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…
In discussing and charting the dramatic shift from state support to tuition as the major revenue source for public colleges and universities, we typically focus on national or state-by-state data. But we can also chart that data for individual institutions. For example, here is such a chart for Pennsylvania State University: The advantage of considering…
The Progressive news site Nation of Change has today run an article titled “Four Charts with What Everyone Should Know about the Student Debt Crisis.” The full article is available at: http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/04/04/four-charts-with-what-everyone-should-know-about-the-student-debt-crisis/ I think that the most telling of the charts may be this one, which shows the incredible increase in government-backed student debt: The…
I am posting this testimony as a companion post to my earlier posting of the testimony of Ohio Conference President, John McNay, to the Ohio Senate Committee responsible for higher-education appropriations [https://academeblog.org/2015/03/05/ohio-conference-president-provides-senate-testimony-on-the-decline-in-state-support-administrate-bloat-the-cost-of-intercollegiate-athletics-and-faculty-workload/]. If you read the two posts you will notice quite a contrast in the emphases in the two statements to the Ohio legislature.…
The following are two brief excerpts from Gongwer’s coverage of the Chancellor’s testimony and the legislators’ response to it. Gongwer is a subscription news service on Ohio government; so I cannot provide a link to the entire article. _________________________ “Chancellor Defends Governor’s Plan To Cut College Costs “A House subcommittee budget probed the higher education…
The Ohio Conference AAUP has produced an “Ohio Higher Education Report” entitled The Real Problems Deserve Real Solutions. The purpose of the report is to influence public policy around higher education issues, especially in light of HB 64, the state budget bill, as well as Gov. Kasich’s Task Force on Affordability and Efficiency. It is also a response…
On this past Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” show, John Oliver devoted about two thirds of the show to an extended riff on the student-debt issue. At one point, he compared taking on student debt to getting a sexually transmitted disease: “Essentially, student debt is like HPV. If you go to college, you’re almost certainly going…
Here is a link to Poorer by Degrees, a new short documentary by Jennifer Shuberth, a former faculty member at Portland State University: http://vimeo.com/95828754. The documentary questions the premise that our economic growth requires a dramatic increase in the number of college graduates. Indeed, it suggests that the increased emphasis on completing degrees may actually…
The following is a link to an article I published about textbooks. I resolve to do something concrete about this problem, and one part of the solution will be abandoning the practice of using textbooks for certain courses. I hope others will follow and offer suggestions. I hope others may already be teaching without “required” textbooks. http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/22/the-trouble-with-textbooks-a-great-american-rip-off/