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 »

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 »

The day after President Obama’s State of the Union address, the administration released a hallmark of his higher education proposals from the night before: the College Scorecard. In the works for about a year, the online tool is meant to provide families with more information about the value and return on investment of the specific college they are considering.

The value of a college’s dContinue Reading »

Last week, Capella University President Scott Kinney wrote a piece in Inside Higher Education encouraging the U.S. Education Department to make available data it collected initially for the now much-in-doubt gainful employment regulation that would allow universities to examine the earnings data of their graduates by degree area.  A few weeks before, the Washington Post ran a story on how VirgiContinue Reading »

Education Intelligence Agency on Teacher Bargaining in Tennessee: “According to the database supplied by TSBA and posted on the Knoxville News Sentinel web site, 92 districts bargain and 45 do not. However, teachers from the non-bargaining districts earn, on average, $130 per year more in pay and benefits than do those who bargain collectively.  If true, then teachers Continue Reading »

Quick Hits is a short compilation of question-raising news stories, blog posts, and video clips that Education Sector team members are reading and viewing each day.

How well does “messy democracy” mix with school turnarounds in L.A.? (Flypaper)

What do students say about tech use in their schools? (Digital Directions)

Is abstinence-only education back up for debate? (h/t Joanne Jacobs)

What’s a degree really worth? (The Wall Street Journal) Tweet Continue Reading »

The NYTimes has an article on an interesting higher ed policy issue: whether colleges should charge more for some degrees than others. Most don’t, but there’s any argument to be made that this is unfair: some degrees–like engineering–are both more valuable in the job market and more expensive to provide in terms of equipment and labor. By contrast, an education degree isContinue Reading »