In 2008 and 2009, Education Sector conducted a comprehensive analysis of higher education accountability systems in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. We analyzed thousands of documents, Web sites, policies, and laws attempting to answer two questions:
What information do states collect on their higher education institutions?
How does the state use that [...]
The New York Times recently published a full-length article chronicling all the ways colleges and universities are cutting back in these recessionary times. The piece’s intent was surely to show how bad things are, but these are the examples it gave:
The University of Washington communications department is saving $1,000 a month by cutting land lines [...]
George Leef, vice president for research at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, takes issue with a recent report I co-authored about college graduation rates. We criticized colleges with unusually low graduation rates compared to peer institutions with similar admissions selectivity. Leef is having none of it:
Even at schools with very low [...]
The two dirtiest words in higher education these days are “climbing” and “wall.”
Seriously, if you spend enough time attending conferences, reading op-eds, etc., you come to realize that that climbing walls have somehow come to symbolize all that ails post-secondary education in America today. People are constantly denouncing their proliferation, or loudly noting that their [...]
This morning I moderated a panel discussion at the Library of Congress focused on college completion. When we came to the Q&A, Cary Nelson, President of the American Association of University Professors, posed a question (I’m paraphrasing from memory):
“One thing nobody on the panel has mentioned is that fact that colleges with higher completion [...]
The Project on Student Debt has a new video out to help student loan borrowers ditch their “debt gremlin” with the new income-based repayment plan option available for federal loans. It doesn’t take much to go from manageable debt to a debt gremlin (losing a job, feeding it after midnight…), but this new federal repayment [...]
The United States of America spends something like $400 billion per year on post-secondary education. That’s a lot of money. Yet we don’t know as much about the higher education sector as we could, or should. While Clemson has justifiably taken heat for cynically manipulating the class size component of the U.S. News rankings, few [...]
“We’re looking into whether California can renege on its commitment”
–Diana Fuentes-Michel, executive director of the California Student Aid Commission, in regards to a state program to repay the college loans of nurses and teachers who agree to work in-state.
The programs sound like a win-win for all sides. A student gets a portion of his or [...]
In an article titled “To Keep Students, Colleges Cut Anything But Aid,” the New York Times reports that:
With the economy forcing budget cuts and layoffs in higher education, colleges and universities might be expected to be cutting financial aid. But no. Students considering a wide range of private schools, as well as those who are already [...]
Sarah Vowell offers a paeon to Pell Grants:
I paid my way through Montana State University with student loans, a minimum-wage job making sandwiches at a joint called the Pickle Barrel, and — here come the waterworks — Pell Grants. Thanks to Pell Grants, I had to work only 30 hours a week up to my [...]
John McCain quietly released his higher education platform last week. It hasn’t drawn much notice, perhaps because it’s only newsworthy in its lack of depth. Sure, one can’t really disagree that we need to “Prepare for the 21st Century in Higher Education” or “Improve Information for Parents,” but those are pretty weak platitudes [...]
I spent yesterday morning participating in a panel discussion (video here) at the Center for American Progress, responding to a couple of new papers they’ve commissioned about higher educaiton. The first, by Sara Goldrick-Rab and Josipa Roksa, makes a comprehensive case for expanding the federal higher education agenda beyond the current monolithic focus on student [...]
A NYTimes front-page story earlier this week focused on the strenuous efforts of the University of Florida’s flagship Gainesville campus to ascend in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings. A few days earlier, the Charleston Daily Mail reported on how a growing number of West Virginia colleges and universities are trying to figure [...]
I couldn’t resist noting the synchronicity of today’s front-page New York Times article, “In Tuition Game, Popularity Rises with Price” and the Chart You Can Trust we released today. The New York Times piece did a good job of getting at the red flags of tuition discounting—merit aid going to well-off students, the increasing uniformity [...]
EduCap announced that its controversial all-expense paid conference in the Caribbean for financial aid officers is cancelled. My guess, though, is that this is not the last we’ll hear about this issue. While lending companies vigorously deny using inducements to gain that coveted status of ‘preferred lender’, economics tells us that thinly veiled efforts like [...]
On Wednesday morning from 9:30 to 11:30, you’ll be coming to Education Sector’s panel discussion on college rankings and higher education accountability, to be held at the Capital Hilton, just two blocks north of the White House. Register here.
What’s that you say? Staff meeting that morning? Big project due? No, no, you’re not fooling anyone. [...]
InsiderHigherEd.com has a story today about a growing trend in college president compensation, whereby pay is linked to “performance.” Not a bad idea per se — I’m certainly among those who think that K-12 teacher pay should be linked to perforamnce. But then the article describes the performance measures being used:
These payments aren’t just bonuses [...]
The New York Times reported today on the closing of Taylor Business Institute, a commercial 2-year business college in New York City. The New York State Education Department ordered the closing of Taylor following a panel report in August who found, among other things, that “In the bulk of its educational activities, the institute operates [...]
Fairly high-profile coverage today of Sec. Spellings’ recent speech on higher education, most prominently the lead above-the-fold piece in USA Today, along with articles in the WaPost, NYTimes, Chronicle, and InsiderHigherEd.
Most of the coverage noted the lack of outrage from the higher education community; after months of rumblings and complaints about the Secretary’s reform commission, [...]
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings gave a televised speech at the National Press Club today outlining her agenda for higher education. The impetus was the released of the final recommendations of the “Commission on the Future of Higher Education,” which she convened last year. All in all she did a good job; while the [...]
In this new Education Sector report, co-authors Erin Dillon and Robin V. Smiles discuss the growing problem of students defaulting on their student loans. Based on the experiences of a small group of Texas HBCUs and a new statistical analysis of cohort default rates, they argue that institutions play a significant role in helping students avoid default./a>
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
In this Education Sector report, Policy Analyst Chad Aldeman calls for a new approach to high school accountability. He argues that the best way to measure whether students are prepared for college or a career is by looking at what actually happens when students arrive at their intended destination.
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.