Sunday's New York Times features a Style section article that quite frankly turned my stomach (at least, I'm pretty sure it was the article and not the 6-month-old fetus I'm carrying!). It describes a debate over Harvard's decision to sign on to a new, expensive preppy clothing line -- one that charges more than $150 for a shirt, and up to $500 for a sports coat. A variety of opinions are represented, from that of the director of admissions and financial aid (a former aid recipient himself) to an undergraduate who said, “I think it’s good that it’s [Harvard's] doing something to make money."

These deals apparently generate about $500,000 per year for the university, which (poor baby) saw its endowment decline by 30 percent last year. And that money goes to financial aid, so we're not supposed to worry that Harvard's being greedy.

And that's the main issue the reporter tackles --...

Every fall for the last 29 years I've embarked on a new school year. No joke--for nearly my entire life the arrival of September has meant one thing: back to the classroom.

Yet this time feels entirely new, nerve-wracking, and yes I'm nail-biting.  Why?  Two big reasons.  First, it's the first year I'm sending my own child off to school.  My son Conor begins preschool next Tuesday in a Waldorf program.  So this year instead of simply looking forward to my own class schedule or preparing lectures for my students, I'm trying to get ready for his new principal, teacher, and classroom.

Want to bring an otherwise confident, competent professor to her knees? Put her face to face with a preschool teacher who disagrees with her.  I may know something about something, but I'm no early childhood expert.  I have instincts, and I have no idea what they're grounded in. So when Conor's teacher...

Anyone who's taken a hard look at the reasons why more students drop out of community college realizes it's got to have at least something to do with their need for more frequent, higher-quality advising.  After all, in many cases these are students who are juggling multiple responsibilities, only one of which is attending college, and they need to figure out a lot of details--how to take the right courses to fit their particular program (especially if they hope to later transfer credits), how to get the best financial aid package, how to work out a daily schedule that can maximize their learning, etc. It's fairly easy to figure that in fact community college students would probably stand to benefit more from good advising than their counterparts at many four-year institutions.

Except high-quality advising isn't what they get.  Counselor-student ratios are on average 1000:1.  That's right...

In several recent interviews and blog posts, I've expressed my hesitation about the move toward online learning in higher education. My concerns are fairly common ones and go like this: How do we know that students are engaged, or even awake, when participating online? How do we know that online learning is as effective as classroom learning? How do we know that any negative consequences outweigh the cost savings? And what exactly are those cost savings? (After all, technology isn't cheap.) And finally, despite claims to the contrary, the digital divide still exists -- so how do we know that low-income and rural populations will get the access to online learning they need?

Admittedly, I'll always be forced to note that for most of these big questions there's little evidence to the contrary -- e.g. we don't know much about the effectiveness of classroom learning in higher education...

One of the more interesting talks at the recent American Sociological Association meetings was given by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, directors of the CLA Longitudinal Study. Arum and Roksa are following approximately 2,300 students attending 24 four-year colleges and universities nationwide in an effort to assess the magnitude and causes of gains in learning. They're working with the Council for Aid to Education and utilizing the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a test that while imperfect is among those more highly-regarded new measures of college learning.

Having examined the test scores of students at the start of freshman year and again at the end of sophomore year, Arum and Roksa discovered the following. First, gains don't look particularly large for anyone. On average, scores went up maybe 50 points (eyeballing their results it looks like from about 1125 to 1160-1175). Of course, ...

The President's proposed College Access and Completion Fund, as represented in HR 3221, is an ambitious effort to get states and institutions of higher education focused on a crucial goal: moving more students from the starting gate to the finish line.  By encouraging an emphasis on the need to find constructive routes to degree completion that can be brought to scale, helping more students more quickly, the legislation aims to enact a meaningful shift -- from access alone to access leading to success.

Of course, there had to be someone or something standing in the way of these lofty ambitions. And unsurprisingly, it's the colleges and universities themselves.  The four-year institutions in particular, as self-interested and self-serving as ever, have come forward via their powerful lobbying associations to demand that the fund work not via states but instead funnel the money directly to ...

On Friday the Sociology of Education section of the American Sociological Association held a small conference in San Francisco specifically focused on the role of the sociologist in educational reform.  Organized by some of the section’s smartest young thinkers including Mitchell Stevens, Amy Binder, and Elizabeth Armstrong, the meeting was refreshingly thought-provoking.  Not everyone in attendance was one of the usual suspects—for example, Tom Toch appeared to give a great talk on school reform.

Central to the day’s discussions was a topic near and dear to my heart: Can, and should, a sociologist of education conduct relevant educational research and try to have an impact on educational reform?  Is the academic’s place in the academy, or in the schools? Even if a professor desires to become involved with policy and practice, is her voice welcomed? Considered?  Or, as so many (but not...

I began the article with a nice, warm feeling--a sweet story of how Barack and Michelle Obama are trying to keep connected and close with their children is a lovely thing to find on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. It's hard to imagine what it must be like to parent in the White House.  Sure, you have plenty of help-- no trouble handling all those bags and kids when you're trying to get out the door, or worrying that you don't have a sitter when you need to stay out late.  But I think all parents suffer from a feeling of being too visible, especially when confronted with tantrums or difficult decisions, and these two are right out in front of everyone.

So I both empathize with-- and envy-- the First Parents.  Their summer trips with the girls sound idyllic; making gelato in Rome, visiting the Eiffel Tower, Ghana, etc....  While the article focused on those outings as...

August is upon us, and we academics are nearing the end of our so-called ‘summer vacation.”  My heart always sinks a little when I hear someone (usually a student) call it that, since I know the truth—it’s the busiest, most stressful time of the year.  Those three months after grading ends and before the next term begins is when we try and finish every article, start several new ones, plan courses for the upcoming year, write grant proposals, and accomplish a million other small tasks that can supposedly be crammed in since, after all, we are not teaching (ok—some of us aren’t).  These insane expectations, perhaps most often held by the untenured among us, lead to 80 hour weeks where we work frantically in fear that come September our to-do list won’t be any shorter.  It’s hot, the pool calls, our kids are around to play, but we ignore all that and keep going.

Is life like this after...

Last week I spoke at a meeting of the Lumina Foundation's Achieving the Dream Initiative, a meeting of policymakers from 15 states all working to improve the effectiveness of community colleges. At one point, a data working group shared results of its efforts to create new ways to measure college outputs. This was basically a new kind of report card, one capable of reporting results for different subgroups of students, and enabling comparisons of outcomes across colleges. Something like it might someday replace the data collection currently part of the IPEDS.

While it's always gratifying to see state policymakers engaging with data and thinking about how to use it in meaningful ways, I couldn't help but feel that even this seemingly forward-thinking group was tending towards the status quo. The way we measure and report college outputs right now consistently reinforces a particular way of...