see nearly 30,000 students enrolled for credit on its three campuses in Cleveland when it opens for the fall semester late in August, with an additional 30,000 taking non-credit courses for job-training “personal enrichment” (instruction in art, photography, and other hobbies). According to campus officials, the 30,000-strong for-credit student population […]
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Of every 100 kids who enter American high schools, only about 20 obtain a bachelor’s degree within a decade. That is why the proportion of adult Americans with baccalaureate degrees is rising relatively slowly, and why the U.S. has fallen behind a number of other nations in the proportion of young adults with college degrees. […]
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During my twelve-year term as a Regent of the University of California (UC), I served for several of those years as Chairman of the Committee on Finance, which has jurisdiction over the budget of the UC system. Adopting a budget was among the most complex and painful tasks that confronted the Board. For me, the […]
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The last time President Obama gave a speech dealing with education (his address to Congress on February 24), he misrepresented government data to make his case that the country needs to put a significantly higher percentage of people through college. (I wrote about his fudging of the figures here) For that reason, Americans would be […]
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Like Caesar’s Gaul, President Obama’s plan for higher education is divided into three parts: 1) Every American should have postsecondary educational training, and within a few years we should again lead the world in the proportion of young graduates with bachelor’s degrees; 2) Federal financial assistance to pay for college should become an entitlement like […]
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In a recent article that received a fair bit of buzz, The New York Times spun a story of the supposed new reality in the recession-plagued U.S.—Students from more well-off families being given admissions preference at increasingly cash-strapped universities. But the Times article misses the larger point. Lawrence University, Colby College and Brandeis (some of […]
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A modified version of this piece appears today in the Washington Examiner Georgetown University, like many colleges and universities hit by the current economic downturn, is in what look like dismal financial straits. The value of Georgetown’s endowment shrank 25.5 percent last year, to $833 million, the annual deficit it has been running is estimated […]
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Many people think the colleges and universities are overreacting to the sharp drop in their endowments. Lynne Munson, former deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is one of these critics. In a letter (subscription only) to the Chronicle of Higher Education, she argues that higher ed endowments haven’t lost much value if […]
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Harvard University, trying to trim its operating budget in the face of a projected 30 percent decline in the value of its endowment stemming from the current financial meltdown, announced its intention to cut 13 of the 27 janitors who service its medical school and an unspecified number of custodial workers elsewhere at Harvard residential […]
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Dr. Macchiarola, chancellor of St. Francis College in Brooklyn, delivered these remarks on February 5th at a one-day conference in New York on “The Future of the University.” The conference was sponsored by the Manhattan Institute’s Center for the American University. If I were making this presentation a year ago, I would not have some […]
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On February 11 art-lovers packed a meeting room at Brandeis University to protest Brandeis’s plans to shut down its on-campus art museum and auction off the museum’s entire 6,000-piece collection. The list of holdings at Brandeis’s Rose Art Museum, most of them donated since the museum’s opening in 1961, reads like a Who’s Who of […]
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In the area of higher education especially, but in most other areas too, the Stimulus bill looks more like an emergency measure designed to maintain current programs than a strategic package aimed to stimulate growth. Among others, college and university presidents are likely to be among those sorely disappointed. Last November, shortly after the election, […]
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The Boston Globe reports that Harvard alumni have written to President Faust asking that, given the recent drop in endowment value from $36.8 billion to $28.7 billion, the latest bonuses paid to the fund’s managers be returned. The five highest-paid executives earned between $3.4 and $6.9 million during the last fiscal year. Those aren’t especially […]
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Hardly a sector of the American economy is unaffected by the current recession; however, no matter how painful this period is, it provides an opportunity for many institutions to do the kind of restructuring that should have been done before now. And, fewer segments of our society are in greater need of financial restructuring than […]
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One thing to be said for the $42.5 billion or so in supposed stimulus dollars that publicly funded institutions of higher learning are trying to squeeze out of the incoming Obama administration’s economic package is that the amount isn’t too much larger than Harvard’s $28 billion endowment. Oh, and it’s also not too much larger […]
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On December 16, the higher education establishment put out its tin cup, asking Congress to give it a 5 percent cut of any “stimulus” spending package—around $40 to $50 billion for new university construction projects. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I’m opposed to the concept of “economic stimulus” spending. The […]
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An article in Governing explores the increasing centrality of Universities and medical centers to regional economic health. It notes a 1999 Brookings Institute study that found multiple cities in which more than half of the jobs among the top 10 private sector employees were provided by universities or hospitals. Baltimore, for one: One of the […]
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Harvard’s Endowment has suffered a staggering eight billion dollar loss, or a loss of at least 22% in the last four months. That’s the worst endowment drop for Harvard in 40 years, and dwarfs most comparable recent plunges in University endowments. Read on. Given uniformly dolorous news in the financial sector, it’s encouraging to see […]
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Amidst a climate of financial worry for many American students, the tide of amply-compensated Presidents refusing or returning portions of their salaries appears to be growing. The Daily Princetonian reports that Amy Guttman, the President of the University of the University of Pennsylvania, and her husband have made two gifts totaling $250,000 to support undergraduate […]
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Former Commissioner of Education Statistics Mark Schneider has caused a bit of a stir with a paper in which he argues that colleges are getting a free pass on a huge problem – a very high drop-out rate. Our colleges are failure factories for literally millions of students, Schneider says, and I agree. To be […]
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Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University since October 2007, holds the record for heading the most universities in America. Here’s Gee’s history at the helms of U.S. institutions of higher learning: West Virginia University (1981-1985), University of Colorado-Boulder (1985-1990), a first round at Ohio State (1990-1997), Brown University (1997-2000), Vanderbilt University (2000-2007), and now, […]
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The stage is now set for wide debate over mandatory student fees These are the fees that educational institutions or student governments assess students above and beyond the monies that pertain to tuition, housing, dining, and similar goods. Some of these additional fees typically fund extracurricular activities or needs such as medical services, crime victim […]
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The public furor over textbook prices shows no sign of halting, as students part with ever-larger sums for books. Before petitioning congress, all should take a look at the burgeoning number of private options for used and cheaper textbooks. Charlotte Allen pointed out several here this summer. Additional options continue to spring up. – The […]
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Read about it here. And remember why they’re expensive in the first place…
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Today’s Chicago Sun-Times offers tips for college saving, from “experts” and from students.
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The Wall Street Journal reports on a new survey of 1.2 million bachelor’s degree holders, which reveals significant variations in average salaries of different graduates. Ivy League graduates earned a median starting salary 32% higher than average liberal arts college graduates, and, at ten year’s distance, earned salaries 34% higher than average liberal arts college […]
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The student loan crisis – or near crisis; narrowly-averted crisis ; or postponed crisis – no one is sure – comes co-incidentally at a moment when many colleges and universities are once again repackaging their basic programs. The new buzzword, as John Leo has pointed out is “sustainability.” I also recently tried my hand at […]
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Despite a great flurry of activity to expand financial aid at selective colleges over the past several years, a new study by the Chronicle of Higher Education reported this gloomy bottom line: “Top Colleges Admit Fewer Low-Income Students.” As someone who has worked for more than a decade to push colleges to enroll more economically […]
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You’ve just started your freshman year in college, so one of your first stops is the campus bookstore to pick up your textbooks. You signed up for Econ 101, where your professor has assigned one of the top-selling basic textbooks in the field: Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw’s 936-page Principles of Economics (South-Western/Thomson), now in […]
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(This article originally appeared at Inside Higher Ed) Dartmouth College is now the latest institution to announce considerable changes to its tuition and financial aid structure, eliminating any charges for students from families making less than $75,000 a year. Dartmouth’s arrangement is not nearly so generous as Harvard’s or Yale’s, yet it’s markedly superior in […]
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