Jesse Singal

From USA Today: Social-networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter can help community college students become more engaged in their academics, a report out today finds. But while large numbers of students say they use such tools in their daily lives, many two-year colleges have yet to mine the potential of the technology. “The uses […]

The Daily Princetonian has a good article on some of the difficulties faced by low-income students at Princeton. For some reason, this (relatively unimportant, at least compared to some of the other parts of the article) anecdote got me the most: Freshman year, one of [Caitlin] Caldwell’s roommates furnished her entire room with furniture, a […]

From the AP: When Sharhea Wade arrived at Bryn Mawr College from a big-city high school, it seemed as if every other student on the quiet, leafy campus had graduated from an exclusive private school. ”I felt intimidated by them,” Wade said. ”Bryn Mawr is a different world.” Yet whenever she felt like a fish […]

Via The Quick and the Ed, Lynn O’Shaughnessy of MoneyWatch makes a convincing case for why parents in most states shouldn’t continue getting a tax break for contributing to 529 college savings plans. When states first rolled out 529 savings plans, they did not offer tax-free withdrawals. Back then the 529 plan’s tax protection vanished […]

Over at The Chronicle, Gene C. Fant Jr. writes about some of the effects on faculty hiring if and when the movement toward three-year degree programs—which was largely ignited by Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.) recent Newsweek column, and which is picking up steam—leads to widespread adoption of that model. Two of them are of particular […]

From the San Francisco Chronicle: California’s Master Plan for Higher Education – which set academics ablaze with the promise of a nearly free college education for all who qualified – is limping toward the half-century mark largely ignored by lawmakers who don’t even pretend they can live up to its expensive commitment. That’s the finding […]

Inside Higher Ed has the story of Bert Chapman, a librarian at Purdue University who also happens to be a stridently anti-gay blogger at Townhall.com. Among other lovely little nuggets, he has said, raging against what he sees as the economic impact of “morally aberrant sexual behavior.” Some at Purdue want him fired. My first […]

Over at Higher Ed Watch, Stephen Burd has a good post on the political chicanery surrounding the end of the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program. Though the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which will end FFEL program lending, has yet to pass in the Senate (it passed in the House in September), […]

If you feel like you’re in too good of a Friday mood, this will help: A nonprofit organization that promised a group of Tucson kids a full ride to college has gone back on its word. In 2005, Arizona Quest for Kids guaranteed 23 local fifth-graders scholarships that would pay four years of tuition equivalent […]

Writing in Inside Higher Ed, Tim Mann, director and senior analyst for Eduventures’ Academic Leadership Learning Collaborative, points out that while the current economic climate should have served as a perfect storm to get academic institutions to evaluate every aspect of how they operate, something has been missing from such discussions: However, generally absent from […]