Higher Education

The College Guide has published several pieces recently about the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights investigation of a potential gender bias in American universities. The U.S. isn’t the only place that’s noticed gender disparity at the university level though. From an article in Inside Higher Ed: Last month, [University of Alberta] President Indira Samarasekera pointed […]

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act , there will be some $100 billion in new money for public elementary and high schools. Something else will change too. As J. B. Schramm and E. Kinney Zalesne of College Summit point out in an op-ed they wrote in the New York Times: But the […]

Brian K. Johnson was placed on leave this fall as president of Montgomery College, a Maryland community college. According to a September Washington Post article: Faculty leaders alleged in a nine-page investigative report that Johnson had “destabilized” the college in 2 1/2 years of leadership by disappearing from office for days at a time, missing […]

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FASFA) has long been one of the more irritating aspects of the college application process. Students, or their parents, fill out this mega-form to determine eligibility for financial aid. The six-page questionnaire, filled with redundancies, irrelevant questions, and lacking potentially important information, can take several hours to fill […]

Many soldiers, perhaps enticed to join the military because of the Defense Department’s commitment to pay for up to $4,500 a year of college, end up enrolling in online colleges. This is understandable; when someone’s actually serving in the military it’s very difficult to attend classes toward a degree, no matter how much money one […]

Perhaps ever since John Quincy Adams proposed his political nonstarter national university in 1828, it’s been well established that the U.S. federal government pretty much stays out of education. Rules about public schools are pretty much left to the states and in terms of colleges, the federal role is mostly limited to money for scientific […]

While there may be some, perhaps misguided, enthusiasm for the three-year bachelors degree, it looks like the popularity of the accelerated BA is increasing. The University of Texas system announced yesterday that it was offering what it called “Fast-Track Bachelor’s Degrees.” From the press release: The Bachelor’s Accelerated Completion (BAC) program will be offered entirely […]

While the College Guide is on the subject of college football, it’s worth taking a look at a recent piece at Higher Ed Watch. The publication annually looks at the graduation rates and academic progress of the country’s top college football teams. It’s pretty bad. According to the article, “only 55 percent of the players… […]

There’s an interesting piece in the latest issue of Democracy about Pell Grants and the state of higher education. Pell Grants, awards for higher education sponsored by the Department of Education, give money (actual money, not loans) to allow low-income students to go to college. But Pell is essentially a failure: Students are borrowing at […]

“Dismissing complaints from some members that Congress had more pressing matters,” as the Associated Press dryly noted in its article about the matter, earlier this month a House subcommittee agreed to legislation to create a formal college football playoff. The goal of the legislation is to force college football to move from an informal series […]