Education

Textbooks are an incredible ripoff, and the sort of ripoff that most adversely affects folks who are already financially strapped. This, then, seems like a pretty obvious idea: let students rent them, which is what Sacramento State is doing. At the moment, the school’s program is still somewhat larval: Parsons says every rental book will […]

This seems like a pretty great program: Before Justin Jefferson got to college, the only kinds of doctors he or his parents had ever heard of were physicians and preachers. Not many researchers and teachers with doctorates live amid the gunshots of east San Antonio’s housing projects, the only world that he and his parents […]

Peggy Noonan, a fellow at at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, is leading a “study group,” which I gather is kind of like a seminar combined with a writer’s workshop. It’s called “Creativity in Journalism, in Politics, and in Life.” Her syllabus is, without a doubt, the worst-written I have ever seen. But this should […]

As you may be aware, today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. The point of the holiday, which is considered the most holy on the calendar (well, at least by better Jews that I), is for us Jews to take a day to fast and reflect on our sins and how to be […]

Wallace Bain has a good column in the Santa Cruz Sentinel in which he asks whether or not we truly value higher education. His piece is specific to California’s higher ed crisis, but hits on some attitudes that are, unfortunately, quite common across the nation: Oh, we say we do, of course. I can’t think […]

Some great pieces have come out the last week about the political debate over the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) on that vast series of tubes we call the Internet. SAFRA would eliminate a government program (the Federal Family Education Loan Program, or FFELP) that involves large, wasteful federal subsidies to student loan […]

Washington, D.C. now has its first community college: The Community College of the District of Columbia is being incubated within the University of the District of Columbia, the city’s land-grant and only public institution, and has taken over its existing associate degree, certificate and work force development programs. For the time being, it is also […]

The Chronicle reports that on Wednesday, a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing on why Congress should change a law that prevents private student loans from being automatically discharged when a person declares bankruptcy. Since 2005, those who declare bankruptcy and have student debt—either through federally guaranteed or private loans—have been […]

We appreciate the attention from CBS’ MoneyWatch.com, but I was unaware that the Washington Monthly is “a neoconservative political journal,” which is the sort of thing I would have appreciated being informed about before I started working here. Anyway, I should get back to working on my upcoming article about how invading Iran is the […]

The Daily Californian reports on a large, economy-fueled protest happening today out West: Hundreds of members of the UC community are expected to rally today throughout the 10-campus system in efforts aimed at publicizing the impact of state and university budget cuts on faculty, staff and students. The walkout and union strike have been organized […]