I’ve been searching for an analogy that would capture the central flaw of an op-ed on Western university branch campuses that appeared in Sunday’s Washington Post. Maybe something about a developing country whose citizens love string quartets; which lacks many high-quality quartets of its own; but which nevertheless sets up politically and bureaucratically driven barriers that prevent high-qualContinue Reading »

Jeff Selingo’s post the other day was a good reminder of how much vital information about student debt we lack, notwithstanding the huge public attention that’s been paid to rising student borrowing in recent years. Both families and policymakers seeking to understand federal student loans and parental PLUS loans need much more fine-grained information about debt levels, default rates, and the Continue Reading »

Summer melt might sound like something that happens to an ice cream cone in July. But in the world of college access, the term refers to a more troubling phenomenon: the significant number of high school graduates (some 10 to 20 percent nationally) who have been accepted to college and plan to attend but never show up in the fall.

The problem is even more acute among low-income, first-geContinue Reading »

The spread of English as the global lingua franca has been as pronounced in academia as anywhere else. On the worldwide conference circuit, presentations are invariably in English. So are white papers, as well as the all-important bar conversations – often between multiple non-English-speakers – that are the main draw for these gatherings. Publishing in English is de rigueur in many fields. AndContinue Reading »

So maybe you thought the big news in higher education this past week was Mike Bloomberg’s gazillion-dollar gift to Johns Hopkins. Or perhaps the latest iteration of MOOCs as credit-bearing loss-leaders for a range of state university degree programs. Or the new report calling for reforming financial aid to boost college completion.

Not so. I just discovered a new tumblr called Accepted! Continue Reading »

Deep Springs College has intrigued me ever since I first read about the singular institution in a mass-mailing sent to me as a high school student. The tiny, all-male, two-year college is located on a cattle ranch and alfalfa farm in an isolated valley in California’s high desert. The 26 hand-picked students at Deep Springs study great books, work on the ranch, and govern the institution to a sContinue Reading »

What do we mean when we talk about “going to college?” The answer is that we mean many different things. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with that. Our higher education system is vast and varied. But in practice, the definition deficit can be a problem when it comes to public discussion of postsecondary education. Too often, we just talk past one other.

Here’s the example I’ve had inContinue Reading »

Like so many of us living in Wonk’s World, I’ve been checking out the seemingly endless (but fascinating!) series of edu innovation conferences to which Jeff referred in his last post. The other day at an AEI confab I was struck by two things. First, the normally clean-cut Michael Horn, executive director of the education arm of the Innosight Institute, has grown a pretty awesome seventies ‘staContinue Reading »

Are the MOOCs now ready for prime time? Like a lot of people, I’ve been pretty amazed by how quickly these massive open online courses have spread over the past year. First, there was the sheer number of students who signed up: some two million have enrolled this year, a figure that astounds me no matter how often I hear it. And it’s hard to keep up with the seemingly daily announcements of newContinue Reading »

I’ve never really understood the periodic attacks on Advanced Placement tests. The latest assault—with the understated headline “AP Classes Are a Scam”—was just published in the Atlantic by John Tierney, a former Boston College professor who also taught AP Government and Politics for a decade. He maintains, among other things, that APs aren’t equivalent to college classes; that huge growth in tContinue Reading »