Higher Education

Perhaps I’m biased because I used to work for Campus Progress, which put it together, but I really like this video: It was a mistake for them to invite that banker to the graduation party, though.

From the New York Times comes word that some colleges’ attempts to trim their budgets to make up for a loss in investment revenue have resulted in the hiring of management consultants: When Holden Thorp, the chancellor of the University of North Carolina, was looking for ways to cut the university’s budget, he did what […]

The San Bernardino County Sun has a good column on what the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education tried to bring about: It was a farsighted document that argued that the future economic well-being of California depended upon a well-educated work force. That would encourage business investment in the state, as well as drawing […]

From USA Today: Social-networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter can help community college students become more engaged in their academics, a report out today finds. But while large numbers of students say they use such tools in their daily lives, many two-year colleges have yet to mine the potential of the technology. “The uses […]

The Daily Princetonian has a good article on some of the difficulties faced by low-income students at Princeton. For some reason, this (relatively unimportant, at least compared to some of the other parts of the article) anecdote got me the most: Freshman year, one of [Caitlin] Caldwell’s roommates furnished her entire room with furniture, a […]

From the AP: When Sharhea Wade arrived at Bryn Mawr College from a big-city high school, it seemed as if every other student on the quiet, leafy campus had graduated from an exclusive private school. ”I felt intimidated by them,” Wade said. ”Bryn Mawr is a different world.” Yet whenever she felt like a fish […]

Via The Quick and the Ed, Lynn O’Shaughnessy of MoneyWatch makes a convincing case for why parents in most states shouldn’t continue getting a tax break for contributing to 529 college savings plans. When states first rolled out 529 savings plans, they did not offer tax-free withdrawals. Back then the 529 plan’s tax protection vanished […]

Over at The Chronicle, Gene C. Fant Jr. writes about some of the effects on faculty hiring if and when the movement toward three-year degree programs—which was largely ignited by Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.) recent Newsweek column, and which is picking up steam—leads to widespread adoption of that model. Two of them are of particular […]

From the San Francisco Chronicle: California’s Master Plan for Higher Education – which set academics ablaze with the promise of a nearly free college education for all who qualified – is limping toward the half-century mark largely ignored by lawmakers who don’t even pretend they can live up to its expensive commitment. That’s the finding […]

Inside Higher Ed has the story of Bert Chapman, a librarian at Purdue University who also happens to be a stridently anti-gay blogger at Townhall.com. Among other lovely little nuggets, he has said, raging against what he sees as the economic impact of “morally aberrant sexual behavior.” Some at Purdue want him fired. My first […]