Higher Education

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a great story about a North Dakota State University professor who didn’t let her National Guard unit’s deployment to Iraq get in the way of her continuing to teach—via the Internet: Ms. Wachenheim served as a medical-logistics officer of the 834th Aviation Support Battalion of Task Force 34. She […]

Higher Ed Watch takes note of some corrupt proprietary school shenanigans: The General Accounting Office (GAO) recently released a report revealing that some publicly traded for-profit colleges have been pumping up their enrollment numbers by deliberately admitting unqualified students. Federal law requires that students who have neither a high-school diploma nor its equivalent must pass […]

Yesterday, New York Governor David Patterson called for an 11 percent decrease in the state’s budget. Not unexpectedly, the cuts will hit the State University of New York system hard: Paterson’s order is especially hard on SUNY and CUNY, which are among the state’s biggest agencies and must find more dollars to cut. The State […]

Students Over Banks brings us some private-sector student-lending corruption fun from Iowa: We didn’t think we needed any more proof that the Senate student aid bill is absolutely vital for protecting the finances of college students nationwide, but recent developments in Iowa put the icing on the corrupt lending cake. The public learned Tuesday of […]

It’s common and good for publications to seek out opposing views. But if you’re Newsweek and want different opinions on SAFRA, why would you possibly ask someone from the Consumer Bankers Association—an organization with a direct financial stake in what’s going on? It’s not as though the CBA doesn’t have means of getting its message […]

USA Today has an article presenting some pretty distressing findings about Hispanics and higher education: Nearly nine in 10 Hispanics say it’s “necessary” to get a college education to get ahead in life — more than any other ethnic or racial group in the USA. But Hispanic students’ plans to get an actual diploma fall […]

That’s what one Cato Institute wonk said at a panel there: “Colleges are able to raise their prices because it’s not the consumers paying that cost,” said Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute, in a presentation called “Student Aid Explains the Pain.” Average tuition rates have […]

Today’s issue of the Guardian offered the latest look at the University of the People (UoPeople), which bills itself as “the world’s first tuition-free, online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education.” Since this innovative organization was created in almost exactly the same spirit as the Monthly‘s own college guide, […]

Given how much student debt pain can be averted simply by knowing the full range of one’s options, it’s good that an organization in West Virginia started a site to help students in that state traverse the daunting financial aid process. We need a lot more such sites for the rest of the country, however.

Speaking of trouble in California, here’s some more: One of the most productive pipelines in California higher education starts with six community colleges spread among the quiet, space-age suburbs of Silicon Valley. Every year the colleges send thousands of their students to the region’s public university, San Jose State. The community colleges here are a […]