Robert Kelchen

As 2013 draws to a close, it’s time to take a look back at some of the biggest happenings (or non-happenings) of the year. Some of these items would have been on the list for several years, but others (including the top happening of the year) are brand-new for 2013. Enjoy the list! 10. There […]

Performance-based funding (PBF), in which at least a small portion of state higher education appropriations are tied to outcomes, is a hot political topic in many states. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures and work by Janice Friedel and others, 22 states have PBF in place, seven more are transitioning to PBF, and […]

Like most faculty members, I have my fair share of quirks, preferences, and pet peeves. While some of them are fairly minor and come from my training (such as referring to Pell Grant recipients as students from low-income families instead of low-income students, since most students have very little income of their own), others are […]

Graduate students love to complain about the lack of accurate placement data for students who graduated from their programs. Programs are occasionally accused of only reporting data for students who successfully received tenure-track jobs, and other programs apparently do not have any information on what happened to their graduates. Not surprisingly, this can frustrate students […]

Regardless of whether President Obama’s proposed rating system for colleges based on affordability and performance becomes reality (I expect ratings to appear in 2015, but not have a great deal of meaning), his announcement has affected the higher education community. My article listing “bang for the buck” colleges ran the same day he announced his […]

In yesterday’s post, I discussed the newly released 2014 college rankings from U.S. News & World Report and how they changed from last year. In spite of some changes in methodology that were billed as “significant,” the R-squared value when comparing this year’s rankings with last year’s rankings among ranked national universities and liberal arts […]

Yesterday was a red-letter day for many people in the higher education community—the release of the annual college rankings from U.S. News and World Report. While many people love to hate the rankings for an array of reasons (from the perceived focus on prestige to a general dislike of accountability in some sectors), their influence […]