Jesse Singal

Inside Higher Ed notes that, while health care is still dominating the headlines and will be for awhile, now that Congress is back in session, “a flurry of news developments Wednesday served as a reminder that higher education issues remain a top priority for the administration and its Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.” Including: * […]

I usually try to stay away from such general statements, but doesn’t it seem like conservatives have a prevailingly negative view of human nature? I ask this after having read George Leef’s latest Phi Beta Cons post, in which he describes typical college students as “academically weak and disengaged kids who just want a few […]

Setting aside nostalgic pro-print sentiments (yes, overall I prefer reading things in print), is there much of an argument against a college paper going online-only? Given that such papers serve a demographic that grew up reading things online anyway, isn’t this a good way to save money and to force the papers’ staffers to pick […]

The usual suspects are all reviewing Crossing the Finish Line, including The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed.

From The Chronicle, more fuel for the debate over the extent to which colleges can control rising tuition costs: The cost of goods, services, pay, and benefits in higher education rose 2.3 percent for the year ending June 30—a figure that is nearly a percentage point higher than the Consumer Price Index for the same […]

Speaking of college graduation rates, a new book out today looks to be a pretty thorough treatment of the subject. An AP writeup says: In “Crossing the Finish Line,” William Bowen and Michael McPherson, former presidents of Princeton University and Macalester College, along with researcher Matthew Chingos, chime in on what many experts consider American […]

David Leonhardt has some stern words for the United States’ public universities: If you were going to come up with a list of organizations whose failures had done the most damage to the American economy in recent years, you’d probably have to start with the Wall Street firms and regulatory agencies that brought us the […]

The Chronicle of Higher Education notes a new report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that shows just how valuable public investment in higher education is. OECD analyzed data from its 30 member nations to come to some rather telling conclusions, like this one: On average across the OECD, the net public return […]

The best metro areas for off-campus enjoyment.

How suggestible are the nation’s college students? Very: Boston College German studies professor Michael Resler went searching for a way to boost flagging interest in his “German Literature of the High Middle Ages’’ class a few years ago, and settled on the idea of simply giving the course a sexier name. The resulting “Knights, Castles, […]