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 efforts like blogging—by the time a study is edited and released, I’ve mentally moved on and mostly want to blog about some new/ongoing research rather than the just-published study. Fortunately, this problem does not apply [...]Continue Reading »

The interest rate “crisis” is heating up again, so now is a good time to revisit the last time this played out (last summer). To refresh your memory, a 2007 law gradually reduced the interest rates on some student loans to 3.4 percent by 2011-12. But rates were scheduled to return to 6.8 percent last summer. The “crisis” began in late April 2012, as proposals to keep rates low began to emerge, and was resolved by late June 2012.

Last summer’s interest rate “crisis” was a real eye-opener for me. Regardless of political orientation, financial aid analysts regarded the ultimately successful effort [...]Continue 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:

This guest blog post written by Danny Rosenthal, who is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former high school math teacher. He practices labor and employment law in Washington, D.C.

Two years ago, Florida’s Alachua County was faced with a dilemma. Under the state’s new teacher evaluation law, the county was required to base 40 percent of evaluations on value-added student achievement data. But state tests did not begin until third grade, and it would be expensive for the district to develop its own assessments. Worse yet, one school in Alachua taught only kindergarten through second grade. So the county [...]Continue Reading »

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!  ES Senior Fellow Peter Cookson remembers his “mentor from the old school.”

April 1961. I am about to graduate from Saint Mary’s High School on the south side of Phoenix, Ariz. I am a fair student at best, only functionally literate, vaguely interested in history, a bit of a cut-up, and noted for talking back to the good nuns and fathers who were our teachers.

While the few middle class kids who attended Saint Mary’s are on their way to the University of Arizona and Arizona State, most of the working class boys are headed to construction jobs [...]Continue Reading »

On Tuesday, the Louisiana Supreme Court issued its decision on the state’s private school voucher program, enacted last year with support from Gov. Bobby Jindal. I’m probably one of the few people in education policy who don’t have strong views either way about vouchers.* In general, I see far greater potential in strategies that seek to grow the supply of high-quality, autonomous schools in the public sector. I have, however, noted that voucher debates have a unique potential to bring out the crazy and stupid in people on both sides of the issue, so I thought I’d offer a few [...]Continue Reading »

Doodle 4 Google. Check out the 2013 winning student doodle on Google’s homepage. Winner Sabrina Brady of Sparta (Wisconsin) High School will receive a $30,000 college scholarship. (Google)

Financial aid fraud. A woman in Dallas has been charged with financial aid fraud after enrolling in 13 colleges and universities and receiving (and keeping) financial aid even after she withdrew from the programs. (The Dallas Morning News)

Dangerously overactive imaginations. A preschool has banned superhero games during the school day. The school sent a letter home to parents explaining that the games had caused injuries among students and parents should monitor the different [...]Continue Reading »