Higher Education

Are there really too many people going to college? Possibly as a result of the economy, and possibly as a result of Charles Murray’s most recent book (the premise of which is that only “10 to 15 percent of the nation’s youth” are even minimally prepared for college), there’s a discussion going around about who […]

As Jesse Singal explained last week the U.S. Education Department is planning to stop the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program and convert all higher education lending to the Direct Loan plan. But many schools are not making internal efforts to support the change. This issue has lately become a matter of some concern for […]

Dave Murray of the Grand Rapids Press had a column last week called “Can college students learn as much from an online class?” which features the almost evergreen discussion about whether or not colleges are actually as effective online. There are, we know now, many people enrolled in college online. As Murray explains: Robert Mendenhall […]

Arizona is doing something original in higher education and not just at, um, the University of Phoenix. Arizona is beginning the process of creating a new state higher education system, focused on changing existing universities, and making it easier for Arizonians to get a degree using a focus on existing community colleges. According to an […]

Remember how colleges promised to scale back on early decision, because of the irritating way the practice favored rich people and left it harder for kids who had been rejected from their first choice school to get into another? In the last decade many colleges began to form large portions of their college classes through […]

The list of Americans awarded Rhodes Scholarships this year were announced on Saturday. The annual notice of the Rhodes Scholarships is, as a general rule, of limited interest to people other than the families of those chosen. In part this is because the students, while clever and well rounded are, after all, still in college […]

There’s an update to the story from last week about the governor of Missouri’s decision to freeze tuition at the state’s colleges and universities. The Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, got college leaders to agree to the freeze to compensate for a “modest” 5.2 percent cut in state funding. But the governor’s opponents in the state […]

The U.S. Department of Education recertified the University of Phoenix, the on-line, for-profit school that is now America’s largest university, and declared that Phoenix can continue to take part in United States federal student financial aid programs. Some 86 percent of University of Phoenix’s revenue comes from federal financial aid. Phoenix’s certification expired in June […]

It is a discussion that rears its head every time the country has economic problems: just what good is college, anyway? A recent research study published by CQ Researcher titled “Is a 4-year degree the only path to a secure future” indicates that the answer is no. The report, by Thomas J. Billitteri at CQ […]

The mascot of the University of North Dakota has, since 1930, been the Fighting Sioux. NCAA considers American Indian nicknames offensive and told UND to find a new nickname or the school would not be allowed to host NCAA postseason tournaments. The North Dakota state board of higher education, which oversees the University of North […]