A recent report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), entitled “Best Laid Plans: The Unfulfilled Promise of Public Higher Education,” explores a fair number of problems the California college system faces. However, I don’t think it covers them all. The report states openly and rightly the problems that California’s public colleges face […]
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Colleges–both on the undergrad and graduate levels–typically admit students and encourage them to take on onerous amounts of debt, without first giving those prospective students the actual data about their chances of finding work in that major field afterwards. This is just as true, by the way, for non-profit as it is for for-profit schools. […]
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Now that commencement speakers have finished their work, what messages did they dispense to the class of 2012, graduating into the worst economy since the Great Depression? Mostly generic words of anodyne idealism: “Live your dream,” “go change the world”–conventional bromides that graduating classes have heard since college life began. Few speakers gave the new […]
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What is the college graduation rate in this country? Correct answer: nobody knows. All the statistics you’ve read about are at best partial truths. We basically track graduation only for “traditional” students. The problem is that these “traditional” students are no longer representative – most college students are now “non-traditional”: 38 percent of students enroll […]
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In 1970, less than 10% of Finland’s students graduated from high school. Now most students do, and Finland is one of the highest-scoring countries on the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests for l5-year-olds in mathematics, science and reading.
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In his January 29 Forum piece, Peter Sacks says that I engaged in “nitpicking” in a blog post expressing disdain for President Obama’s higher education agenda. He’s free to call my skeptical view about federal initiatives to lower the costs of college whatever he wants. But in my opinion, it is naive to believe politicians […]
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The naysayers started their nitpicking the day after President Obama, in his State of the Union Speech, presented his plan to kick-start America’s sputtering system of higher education. George Leef of the Pope Center said “Obama’s talk about getting tough with colleges over tuition is pure political blather.” Hans Bader and others offer another off-center […]
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If college and university officials finally want to solve the longstanding problems ofmediocre retention rates and pitiful graduation rates, then a magic, off-the-shelf solution awaits them. It’s called MyEdu, a private company that claims its website will help colleges solve the problem of disappearing students. How? By allowing students to see such titillating facts as […]
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One of the frequent complaints one hears from humanities professors and figures in the “softer” social sciences is that students and a growing number of higher education officials, consultants, and commentators regard college more and more as a job-training program. While driving across the country this week, I heard Rush Limbaugh declare that the only […]
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Should all-black colleges exist in 2010? No, some say. After all, it’s been almost fifty years since segregation was outlawed in America. And most Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are of also-ran status, doing their best, but hardly the bastions of excellence that so many were in the old days. Graduation rates are low […]
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Last week both the Chronicle of Higher Education (“Reports Highlight Disparities in Graduation Rates Among White and Minority Students”) and Inside Higher Ed (“‘Gaps Are Not Inevitable’”) reported on two large studies by The Education Trust of the graduation rate gap between white and African-American students and betweenwhites and Hispanics. Even aside from the fact […]
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Jackson Toby, professor emeritus of sociology at Rutgers and author of the new book, The Lowering of Higher Education in America, delivered this speech yesterday (April 7) at a luncheon in New York City. The luncheon, at the University Club, was sponsored by the Manhattan Institute’s Center for the American University and Minding the Campus. […]
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A February 26 debate on the subject is online here. The event was sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Former secretary of education Margaret Spellings and Michael Lomax, president and C.E.O. of the United Negro College Fund, are on the pro side of the topic, “To remain a […]
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Edward Albee, Woody Allen, Maya Angelou, Wally Amos, Jane Austen, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Joan Baez, Warren Beatty, David Ben-Gurion, Sonny Bono, Rick Bragg, Richard Branson, Albert Brooks, David Byrne, James Cameron, Raymond Chandler, Coco Chanel, John Cheever, Sean Connery, Walter Cronkite, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Dell, Princess Diana, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bob […]
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Confirming what college administrators have known for years, Education Sector has released a report based on U.S. Department of Education figures detailing huge gaps between the college graduation rates of white students and those of blacks. The gap (measured by failure to graduate within six years from a four-year institution) averages about 20 percent, although […]
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There is a substantial academic performance gap between black and white high school graduates. Most who study education readily acknowledge this fact. Institutions of higher education are presumed to be places where students come to the campus reasonably prepared to compete with others who are similarly prepared. For decades, colleges and universities have sought to […]
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