A few days ago I spoke with Alexis Morin, co-founder of Students for Education Reform (SFER), a relatively new organization that organizes college undergraduates across the country to advocate for education reform. They’ve grown from their first chapter at Princeton, founded in 2009, to 20 chapters today. And, according to Morin, are looking to expand to 100 in the near future.

ButContinue Reading »

That’s a question that Kevin Carey and I have gotten a lot since releasing our Debt to Degree report last week. The report describes a new measure of college success, the ‘borrowing to credential ratio’ (let’s call it the BCR for short). The BCR seeks to combine measures of two chronic problems in higher education: dropouts and debt.

But when you create a statistiContinue Reading »

Moody’s Analytics recently released an analysis of the current status of student lending, including a pessimistic outlook on its future (via Community College Spotlight). While the analysis doesn’t say much that you haven’t already heard here (rising debt levels, increasing default rates, tuition that outpaces inflation&#Continue Reading »

On Wednesday, Kevin Carey introduced a new measure of how well colleges are doing in both producing graduates and keeping student loan debts low: the borrowing to credential ratio.

In response to many requests for the data we used to create the ratio, we’re introducing the borrowing to credential ratio data file (.xls). It’s available now on our website for anyone to downloadContinue Reading »

‘College for All’ is a phrase that is thrown around a lot in the media and in policy debates – sometimes by people who support it, other times by those who deride it. But there are two important things to remember in this discussion: 1) College for All doesn’t mean Harvard for all – it can include vocational and technical training and 2-year as well as 4-year degreContinue Reading »

Fulfilling a requirement of the 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act, the U.S Department of Education released today lists of the colleges with the highest and lowest tuition prices and also colleges that saw the highest percentage increases in tuition in the past year.

This ‘shame’ list is intended to pressure colleges to moderate the rapid increases in tuition that have beContinue Reading »

Michigan governor Rick Snyder announced Monday that the state would take over the worst of Detroit’s public schools beginning in 2012. But instead of dictating what these schools should do to improve by, say, mandating one curriculum or taking over schools’ hiring and budgeting, Snyder is planning to give these schools–the lowest performing of one of the lowest performing distContinue Reading »

The Century Foundation published a report on Monday that seeks to answer a question I posed in two reports a few years ago—does interdistrict school choice significantly increase options for students in low-performing schools? And, related, does it make sense to expand NCLB’s choice provision to allow students to choose higher performing schools in other districts?

A great thing about haContinue Reading »

The much-anticipated gainful employment regulations, which include important changes to how for-profit colleges are held accountable, were finally released today (for more on gainful employment see this ES report from 2010).

There’s grumbling on both sides about the final regulations. Proponents are upset over added leeway given to the colleges. And the for-profit sector, despite wContinue Reading »

What’s It Worth?: The Economic Value of College Majors, a new report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, contains some very interesting data that should spark debate over the relative economic value of college majors. The Georgetown researchers analyzed census data that links workers’ bachelor degree majors with their careers and earnings – data thatRContinue Reading »