Higher Education

Mark Kantrowitz, the founder and publisher of FinAid.org, has up a post at Higher Ed Watch explaining how much further we have to go in terms of helping out low-income college students: While the Obama Administration’s proposal to index the maximum Pell Grant to one percent over the inflation rate is a step in the […]

Richard Kahlenberg just wrote a Washington Monthly web exclusive in which he points out that some schools in states that have banned affirmative action are still able to do well in the social mobility category of the Washington Monthly‘s college rankings. The reason? Class-based affirmative action programs, which also do a better job of increasing […]

Here’s a Reuters article on online higher education and the key role it will have in fulfilling Obama’s ambitious college access goals: The online education sector grew 13 percent last year and had been growing at about 20 percent in previous years. Nearly one in four students take at least some college courses online, up […]

Here’s a good article on higher ed costs in South Carolina. USC vice president for student affairs Dennis Pruitt points out that the system that took a hit was already quite a shaky one: People who were counting on using their retirement funds to pay for school, in many cases those have dried up. Many […]

From The Chronicle: The University of Regina, in Saskatchewan, has so much confidence in its graduates that it’s giving them a job guarantee with their degrees. According to a news release issued today, the university promises students who complete the new UR Guarantee program’s requirements that they will get a “a great job within six […]

Inside Higher Ed: Increasing numbers of young Americans are choosing to enter postsecondary education through community colleges — but too many of them are having to work and attend part time and too few of them are leaving with degrees as a result, the think tank Demos argues in a report released Tuesday. The report’s […]

Speaking of reasons Harvard alums shouldn’t give to the school, here’s Kevin Carey in a Monday column in The Chronicle: Harvard spent the money on many things. But not a dollar went to increasing the number of undergraduates it chose to bless with a Harvard education. In 1990 the university welcomed slightly more than 1,600 […]

Speaking of the corrupting influence of college sports, Deadspin has a good rundown of a rather ugly scandal at Binghamton University, where the basketball team has seen better days—six players were recently kicked off the team for various legal and academic issues, including the starting point guard, who was arrested on charges of possessing and […]

It takes a close reading to fully detect this, but I almost get the sense that Michael O’Hare isn’t thrilled with how the school he teaches at, U.C. Berkeley, has handled some recent issues pertaining to athletics: When it rains, it pours. Two days after President Yudof humiliated himself and the university he heads, drove […]

Do the Washington Monthly‘s college rankings make the case for class-based admissions?