On Sunday, President Obama rallied Senate Democrats and implored them to work together to pass the largest piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act of 1935. Let's hope that despite their apparent haste, members of Congress will take some time to study both the successes and failures of the Social Security program so that health-insurance reform (a.k.a. government-run health insurance) does not repeat history in becoming the next budget-busting, unsustainable entitlement program.

When Social Security was created, it was far from the comprehensive program we know it to be today. For the first 15 years of the program, participation was limited to individuals who worked in certain employment categories. Excluded were workers in agricultural jobs, domestic service or government service, as well as most nurses, teachers, social workers, and librarians. While we would not...

On Monday, the Senate began debate on its monumental health-care reform package. Senator Barbara Mikulski (a Maryland Democrat) introduced the first amendment, which is an omen of what the future will hold when Congress takes over the health-care system. If passed, Senator Mikulski's amendment would require insurers to provide women with free preventative screenings for breast cancer, cervical cancer, post-partum depression, diabetes, and other ailments that are common causes of disease, disability and death in women. Insurers could not charge a copay or any other fee for these services. So here we are, just the first day of debate and already the Genie is out of the bottle.

While we might all agree that screening for a range of diseases and conditions is important, and that better screening might reduce long-term health-care costs, it is hard to see how we will reduce health-care...

There are tremendous inconsistencies between the commitment that we want students to make to achieving their higher education goals, and the commitment that we are willing to make to support them in reaching their fullest potential.

We want students to commit to completing a credential, be it a certification, license, or degree, yet we have a financial-aid system that treats each year as a discrete and separate entity. Low- and moderate-income students have a difficult time planning for the long term when they have no idea from one year to the next what level of financial assistance will be made available to them. Each year takes the student back to the beginning, with another FAFSA to complete, and another anxious waiting period to see how much, if any, aid will be offered.

Each year a new set of decisions must be made regarding which, if any, loans to take, and from whom. For...

Time recently published its list of Top 10 college and university presidents. Featured on that list is one of the most extraordinary individuals I have ever had the honor to know -- Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, the president of UMBC. The article highlighted Dr. Hrabowski's achievements in increasing the number of underrepresented minority students who pursue advanced degrees in science, engineering, and medicine. His accomplishments in this regard have been tremendous -- and his work has proven that if we want students to be successful, then we must continually raise the bar, force them to aim high, surround them with highly motivated mentors and peers, hold them accountable for their own success, and require them to give back to others even more than they took along the way.

For Dr. Hrabowski, there are no excuses and no exceptions -- just opportunities to work harder and accomplish more...

We have spent a great deal of time over the last decade -- and certainly during the last year -- discussing the federal student-loan programs from the perspective of the cost of the program to taxpayers. However, we have failed to concentrate on the truly pressing issues that are most significant to students and families, including the overall level of indebtedness that recent and future graduates will face and the fact that despite increased loan limits (particularly in unsubsidized student loans), many students remain unable to pay the costs of higher education without relying on other, even more burdensome, lending vehicles.

I think the main problem with the student loan program is that we allow institutions, financial aid officers, and the federal government to euphemistically refer to student loans using terms that, in the minds of many students and families, connote reduced...

The time has come for colleges and universities across the country to begin their quarterly reporting on the impact of funds received through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Institutions must report on the progress of ARRA grant awards, the number of direct-funded jobs created or retained with these grant funds, and the investment made in campus and research infrastructure (through grant funds as well as with state funds made available through the Recovery Act). Given that few people in America understand how research is conducted and funded, I worry that these reports will do nothing more than generate unwarranted controversy and erroneous
accusations of wasteful spending.

A significant portion of most federal grants fund various indirect costs, including the salaries of administrative and support personnel, maintenance of research facilities and compliance with...

Well, here we go again. A study (behind a pay wall) entitled Examining the Relationship Between Maternal Employment and Health Behaviours in British Children, which was published in the September 29th online version of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, has led to a flurry of headlines intended to reinforce the piety of staying at home, and the guilt of being a selfish, money grubbing, working mother. Maybe you've seen some of these headlines, including "Working Mothers Have the Unhealthiest Children" (Guardian, UK), and "Kids of Working Moms Less Healthy" (MSNBC). I wonder how many of the journalists who penned those sensational headlines actually bothered to read the study. If they had, they would have realized that the data tell a very different story -- one that does not support the conclusion published in the abstract.

The study was based on survey data...

I have been away from my blog of late because I was called upon by my county of residence to fulfill my civic responsibility as a juror in the circuit court. Although jury duty never comes at the right time (for me, it interfered with a long-planned vacation), I was actually a little excited when I was selected to serve on a real jury and see justice in action. Unfortunately, the experience turned out to be frustrating and unsettling at best.

I was appalled by how little my fellow jurors knew about our justice system. The idea of a presumption of innocence was lost on some, while the idea that the defendant could possibly be guilty was lost on others. Evidence seemed to be nothing more than artifact -- it was personal experience that would decide the outcome of this case. I was shocked that some of my fellow jurors refused to follow the rules regarding discussions of the case outside of...

As an empty nester, it is now easy for me to reflect upon the joys of parenting. The greatest joy, of course, is watching that beautiful little baby grow and develop into the complexity of an adult human, replete with gifts we celebrate and quirks that, undoubtably, come from the lineage of the other parent. But the second greatest joy may well be the way that our F2's challenge us to rethink our past assumptions, to see the world in a different way, to learn something that we never before found interesting, and to rethink our priorities and sense of world order. With that, I want to share a lesson I learned from one of my own sons, in part because this lesson might be helpful to others, and in part because I hope it causes you to take a moment to think of your own child's wisest moments. 

Like many of my fellow higher-ed brethren, who devote our lives to ensuring that other...

And so it begins. As we learned today from Jennifer Gonzalez's article, "State Directors of Community Colleges See Bleak Financial Times Ahead," community colleges that were supposed to get a much-needed opportunity to improve and update their infrastructure, courtesy of the economic stimulus package, will instead be faced with record-high enrollments concurrent with record-low budgets.

It seems as though state and local officials saw stimulus funding not as a way to pay for some much-needed, one-time investments in facilities, but instead as an excuse to cut their own support for these important instituitons of higher education. Community colleges have done the right thing for decades by keeping tuition low, despite the fact that the students they serve are most likely to need costly academic support services. Now community colleges are being further penalized at the very moment when...