Higher Education

The Washington Post isn’t happy with the higher ed rhetoric coming from Virginia’s gubernatorial candidates: LISTEN TO the promises of Virginia’s two gubernatorial candidates regarding higher education, and it’s hard to tell the difference. Democrat R. Creigh Deeds and Republican Robert F. McDonnell both say that they will increase the number of degrees awarded while […]

Joseph Chapman, President of North Dakota State University, is resigning. “It just isn’t fun,” he told the AP. The list of things that aren’t fun includes the $22,000 he spent sending himself and his family to Barack Obama’s inauguration—money that came from NDSU’s donation-funded Development Foundation. In comparison, his counterpart over at the University of […]

Inside Higher Ed reports that yesterday’s hearing could have been a lot worse for for-profit colleges: Rumor had it, in the days leading up to Wednesday’s hearing before a House of Representatives committee, that officials from the U.S. Government Accountability Office were preparing to screen a video for lawmakers that showed officials at an unidentified […]

Last week I wrote about a new campaign by loan companies called “Protect Student Choice.” The campaign is being run by Qorvis Communications, a controversial PR firm. Thanks to YouTube’s “studentloanreform,” we can now see that the firm has been astroturfing on this issue since at least 2007. Mr. or Ms. Studentloanreform posted a presentation […]

The Chronicle has up a piece about yesterday’s hearing, and adds some useful history: This is not the first time the Education Department has been criticized for its oversight of ability-to-benefit tests. In 2002, following a series of audits, the department’s Office of Inspector General recommended that the agency improve its monitoring of test publishers. […]

In a Senate hearing last week, Andrew Gillen of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity offered some helpful thoughts on the current debate surrounding Pell Grants. Admittedly, hardcore policy wonks have likely reviewed his testimony by now, but his words are worth a second look. (Click here for the PDF.) Recent Pell Grant reform […]

You can watch today’s House Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning and Competitiveness hearing—or read the testimony—here. Shorter clips are on YouTube.

Earlier today the House Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning and Competitiveness held a hearing “to examine how non-profit and for-profit colleges and universities administer and enforce student eligibility requirements for federal financial aid programs.” Witnesses included George Scott, Director of Education, Workforce, and Income Security at the GAO; Robert Shireman, Deputy Undersecretary of the […]

I’ll have more on it later, but the House Committee on Education and Labor’s Higher Education, Lifelong Learning, and Competitiveness Subcommittee is holding a pretty important hearing today on “Ensuring Student Eligibility Requirements for Financial Aid.” It’s pegged to a GAO report I blogged about here, where I quoted Inside Higher Ed: The General Accounting […]

From Sen. Evan Bayh’s (D-IN) office: A bipartisan coalition of 14 U.S. Senators today introduced legislation to provide immediate student loan debt relief to active-duty service soldiers and members of the National Guard. Currently, soldiers who are serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries abroad are charged interest on their federal student loans while they […]