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…
Sources: National Center for Education Statistics, New Deal 2.0, Nation of Change Total student loan debt in the U.S. in 2012: $1 trillion. Total student loan debt in the U.S. in 2011: $830 billion. Total credit-card debt in the U.S. in 2011: $826.5 billion. Total value of the federal student loans taken in 2010: $100…
This is a guest post by Adrianna Kezar and Dan Maxey. Changes in the composition of the American professoriate toward a mostly contingent workforce are raising important questions about poor working conditions for non-tenure-track faculty and connections between these conditions and student learning outcomes. Numerous studies have found the negative working conditions of these faculty have…
A trustee once told me that perception is reality in higher education. The comment didn’t require a response but I wish I had made one. What I should have said is that the truth trumps perception in a world where principle and fairness should always matter most. In fact, the best leaders are not those…
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have been getting a lot of attention lately. The idea of free access to higher education via online classes challenges our traditional assumptions about good undergraduate pedagogy–that small class sizes and significant face-to-face time with professors are crucial to learning. As a parent with two kids at private universities, I find…
The November-December issue of Academe looks at faculty service. It is perhaps the most ambiguous of the traditional triad along with teaching and research, and the articles in this issue seek to describe the different ways that faculty conceive of service, and the different ways that service is (or is not) recognized. Read the issue here.…