Higher Education

Well somebody in the Obama administration likes for-profit colleges. U.S. Under Secretary of Education Martha J. Kanter speaking at a Career College Association investor meeting, thinks that for-profit schools “have so much to offer the country in promoting opportunity to students.” According to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Kanter noted that for-profit […]

Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s Director of the National Economic Council, recently said that American income inequality continues to plague higher education. According to a Reuters article, only “10 percent of students in leading colleges and universities come from families in the lower half of the income distribution.” Summers spoke about higher education at Yeshiva University […]

From the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education comes news that 32 percent of black people over age three were enrolled in an education program. In contrast, only 24 percent of white people were registered in some form of school. The article explains that: Since the end of slavery when prohibitions against blacks learning to […]

Barbara Barreda writes in Education Week that it may be time to change how schools use technology. Historically, universities and (to a lesser extent) public schools were the institutions that brought new equipment and training to students. Students alone did not have the money and ability to access cutting-edge technology. But, as Barreda says: While […]

In a curiously Onion-like article, Inside Higher Ed reported today that Post University, a for-profit school in which most students take their courses online, will now have a football team: To hear Ken Zirkle, Post’s president, tell it, starting a sprint football team and affiliating it with those from a handful of highly selective institutions […]

Duke University graduate student Ken Ilgunas is saving on living expenses by simply not renting an apartment. Ilgunas, 26, sleeps in a 1994 Ford Econoline van. The student’s vehicle has no running water so he showers in the campus gym and cooks with camping gear. Ilgunas decided to live in his van in order to […]

A recent report from Public Agenda, With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them: Myths and Realities About Why So Many Students Fail to Finish College, looks at college dropouts. Without being overly simplistic here, the report indicates that students do not, as a rule, drop out of college because college is too hard. Students drop […]

Apparently students at Fort Hays State University will receive $5 for every credit in which they earn a C or better. According to an article in the school paper: The money for the Tuition Incentive Program comes from federal money appropriated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Kansas received $39.9 million for higher education. […]

Michigan Lt. Gov. John Cherry proposed refunding the recently eliminated Michigan Promise scholarship program through a tax on bottled water companies. Cherry said a tax of 10 cents a bottle could generate $118 million per year. But University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman essentially rejected the idea: “Financial aid in the state of Michigan […]

Tara Lemmey, CEO of LENS Ventures, a sort of technology consulting firm, argues in the Huffington Post that it’s time to rethink higher education: From the UC student protests over fee hikes, to community colleges holding midnight classes due to increased demand, to repeated warnings from business and policy leaders that we are not graduating […]