An unusual organization of policy leaders has joined the chorus for higher education reform. Chief state budget officers rarely speak collectively or publicly about higher education—instead focusing on state revenue issues, adjusting budgets in light of revenue surpluses (a rare event of late) or shortfalls, and enacting a budget.

But in a recent report, these state officials spoke out oContinue Reading »

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the Perkins Loan program “provides lowinterest [sic] loans to help needy students finance the costs of postsecondary education.” Pell grants target needy students as well, so the chart below shows the number of students receiving Perkins loans and the number of students receiving Pell grants at a sample of colleges.

The blue line shoContinue Reading »

Our new study, Degrees of Value, explores the returns to investing in college and finds that much more attention should be paid in the vast ranges of outcomes that students experience.

One of my strangest experiences as a researcher is the period of time between when work on a study is finished and when it is released. For me, this timing issue greatly complicates public outreach effortsContinue Reading »

The accreditation woes of City College of San Francisco are the closest thing higher education has to a soap opera. Like any soap opera, it can be hard to jump in midstream, so here is my recap of the story so far for those of you just joining us:

We are pleased to release Degrees of Value today. This paper aims to provide information on one important aspect of college—the return on investment. While there is certainly more to a college education than the financial payoff, the fact remains that this is an increasingly dominant concern for students. More tahn 80 percent of students now cite “to be able to get a better job” as a very imporContinue Reading »

Guess which major news magazine had this cover headline last week: “Time to Scrap Affirmative Action.” (Note there is no question mark.) In past years, one might have thought it was National Review or The Weekly Standard. Not this time. The story belongs to that well known “right-wing publication,” The Economist.

The Economist’s article discusses a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on tContinue Reading »

Recent commenters have asked for maps showing graduation rates and enrollment. Ask and ye shall receive.

The first map below shows each state’s average four-year graduation rate (enrollment-weighted, meaning schools with only a few students don’t skew the average). Nevada, New Mexico, and Alaska (not shown) have enrollment-weighted, four-year graduation rates of less than 15 percent, whiContinue Reading »

Officials at eCore, the University System of Georgia’s online curriculum, collect heaps of student data every year: individual course completion rates, withdrawal rates, and even the number of those identified as at-risk each semester.

Every day, Melanie Clay, dean of eCore, says she looks at the dropout rate and compares it to the rate at the same time last year. “If it’s not going in tContinue Reading »

My paper, Selling Students Short, released on March 20, 2013, examined teaching loads among tenured and tenure-track faculty. I relied on teaching load data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Data Analysis System (DAS). After publication of the paper, further investigation revealed that the teaching load data I used was incorrect.

Specifically, the 1987-88 DAS output for the “mean” Continue Reading »

Education Sector has always been an independent think tank that challenges conventional wisdom in education policy. That means we try to follow the data wherever it leads us.

We recently learned that some of the information in Selling Students Short, a policy paper written by our research director, Andrew Gillen, was based on incorrect information. The U.S. Department of Education’s DataContinue Reading »