Robert Kelchen

Although higher education has a partially deserved reputation for being extremely slow to change, quite a bit happened in the higher education world in 2015. Below is the first half of my top ten list of most important or influential higher education events that took place in the last year, with the second half coming […]

As 2015 rapidly draws to a close, I’m looking to continue an annual tradition on this blog—two lists of the top ten and ‘not top ten’ events in the higher education world during the past year. The top ten list includes the most newsworthy events of the year, regardless of whether they are good or […]

Over the last week, much attention in the higher education world has turned to the saga of University of Missouri-Columbia graduate student Jonathan Butler, who engaged in a hunger strike in an effort to get Missouri’s system president Timothy Wolfe to resign due to a perceived lack of attention paid to racism on at the […]

In the last several years, a number of companies have started short-term, intensive training programs in fields such as computer programming, Web design, and business designed to give fresh college graduates the skills they need to land lucrative jobs in growing fields. These “boot camps” include offerings by start-up companies such as Dev Bootcamp, General […]

The Obama Administration’s two-year effort to develop a federal college ratings system appeared to have hit a dead-end in June, with the announcement that no ratings would actually be released before the start of the 2015-2016 academic year. At that point in time, Department of Education officials promised to instead focus on creating a consumer-friendly […]

This post first appeared at the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center Chalkboard blog. In response to concerns over the rising price of college and increasing amounts of student loan debt, the Obama Administration has worked to expand income-based repayment programs for those with federal student loans. In late 2015 or early 2016, the U.S. Department of […]

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Higher education has gotten a lot of attention during the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign. All three major candidates for the Democratic nomination – former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – have proposed different plans […]

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign released her framework for higher education reform at midnight on Monday morning (see details here and here). The plan, officially listed at a cost of $350 billion over ten years, would move closer to the idea of debt-free public college, require states to increase their spending on public higher education, and […]

In a major higher education policy proposal, former Senator and current Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton recently announced plans for higher education reforms that come close to debt-free college by increasing grant aid to students and reducing interest rates on current loans. She is following in the footsteps of the other two main candidates for […]