Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor voted 30-17 to pass a bill (PDF) that increase the Pell Grant and also establishes new programs to help community colleges, increase college completion rates, and improve early childhood learning.
These initiatives would be paid for by eliminating subsidies that are currently given to [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'Community Colleges'
About CBO’s Alternative Student Loan Cost Estimate
Tight Budgets and Accountability
It’s funny what a budget shortfall does to perspective. In January of 2007, the University of California (UC) system, one of the largest and most symbolically important systems of higher education in the country, released its latest accountability document. At 40 pages, it was remarkable, for such a highly regarded system, for its lack of [...]
Briefly,
En route to Pitchfork music festival in Chicago so blogging via blackberry and limited to short post:
1) David Brooks’ column today about community colleges is quite good, much more so than yesterday’s higher ed piece in the Post from E.J. Dionne.
2) The Post review of the Dead Weather concert @ 930 club misses the point [...]
Save Community Colleges
Despite the fact that the economy is shedding half a million jobs per month, the “moderate” approach to stimulus in Congress appears to involve rejecting aid to state and local governments and thus ensuring pro-cyclical cuts in public employment. As a result, education budgets are sure to suffer, and there’s a strong case that no [...]
Paying for College
I’m sure it’s true, as the Times reports, that the economic downturn is making it harder for people to pay for college, in that this is true for anything expensive and the cost of college in real dollars is growing robustly every year. But it’s important to remember that the example around which the story [...]
Tough Questions about UDC
One of the Washington Post’s best columnists doesn’t publish on the op-ed page, but in the Business section: Steven Pearlstein. I’ve become a regular reader over the last few years, not just because he provides a lot of insightful, well-informed commentary on business and economic issues, but because he’s written some really good pieces on [...]
The Case for Community Colleges
In all the hubbub over this, that, or the other ranking of four-year colleges, the 45 percent of American undergraduates who attend a community college are left out. Those students are lower-class citizens in the higher ed world, the wide bottom layer of the status pyramid that ascends to the peaks of the Ivy League. [...]
High School Students Not Stressed Out Enough — Seriously
Diana Jean Schemo’s great article about high remediation rates in community colleges was, unfortunately, kind of buried in the Labor Day weekend slot a few days ago. If you missed it while barbecuing and closing up your pool, take a look. In a nutshell:
As the new school year begins, the nation’s 1,200 community colleges are [...]






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