The College Board announced today that the price of higher education increased significantly in 2009, rising faster than inflation and family income. In other news, the sun rose in the east, teenagers were sullen and uncommunicative, too much alcohol gave people false courage, and politicians told people what they wanted to hear.

Following past practice, the College Board presented the findings in a light most favorable to its members, the colleges and universities that increased prices. Comparing this year's announcement with last year shows this pretty clearly.

In 2008, the average tuition and fees at public four-year universities increased by 6.4 percent. Inflation in 2008 was unusually high, 5.6 percent, due in large part to spikes in energy prices. So when the College Board released Trends in College Pricing 2008, it issued a press release titled "College Prices Increase in Step ...

Late last week I got a call from a sports reporter at USA Today who was writing about Binghamton University's deeply embarrassing men's basketball team. The amazingly-still-employed coach, Kevin Broadus, a man who thought this would be a really good week to commit new recruiting violations, was formerly an assistant to Georgetown University coach John Thompson III, son of legendary Georgetown coach John Thompson. The article quotes the senior Thompson supporting Broadus' decision to recruit a host of players who have since been kicked off the team amid accusations of crack dealing and academic misconduct:

Thompson says Broadus was only doing what Thompson did in 27 seasons at Georgetown, which included a national title in 1984: extending opportunities to African-Americans who haven't seen many. "I respect the fact that he's willing to go out on a limb and try to give kids an opportunity...

The 2009 state NAEP math results were released today, and they're disappointing. Fourth-grade scores, which have been a great and under-recognized success story over the last two decades, were flat. Eighth grade scores rose slightly. What to conclude? Most broadly, that most of the claims about national education policy, pro and con, have been overwrought.

Supporters of the No Child Left Behind Act -- and I've generally been one of them -- hoped that the law would catalyze a major upward move in student achievement. That hasn't happened. Perhaps it's because every state got to choose its own standards; perhaps it's because the law did little to get better teachers in classrooms; perhaps it's because yawning revenue disparities between and within states were largely unaddressed. Whatever was missing, something was missing, probably many things, and the next version of ESEA will need...

A few months ago a magazine editor sent me proofs of some upcoming higher-education books, to see if I'd be interested in writing a review. One was Wannabe U, by University of Connecticut sociologist Gaye Tuchman. That sparked my interest -- my father was once a professor at UConn and I lived in Storrs until I was 13. But when I started leafing through the pages, the book immediately struck me as ... odd. It purports to be the study of an un-named university's quest for status. All the characters have pseudonyms and the author says some of the details of their jobs have been changed. But the university in question is obviously the University of Connecticut.

For example, on page 14, the book quotes President "Whitmore" as saying, at his inauguration, "Nothing is more important to the quality of life in this state than educational excellence." If you Google that phrase, exactly as written...

So I'm taking the Red Line to work this morning, at around 8:50 a.m., traveling from east to west between Gallery Place and Metro Center. We're in the tunnel and I'm all the way up at the front of the first car, just behind the driver, when suddenly there's a WHUMP and the car lurches upward and then back down again, followed a fraction of a second later by a bright shower of orange sparks in the tunnel outside.

The car shudders to a halt and I can hear the driver radioing in to central dispatch, we have a situation, there was a loud noise, we may have hit something, please advise. Other trains barrel past in the other direction. The people in my car are calm but I can hear passengers from cars further back on the intercom in the driver's cabin behind me, calling to her, there's smoke in the tunnel, smoke, what should we do?

The driver, professional and calm, keeps calling back to...

There's been a fair amount of commentary on the Harvard column I wrote for The Chronicle last week. This critique in Harvard Magazine was thoughtful, as were many of the comments under the piece on the site itself. Not all, though: For the record, I've never applied to or been rejected by Harvard, although if I had applied the university certainly would have rejected me for completely justified reasons. I wasn't a very conscientious student in high school, or as an undergraduate for that matter. Nor do I bear the university any personal grudges. Working in the D.C. think tank / journalism / legal world, I know dozens of Harvard graduates and they're all wonderful, smart people. I'm also pretty baffled by this:

I registered with this website specifically to comment on this story. As a Harvard Alum (class of 08), I can't help but wonder what made this writer so bitter. Do you not...

There's a moment in the guitar god documentary It Might Get Loud (out now, and worth seeing) where U2 frontman The Edge talks about the first time he saw This Is Spinal Tap. "I didn't laugh," he says. "I wept." The Edge knew that the hilarious excesses chronicled in the classic mockumentary were in many ways indistinguishable from the real-life state of rock 'n roll circa 1984, a time when U2 first exploded into world popularity. Few films have aged as well, particularly comedies, which are often tied up in the mood of their moment. That's because, in addition to being riotously funny, Spinal Tap demonstrates the supreme importance of boundaries in public discourse.

By that I mean the outer limits of seriousness, the point beyond which you risk ostracism and marginalization. People, by their nature, are constantly on the lookout for where these lines are drawn. We're social creatures a...

I've never been embarrassed to tell anyone I graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton. It's not in the Ivy League, it's not as well-known as Berkeley or Michigan or Virginia, but it's a well-regarded, selective public institution. A lot of smart people learn and teach there, and the university's overall trajectory has been very positive. So as an alumnus, it's just tremendously dispiriting to open up the New York Times and read headlines like "Binghamton Lecturer Critical of Athletics Is Fired."

Apparently, an "adjunct lecturer who accused the athletic department of giving preferential treatment to men’s basketball players and pressuring her to change her grading policy for players was dismissed Tuesday."

This "comes at a time when Binghamton’s basketball program, which reached the N.C.A.A. tournament for the first time last season, has hit a nadir. The university ...

Newsweek has published a mini-debate (the "Student Loan Smackdown") between for-profit bank representative John Dean and myself, on the subject of whether Congress should pass President Obama's plan to redirect $8-billion in lucrative subsidies for for-profit banks to Pell Grants and other worthy causes. Dean says "No!" while I say "Yes!" Newsweek went with "Yes."

Apparently the standard tactic($) of spending tens of millions of dollars on lobbyists and campaign contributions isn't working, because Dean is now saying that the legislation "adds $1-trillion to Treasury borrowing over 10 years." In a time of exploding budget deficits and growing national debt, that seems pretty scary. Why would Obama burden us so? The answer, of course, is that he's not. Dean's statement is a combination of exaggeration and wordplay.

First, the exaggeration: $1-trillion. What a coincidence, that borrowing...

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Chicago State University is in danger of losing accreditation, "because of 'remarkably poor' graduation and retention rates, as well as tumultuous leadership and finances."

The article goes on to note that "the Higher Learning Commission cites several 'grave' concerns regarding the future of the South Side school that serves roughly 6,800 students," and that "retention of students from the first to second year of college is 'very poor,' the letter said. Of the 372 students who started college in fall 2007, for example, only 55 percent returned the next year. And the six-year graduation rate has continued to decline. Only 12.8 percent of first-year students in 2002 graduated by 2008."

Not to mention the fact that incoming president Wayne Watson "was expected to start August 1, but a snafu over his state pension delayed his service two months,...