President Obama has set the higher education agenda for the remainder of his term by linking consumer fears with politics. There is substance in the president’s arguments about sticker price, the squeezing of the American middle class, and the failure to provide access to a higher education degree for those who seek it. The fundamental…
Writing for Business Insider, Cork Gaines has surveyed “All the Crazy College Football Uniforms for This Season” [http://www.businessinsider.com/new-college-football-uniforms-2013-8?op=1]. On its surface, the article seems a survey of an aspect of the sport that has become increasingly eccentric, almost a gimmicky trademark for some teams. Long the trendsetter in mutating and eye-popping uniforms, the University of…
A year ago, in the wake of the protests across the Muslim world ostensibly sparked by the Internet trailer for the film Innocence of Muslims, Aya Bratrawy and Rachel Zoll, writing for the Associated Press, collaborated on the article “An Overview about the Prophet Muhammad and Why He is So Revered by Muslims.” The writers…
Part 3: Reduce the Cost of a Degree by 40% by Reducing Labor and Capital Costs. [Explanatory lead to the first post in this series: Richard Vedder is distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In an…
I teach courses in postcolonial literatures and cultures, and I like to think that I have moved largely beyond a self-referential and reductive perception of unfamiliar aspects of other cultures as exotic or bizarre. But then I come across a news item that leaves me wondering whether it is worth my time to wonder what…
Part 2: Deliver Half of a Baccalaureate Degree by MOOC [Explanatory lead to the first post in this series (): Richard Vedder is distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In an earlier post, I pointed out,…
As American colleges and universities emerge weaker but wiser from the Great Recession, it is also time to think about how best to move forward with capital projects long delayed or shelved. What, then, are the preconditions determining which projects go forward? What seemed to be an essential capital expenditure five years ago may not…
Part 1: Three-Year Baccalaureate Degrees Richard Vedder is distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In an earlier post, I pointed out, as others have, that he is hardly an unbiased or objective commentator on the state…
This is an open letter sent by Perez to the United Auto Workers. Brother and Sisters: From the U.S. Department of Labor, where I proudly work in a building named for my great predecessor Frances Perkins, let me wish all of my friends in the United Auto Workers and your families–wherever you are–a safe, happy…