In my last post, I wrote on the need for a comprehensive redesign of the collegiate business model. The numbers don’t work, the model typically addresses incremental budget adjustments at best, and the bureaucratic “mom and pop” shops who administer the budget at many colleges inhibit broader cooperative partnerships that can hold down costs and…
Sources: National Center for Education Statistics, Bloomberg News, Chronicle of Higher Education, Blumenstyk and Fuller Number of post-secondary institutions newly accredited between 2005 and 2009: 483. Percentage of post-secondary institutions newly accredited between 2005 and 2009 that were private for-profit institutions: 77%. Percentage of total accredited post-secondary institutions in the U.S. that were private for-profit…
In my original post under this title, I pointed out that the proponents of “right to work” never directly address questions about how “right to work” improves workers’ wages, benefits, or working conditions. I rhetorically asked who can possibly believe that a worker–in particular a worker receiving low to average compensation–can negotiate more effectively as…
Stanley Fish’s offering “Higher Education’s Future: Discuss!” in today’s New York Times doesn’t provide anything new–but that’s not his fault. He writes about a panel discussion among four college presidents, ending: Not that I have anything more scintillating to offer. I’ll just wait for the next panel discussion and hope to hear the good news. He…
In “Who Will Hold Colleges Accountable?”, Kevin Carey of the New America Foundation writes in The New York Times: I suspect those courses that will be most valued will be those where students actually learn. Of course. Most of us who teach don’t just suspect that–we know it (as does Carey, I am sure… he’s deliberately understating the obvious).…
Source: National Center for Education Statistics Percentage of those enrolled in public four-year institutions who received financial aid in 2009: 79%. Percentage of those enrolled in private not-for-profit four-year institutions who received financial aid in 2009: 87%. Percentage of those enrolled in private for-profit four-year institutions who received financial aid in 2009: 86%. Percent of…
Sources: National Center for Education Statistics, Goldwater Institute, New Republic Average annual tuition at public four-year institutions in the U.S. in 2010: $7,605. Average annual tuition at private four-year institutions in the U.S. in 2009: $27,293. Average annual tuition at public two-year institutions in the U.S. in 2009: $2,713. Percentage increase in tuition and room-and-board…
Source: National Center for Education Statistics Total number of degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States in 2009: 4,495 Post-secondary enrollment in 2009: 20.4 million Percentage of the total U.S. population enrolled in 2009: 5.7% Enrollment by percentage in four-year institutions in 2009: 62% Enrollment by percentage in two-year institutions in 2009: 38%
I’ve been re-reading parts of Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, a book I love even where I disagree–looking yesterday at the chapter “The Fate of the Reformer.” What Hofstadter presents is an interesting contrast to the “reform” movements in education today, particularly when he is dealing with civil-service reform in the 1880s. The government reformers…