I just read the GAO report about default rates among for-profit institutions, and while I have a great deal of respect for George Scott and his GAO colleagues, there are some astounding errors in the methodology used for this study ... not to mention some key omissions in the Chronicle article about it by Libby Nelson.

A key finding of the GAO study is that for-profit institutions are growing at a rate that outpaces their nonprofit competitors, including in the four-year degree sector. Whereas once for-profit schools dominated the technical and certificate degree market, they are now competing for some of the same students, and more importantly the same Federal Student Aid dollars, that have been the traditional domain of the non-profit sector. That may explain why there is such a great deal of disdain for these highly successful institutions. Well, that and a great deal of...

So, the Baucus "gang-of-three-out-of-six" bill has been released, and it is clear that policy makers are no longer talking about health-care reform, but are instead focused on health-insurance reform.  As has been done for decades in education, where many “education reformers” work around the edges to find a different way to pay more for an educational delivery system that is fundamentally flawed, it appears that now the “health care reformers” are working around the edges to figure out a new way to pay for a health-care delivery system that is similarly fundamentally flawed. 

I agree that we need to make sure that more people have access to a means to pay for health-care services, which means that more people need access to health insurance, but if we decouple the debate about insurance reform from the debate about delivery reform, we simply enable more people to pay for a system that ...

I keep hearing comparisons between the proposal for mandatory health insurance coverage and the requirement that drivers maintain auto insurance.  Sounds good, but the comparison just doesn’t work. In reality, car-insurance coverage is not mandated to all Americans, all adults, or even all licensed drivers (one can maintain a license but not auto insurance if he or she does not plan to drive a car). Auto insurance is but one price that must be paid in order to enjoy the privilege of driving.   

Alternatively, the mandatory health insurance proposal would essentially require that, in exchange for the privilege of ... citizenship? Residency in the U.S.? Life? ... one must procure health insurance for herself and her family. Can pedestrians “opt out” of mandatory health-insurance coverage, and more importantly, where in the Constitution does the Federal government have the right...

I spent the Labor Day weekend sailing on the Chesapeake Bay, and it occurred to me that sailing and policy-making have a great deal in common. Sure, if the wind is just right, a beam reach might take the mighty vessel directly to the destination of choice, but those are the days of which a sailor dreams … ones that are infrequent at best. More often than not, sailors spend their time tacking back and forth -- from port to starboard -- along a zigzag course of extremes that ultimately takes the vessel right down the middle. Sailors develop a great deal of patience for this mode of travel because while we know that the zigzag course takes more time and is less efficient, we understand that time on the sea affords us unplanned and unanticipated conversations, experiences and discoveries that otherwise might not have been. In a world that moves too fast, there is nothing so precious as...

In the ongoing conversation about institutional quality, I continuously see references to retention and graduation rates as “the” -- or at least "a” -- key indicator of institutional quality. But what if we have it all wrong? What if measuring graduation and retention rates as evidence of institutional quality is like taking a person’s temperature to evaluate the efficacy or effectiveness (these are experimentally different measures) of his blood pressure medication?

While it may be true that, at the margins, some institutions are more successful at retaining and graduating disadvantaged students than others, and we should certainly study those institutions to find out what they do “right,” in general, retention and graduation rates correlate more closely to student socioeconomic status and family situation than they do to institutional type, sector, or quality. Even at the...

The passing of Les Paul last week reminded me of the power that a single person has to change the world.  Les Paul was a self-made, self-educated man, who learned everything he needed to know through the once great American pastime of tinkering.  He held no formal degree in music or engineering, but after years of experimenting with player piano rolls, crystal radio sets, and eventually wooden planks and electric pick-ups, he brought his “log” electric guitar to the audience and eventually helped Gibson bring the solid-body electric guitar to the world.  It may have taken him 10 years to convince Gibson to go electric, but next to tinkering, I guess patience and perseverance are the other attributes shared by history's greatest inventors.

I met Les Paul at the 2004 First World Guitar Congress, held at Towson University in Maryland.  At the age of 88 (he turned 89 during the week-long...

In his August 7th posting, Why is Northern Kentucky University Trying to Steal Your Money?, Kevin Carey raised an important concern about earmarks that rob the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) -- and more sadly, the innovative institutions of higher education that try to play by the rules - of funding that should be awarded competitively to projects that will yield postsecondary education improvements.

When Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, they added an impossibly long list of new activities that the Department was authorized to support through the FIPSE program, including everything from to designing more cost-effective methods of instruction and institutional operation, to creating new programs for awarding credentials to individuals, reforming remedial education, creating interdisciplinary programs that focus on poverty and human...

How nice that we are willing to give $3,500 or $4,500 in taxpayer dollars to upper-income people who made the bad decision to purchase a gas guzzler in the past, and now want to enjoy the luxury and savings associated with a new, fuel-efficient car.  Keep in mind that even with the government "allowance rebate", poor people still can't afford a new car, and especially not a new hybrid, so this money is not going to help the working poor.  When you realize that the rebate is available on new cars with puchase prices of up to $45,000, you can see just who Congress had in mind when creating this program. 

So, while some of us nurse along our aging, yet fuel efficient, Hondas and Toyotas that won't qualify for the rebate program, the government is happy to reward our monster-truck driving neighbors with a sizable gift to help them purchase a newer, less monstrous truck that gets a whopping ...

I hope all of you college and university presidents out there are paying attention and have added a new tool to your conflict resolution toolkit. The next time two or more students are embroiled in conflict, it appears that the best way to solve it might be to invite all parties over to the presidential mansion to have a cold beer. Even really smart people seem now to recognize that in small quantities, alcohol might make calmer or more reasonable people out of all of us, that somehow it could enhance the value of the conversation, or at least the ease with which it flows. Just chug that mug and let the good times roll.

Oh, but that's right. You have been charged with being the moral leaders of young people in the U.S. and the deliverers of the message that alcohol won't solve problems but will instead exacerbate them. You are the mandated keepers of dry campuses in order to protect...

As the Congress and administration work through the details of establishing a new $12-billion program to boost the nation’s community colleges, I urge policy makers to look to the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education program as the right model to follow, and perhaps the best place to put that sizable new investment. While I understand that congressional boundaries and committee jurisdictions force members of Congress to stay within their agency silos when developing new programs, my hope is that the members of Congress who sit on the House and Senate education and science committees can work together to make sound investment decisions by expanding programs that work rather than creating yet another new program with an unproven track record. 

The ATE program, which has existed since the 1980s, is one of the only Federal science and mathematics education programs...