July 20, 2012, 12:12 pm
By Peter Wood
The bubble in American higher education is inflating rapidly. Ironically this is happening just at the moment when large numbers of Americans are noticing that there is indeed a higher-ed bubble—that colleges and universities are enrolling too many students at too high a price; that the market for college graduates is saturated and oversupplied; and that there is a serious disparity between the costs and the rewards of the typical college-degree program.
One might think that parents who have some sense of this situation would think twice before spending tens of thousands of dollars (or more) on college, and encouraging their sons and daughters to go deeply in debt. But that hasn’t happened yet, at least not in substantial numbers. The psychology, as well as the finances, of this market differ from some classic bubbles. College degrees aren’t tulip bulbs, or overpriced condos. It…
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July 13, 2012, 5:24 pm
By Peter Wood
The dreadful scandal at Penn State reached another level on July 12, with the 250-page report of former FBI director Louis Freeh to the university’s board of trustees, culminating a seven-month independent investigation. The report makes clear the complicity of senior officials at the university in covering up convicted child molester and former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual assaults on children. The officials include head football coach, the late Joe Paterno, university president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley, university vice president Gary Schultz, and university police chief Thomas Harmon, all of whom knew enough of the facts to act but who chose instead to turn a blind eye to Sandusky’s concurrent career as a child molester.
The officials chose to pursue a cover up, according to Freeh, because of their fear of bad publicity.
That probably…
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March 27, 2012, 11:52 am
By Peter Wood
President Obama and most of the higher-education establishment is in full cry for a large expansion in the number of students who attend and who complete college. We are told this is a priority because it would be good for the nation’s economy and good for the students. Be that as it may, there would be other beneficiaries of such an expansion. A recent report inadvertently highlights this. It offers an answer of sorts to “Who benefits?”
In February, FSG, “a nonprofit consulting firm specializing in strategy, evaluation, and research,” issued a report about the need for community colleges to outsource services such as data analysis, planning for organization change, faculty and staff development, and “readiness assessment services, psychosocial supports for students, counseling, mentoring, and tutoring.”
The 32-page report, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is …
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March 6, 2012, 5:16 pm
By Peter Wood
President Obama’s agenda for higher education includes the goal of having nearly all Americans receive at least one year of formal education beyond high school. For shorthand, he has often referred to this extra year as “college,” which has prompted controversy. College for all? He referred to this in his January 24 State of the Union address as part of “the basic American promise,” namely:
if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement.
What this means is a matter of some dispute. According to the New York Times, “almost 70 percent of high-school graduates in the United States enroll in college within two years of graduating.” Is that figure too low? When Obama addresses this issue he sometimes sounds like he is enunciating a general principle that all or nearly all should go to…
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August 26, 2011, 5:42 pm
By Peter Wood
Richard Vedder’s Innovations post, “Universities and Income Equality: New Evidence and Conjectures,” deserves serious attention. I was going to post a comment, but it struck me as perhaps more useful to offer some additional context.
Vedder offers a tentative finding that since 1970, we have had diminishing returns in the attempt to reduce income inequality by expanding the percentage of the population that holds college degrees. His finding contradicts a number of other studies and those differences will have to be sorted out. But, unlike those other studies, his finding makes perfect intuitive sense.
It also fits with several other forms of evidence. We learned back in January from Academically Adrift, Arum and Roksa’s study of the results of the Collegiate Learning Assessment, that overall about 36 percent of college seniors have made no significant cognitive advance…
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August 5, 2011, 11:24 am
By Peter Wood
News item:
Under the debt ceiling deal signed into law on Tuesday, government-subsidized loans for graduate and professional students across the nation will be eliminated in July 2012. Those students will begin paying interest on their loans while still in school, or let it accumulate.
—Associated Press, August 3, 2011.
A Wall Street analyst:
The longer-run outlook for students lending and borrowers remains worrisome. Unlike other segments of the consumer credit economy, student loans have not demonstrated much improvement in performance despite some improvement in the larger economy…[T]here is increasing concern that many students may be getting their loans for the wrong reasons, or that borrowers—and lenders—have unrealistic expectations of borrowers’ future earnings. Unless students limit their debt burdens, choose fields of study that are in demand, and successfully…
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April 19, 2011, 10:49 am
By Marybeth Gasman
April 13, 2011, 3:44 pm
By Marybeth Gasman
Last week I attend a day full of events at the National Press Club in Washington. The National Association for Equal Opportunity (NAFEO), an advocacy group for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) as well as Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs), sponsored the day. The day focused on refuting negative perceptions of HBCUs, the ranking of HBCUs by U.S. News and World Report (I moderated that session), and HBCUs’ relationships with the media. As with any conference on HBCUs that I attend, I learned a lot and took a lot of notes. Here are some of the highlights, coupled with my own spin on the issues.
The opening session of the day featured Ohio University professor and fellow Innovations blogger Richard Vedder. Not long ago, Vedder wrote a not-so-supportive piece for the Chronicle on HBCUs. After reading the piece, NAFEO president Lezli Baskerville reached out…
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April 13, 2011, 3:40 pm
By Peter Wood
Today, April 13, has been declared “Take Class Action Day” by the AAUP and a collection of faculty unions, which have called for a “teach-in.” We are invited to contemplate the seven “Guiding Principles” for the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education. The project originated with the California Faculty Association last fall, which summoned the support of other faculty unions at a conference in January.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the January conference, and in February, Jason Jones’s writing on the Chronicle’s ProfHacker blog promoted the April 13 event. At the end of March, the AAUP newsletter urged its members to plan April 13 events and let the AAUP know. The protest, however, seems to have been a damp firecracker. As far as I can tell not much is happening. If the AAUP Web site has a list of today’s events, it has been artfully buried on the…
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February 25, 2011, 2:28 pm
By Frank Donoghue
Richard Vedder, a retired economist from Ohio University and fellow Innovations blogger, makes a radical, macroeconomic argument about why college costs so much in what is perhaps his most influential book, Going Broke By Degrees: Why College Costs Too Much (2004). Indeed, he goes beyond a critique of the contemporary college by wondering if we need universities at all.
He muses: “Are universities vital? Perhaps, but the process of learning and discovery existed before they came into being during the late Middle Ages, and it would continue, albeit perhaps in a less efficient fashion, if they ceased to exist. As universities become even more costly, they would do well to remember that they do not have a monopoly ton the creation and maintenance of our human and cultural capital.” He describes a vicious circle of funding and spending that dovetails with Jackson Toby’s central…
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