The Institutions on the Department of Education’s Financial Watch List: Part 5

        Previous Posts in This Series: The Institutions on the Department of Education’s Financial Watch List: Part 1: https://academeblog.org/2015/05/07/the-institutions-on-the-department-of-educations-financial-watch-list-part-1/ The Institutions on the Department of Education’s Financial Watch List: Part 2: https://academeblog.org/2015/05/08/the-institutions-on-the-department-of-educations-financial-watch-list-part-2/ The Institutions on the Department of Education’s Financial Watch List: Part 3: https://academeblog.org/2015/05/11/the-institutions-on-the-department-of-educations-financial-watch-list-part-3/ The Institutions on the Department of Education’s…

Federal Research Funding 2011-2015

The following charts are from the National Science Foundation website: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2015/nsf15322/?WT.mc_id=USNSF_179   Funding by Type:   Funding by Performer:   Funding by Agency and Performer:   Funding by Agency and Type:   Funding by Discipline:  

Bertrand Russell and Academic Freedom

Since today is Bertrand Russell’s birthday (he was born in 1872), I wanted to share this short segment from my dissertation on the history of academic freedom about Russell’s firing from CCNY and the first court case to mention the words “academic freedom”: A turning point in academic freedom came in 1940. That year marked the…

What’s the “Value Added” of a College Degree?

In a recent release titled “Beyond College Rankings,” Jonathan Rothwell, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, examined the “value added” of two- and four-year colleges in the United States. In doing so, Mr. Rothwell assessed the difference in the expected economic success of alumni and the actual outcomes of graduates. The conclusions are based on…

The Logical End of For-Profit, Online Education

The best way to ensure at least some value to education is through time-defined study under monitored face-to-face supervision. Education can certainly happen otherwise; it can even end up being not very good in this set-up. But every other model cries out for scam. In The New York Times today, Declan Walsh shows us that the ultimate result of the…

The Debt Load of the 2015 Graduating Class

On May 8, 2015, Jeffrey Sparshott’s article “Congratulations, Class of 2015. You Are the Most Indebted Ever {For Now)” was published in the Wall Street Journal [http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/05/08/congratulations-class-of-2015-youre-the-most-indebted-ever-for-now/]. The article draws on a report produced by Edvisors [https://www.edvisors.com/], a website that provides a broad variety of resources on financial aid, including loans, for prospective and current…

While We Have Been Focused on the Verdict in the Tsarnaev Trial

This past week, an Egyptian court sentenced to death former president Mohammed Morsi, along with 130 other defendants, for their participation in a mass jailbreak and their roles in subsequent attacks on the police and the military that led to the overthrow of the government of Hosni Mubarek. This sentence comes on the heels of…

Chris Christie’s Impact on Public Higher Education in New Jersey

New Jersey Policy Perspective has released a new report that links decreased state support of public higher education and falling wages to increased student-loan debt: “New Jersey students and families continue to have a hard time affording the high cost of a college education, thanks to lackluster state support for public colleges and universities. New…