Daniel Luzer

This may be merely a symptom of the current recession or a long-term trend in higher education, but the country is increasingly focused on vocational education. The specialized certificates that people can earn in relatively short periods of time guarantee that the holders of those certificates can find jobs, right? It’s practical. Well, at least […]

Officials from California State University, Los Angeles recently told 500 of its students that their grades were so low they couldn’t return to school; they had flunked out. Not really. According to an article by Carla Rivera in the Los Angeles Times: All of the students were on academic probation, but they should not have […]

That’s awkward. Last week Village Voice had to take down an article it published recently that was highly critical of for-profit colleges. As Editor Tony Ortega wrote: Freelance writer Rob Sgobbo’s article “For-Profit Blues” was removed from the website after the Voice learned that Sgobbo had invented a character, “Tamicka Bourges,” who claimed she had […]

Not only are American high school students unprepared to go to college, they’re not even good enough for the enlisted ranks of the military. Maybe. According to an article by RiShawn Biddle in the American Spectator: Much of the discussion about America’s abysmal public schools has focused on how decades of declining literacy and academic […]

Ah, legacy preferences. So easy to get annoyed about, so hard to defeat. A common defense of legacy preferences, the extra weight given by colleges to applicants with relatives who are alumni, is that they don’t really matter that much. If a candidate has a relative who attended the school that adds, what, two points […]

Why, exactly, college is so expensive is a matter of considerable debate. Disagreement about why college costs keep rising, and rising so fast, may also impede any efforts to curtail the problem. One observer has got both a theory for rising costs and a solution about how to bring them down. According to a recent […]

The rising cost of tuition, particularly at America’s public colleges, threatens to make higher education less attainable for poor and working class Americans. It’s not our fault, protest the state universities; the American taxpayers are simply less generous in their support for higher education than in the past. Is this true? Well maybe not, suggests […]

The new graduate school rankings are out. Roughly every decade the National Research Council releases its rankings of American doctorate programs. Unlike undergraduate rankings, which are mostly kinda BS (what’s the fanciest college to send your child?) graduate school rankings are based on slightly more objective information. Academics decide what characteristics doctorate programs should have, […]

The state of Georgia still hasn’t figured out a way to fund its struggling HOPE Scholarship, its decade-old program guaranteeing essentially free tuition to Georgia high school students with a B-average or better to stay in state for college. Georgia’s having trouble paying for it. According to an article by Kim Severson in the New […]

Apparently Brown University is really grumpy about the city of Newport News, Virginia. Brown alleges that Newport News has its sword. Or, at any rate, the sword is located in Newport News. Who’s actually in possession is a little unclear. According to an article by Peter Dujardin in the Daily Press: Brown University has filed […]