Jesse Singal

Can’t say I’m surprised: In a year when federal dollars for scientific research declined for academic institutions overall, minority-serving colleges took a disproportionate hit, according to a new report from the National Science Foundation. Historically black colleges and universities, institutions with large Hispanic enrollments, and tribal colleges all saw steeper federal funding declines than the […]

Ross Hancock, spokesman for the American Welding Society, as quoted in Inside Higher Ed: The American Welding Society gets concerned when we see Congress act, as it did this year, to discontinue funding for proven programs like the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technical Training programs in favor of brand new “green jobs” education… That’s because, […]

It wasn’t reported until today’s paper, but William Trombley, a very influential longtime higher education reporter for The Los Angeles Times, died Sunday at 80. The obituary is here.

Business Week has a solid article running down some of the options for recent college graduates who find themselves struggling with student loans. (One of the more intriguing ones is SponsorChange.org—graduates who volunteer in their community through this program get a stipend to help cover student loans in return.) The problem, as is the case […]

Camille Paglia treks merrily ahead in her years-long quest to be as wrong as possible.

From Reuters: Democratic lawmakers seeking a thorough overhaul of the $92 billion U.S. student loan market were expected to score a win in the days ahead from a favorable finding by the Congressional Budget Office. With a House of Representatives floor vote anticipated next week, the CBO was expected to say the Democrats’ bill would […]

The Ivy League is of course far from this blog’s focus, but it’s still astounding—and difficult to grasp, really—that a university’s endowment could shrink by $11 billion in one year. I wonder how many community colleges you could run for a year with that much money…

Earlier today, the Washington Monthly and Education Sector, with support from the Lumina Foundation for Education, hosted a great discussion on the future of higher ed reform down at George Washington University. Hopefully I’ll eventually have audio to put up, but in the meantime a few highlights and thoughts: -Kevin Carey of Education Sector, in […]

The Chronicle has a writeup on the new chair of the Senate health and education committee, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who replaces the late Ted Kennedy. Harkin wasn’t seen as the most likely replacement for Kennedy: Mr. Harkin’s decision to accept the chairmanship came as somewhat of a surprise to higher-education lobbyists, many of whom […]

It’s worth driving this point into the ground endlessly: when a state is forced to make budget cuts to higher education programs, it’s often community colleges—whose students tend to be the ones most vulnerable to exiting higher ed—that suffer the most. Even when the percentages of cuts made to community versus four-year colleges look similar, […]