As a child growing up inside the Washington Beltway, I learned early never to have much faith in politicians. Every few years new folks came to the city, promising "change" and leaving without having done much at all. The candidates and officials I did like never got the attention and promotions they deserved. And worst of all, those who claimed to be on my side were everlasting disappointments (read: Bill Clinton).

Somehow that cynical base inside me melted a little with the election of Barack Obama, and became a tiny puddle when he announced the American Graduation Initiative. Finally, a president who "got" it! As educators we were all working to prepare children for a full life, and that had to include a real shot at higher education. That meant finally giving sufficient resources to the colleges where the majority of those looking longingly at the American Dream were going to end up...

Ah, the joys of being a state employee—our salary info is readily available to the public!  Despite the University of Wisconsin system's efforts to keep that information quiet (salaries are very low, making it easy for other universities to lure us away), the Wisconsin State Journal put it online to ensure transparency.  Here are some interesting tidbits:

--9 of the 10 best-paid employees in the University of Wisconsin system are men.

--5 of the top 12 best-paid employees in the system are in athletic departments. Director Barry Alvarez earns $500,000 a year—$85,000 more than Kevin Reilly (system president) and $63,000 more than Biddy Martin (chancellor of the Madison campus). An assistant football coach earns five times more than yours truly.

--The deans of Madison's law and business schools outearn the deans of letters and science and education by approximately 25 percent.

--The...

It's all about the bankers -- again. As I've said in this blog numerous times, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act is poised to dispense critical aid to low-income college students and the colleges they attend -- if the lending industry doesn't kill it first.

The savings that would result from a move to direct lending are substantial. Money would go directly to the neediest college students and to community colleges, a sector that is swamped and struggling in this recession. This investment in human capital is in so many ways a no-brainer -- it'll generate a large return, benefit folks in nearly every community in the country, and support the American dream.

Of course, the bankers will have none of it. In the current system they draw profits on the backs of students, lending them money and selling those loans to the government. They are so eager to hold onto those profits ...

As a mother of two, including a seven-week-old infant, I think about child care constantly. Who provides the best care? How much does it cost? What's the travel time involved? Can I find an arrangement that accomodates my desire to nurse? These difficult questions are keeping me up at night, as I struggle to find a situation that works for my infant, my toddler, my husband, and (last and possibly least) me and my career.

But I'm also aware that my situation is quite good, especially when compared with others on our college campuses. The number of unmarried parenting students is rising, doubling over the last 20 years from seven to just over 13 percent of the undergraduate population. More than one-third of black female undergraduates nationwide are unmarried parents, and so are 21 percent of all Native American undergrads.

More than half (59 percent) of these folks are really...

In a recent post on Education Week's blog, Debra Viadero offers a caution about President Obama's support for community colleges. Pointing to her recent article on community college research that indicated how much more we need to know about how best to improve completion rates in that sector, she questions whether the president would be wiser to place his bets on career colleges. She says that a recent study by the Educational Policy Institute (EPI) and an ongoing program of research by James Rosenbaum and colleagues support her contention that community colleges ought to take cues from career colleges.

In my opinion, this talented reporter is jumping to conclusions.

Yes, the graduation rates at two-year for-profit colleges exceed those at two-year public colleges. No one disputes that. That does not necessarily mean, however, that career colleges are outperforming community...

The end of last year was a busy time for me as I waited out the birth of my daughter, who decided to spend an extra 10 days lounging in utero before emerging into the Wisconsin winter. I was so focused on strategies to promote her exit (sidenote: Talk about an area in need of better research -- given gobs of data on live births for hundreds of years, docs still refuse to hazard a prediction of labor occurring on any given night!), I virtually shut out the world of higher education policy. Imagine!

Thankfully, others were hard at work around and over the holidays, thinking about ways to make sure that the substantial, timely, and hard-won investment which will (fingers crossed) soon come to higher education via the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) are most effective. Evidence of that work is contained in a December Lumina Foundation memorandum to the U.S. Department of...

Dear readers,

Throughout the fall I blogged infrequently on the challenges of being a pregnant parenting professor. Today I'm writing again, this time to acknowledge how truly lovely life can be, and just how lucky I am.

Last Saturday my family welcomed my daughter into the world. Annie is already a strong-willed young woman, and I look forward to the challenge of both integrating her into our hectic life, and to learning how we can fit into hers. 

I hope to rejoin you with some new commentary on higher education by month's end. Til then -- happy new year, and all the best to you and your family.

Sara

When the history of American higher education in the 21st century is written, I suspect the end of the first decade will be known for two resounding themes: the growing importance of community colleges, and a move from college access to a focus on college success. The vocabulary of this important time centers on words like efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness. These are terms that, thanks in no small part to the work of foundations like Lumina and Gates, finally have traction among both administrators and consumers of higher ed. In a very real sense, this is nothing less than astounding progress for an institution built primarily to enroll students privileged enough to attend college -- and not necessarily to graduate them.

For the latest -- and greatest -- example of this sea change we can look to Indiana. Faced with ever-common declines in resources for higher education,...

There's growing concern with higher education's affordability problem, as well there should be. It's hard to see how college will promote social mobility if a kid's ability to access it is increasingly linked to whether or not his family has money.

So it's heartening to see college leaders attempting to provide solutions. But it'd be even better if we first saw them earnestly attempting to understand where the real sources of trouble lie. I'm afraid that step's being skipped a bit too often, running the risk of making things worse.

Here's a recent example. At this month's regents board meeting, University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly was explicitly asked to name some solutions to promoting affordability at his institutions.  There were many ways he could respond. To his credit, Reilly acknowledged the importance of growing the state's paltry support for need-based aid and...

I love a good controversy about an important higher-education topic. What better way to enjoy a Wisconsin snowstorm than to sit cozily inside, trading e-mail messages with knowledgeable folks who are trying to sort out why it appears college completion rates have declined in the United States over the last 30 or 40 years. I'm hard-pressed to think of one (well, maybe, after a long day of work having this  38-week fetus out of me would be nice). So, thanks to Sarah Turner, John Bound and Michael Lovenheim for giving us such a nice meaty analysis to chew over this week.

There's already been a good bit written about and commented on from this report, particularly by Cliff Adelman, the man who gave the world America's longitudinal transcript data and a robust series of reports on what they tell us about colleges and students. The fact that so many people find so many different messages ...