Month: July 2009

3 Ways To Save On College Textbooks

Some advice from the Philadelphia Inquirer “Renting” and digital textbooks? It’s a new world out there…

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Assorted College Tales From The Times

Sunday’s “U” Issue of the New York Times offers a few interesting features: – How dropping test score requirements is also a convincing tool for the benefit of colleges. – An interesting University of Cincinatti dorm effort to retain first-generation college students. – Some advice on balancing grad school prospects and debt. And plenty more, […]

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Take Close Note

Top Party Schools, from the new Princeton Review college guide: 1. Penn State University, State College, Pa. 2. University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla. 3. University of Mississippi, Oxford, Miss. 4. University of Georgia, Athens, Ga. 5. Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 6. West Virginia University, Morgantown, W.Va. 7. University of Texas, Austin, Texas 8. University of […]

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No One Said It’d Be Easy

“Choosing Community College Means Some Homework” by Kathy M. Kristof from the L.A. Times: “You can go two years to a community college for the cost of one course at a four-year university,” said Don Silver, author of the “Community College Transfer Guide.” “What is overlooked is how complex it can be.” Too often, students […]

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Beware the Sensitivity Gestapo

The trajectory of my career changed in late 2006, although I could never have recognized it at the time. I am a tenured full professor of journalism at Michigan State University. I was sitting in my office when a student dropped by and identified himself as the chairman of the MSU College Republicans. They needed […]

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Card Check Comes To Campus

Labor unions have suffered a number of defeats in recent years, but they hope to regain momentum by gaining passage of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier to secure votes for unionization, mainly through a mechanism called “card check.” Card check would replace the traditional method of unionization by eliminating […]

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Do Elite Colleges Produce The Best-Paid Graduates?

The New York Times poses the question. I’m not going to tell you the answer – take a look for yourself.

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The Student Debt Crisis Is Not Being Fixed

A recent report from Education Sector shows that about half of America’s college undergraduates go into debt these days in order to work toward their degrees. In 1993 only 32 percent of college students took out loans to pay for their educations, so these latest figures, from 2008, based on the U.S. Education Department’s National […]

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Will Community Colleges Be More Expensive?

As expected, President Obama’s plan to aid community colleges, to the tune of $12 billion, drew impressive praise. “Dean Dad,” who blogs at Inside Higher Ed called the president’s Macomb Community College speech in Michigan, which outlined the program, “by far the most intelligent presidential discussion of higher education I’ve ever seen.” But there were […]

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What Black Studies Can Do

“If I couldn’t study something that’s about myself then I wouldn’t want to be here,” the black sophomore once told me, explaining how crucial to him it was to be able to major in African-American Studies. It always stuck with me. The African-American Studies department he was a major in was one of about 300 […]

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Some Useful Advice

“Weighing Price And Value When Picking An Elite College” from the Wall Street Journal.

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The Case Against College Entitlements

A revealing video from Reason TV on increased federal student aid. Reason speaks with, among others, Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) and Charles Murray.

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How To Pretend To Cut University Budgets

The talented education bloggers at The Quick and the Ed have turned their attention to a topic dear to the hearts of us at Minding the Campus (see my March 31 opinion piece for the Washington Examiner): the reluctance of colleges and universities to take serious steps to cut costs in the face of shrunken […]

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The Texas Mugging Of Western Civ

Last November, Rob Koons, director of the Program in Western Civilization and American Institutions at the University of Texas, was abruptly fired from that position. In swift succession, the name of the program and its leadership was changed to conform more closely to the ideological tastes of the faculty of the College of Liberal Arts. […]

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“Poverty Studies” – Because There Are Never Enough “Studies”

Here’s one of the latest of those interdisciplinary and usually heavily politicized “studies” programs on college campuses: “poverty studies,” taking its place alongside black studies, Chicano studies, women’s studies, gay studies, and the rest of the ideology-driven academic disciplines in which undergraduates and graduate students can specialize as alternatives to more traditional fields such as […]

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