A Response to Peter Sacks
I’d like to respond to Peter Sacks’ critique of my new study. Something that I think is lacking from Sacks’ critique is any sort of acknowledgement of what the paper…
Search Results for: peter sacks
More College Aid for Low-Income Families, Please
When individuals seek higher education, why should all of us have to pay? After all, individuals decide whether to seek a college degree based on their own calculations of expected…
A Dubious Move by the University of Texas
If college and university officials finally want to solve the longstanding problems ofmediocre retention rates and pitiful graduation rates, then a magic, off-the-shelf solution awaits them. It’s called MyEdu, a…
The Days of Legacy Admissions May Be Numbered
…of IRS regulations that forbid deductions for donations that “enrich the giver.” Rosenberg calls this argument “fanciful,” but as Peter Sacks has noted, IRS publication 526 provides, “If you receive…
Are Student Debt Levels Ridiculous?
Megan McArdle of the Atlantic, with a few strokes of her blog pen, has just solved the problem of too much student debt and the college affordability dilemma — all…
Does Student Debt Really Matter?
In a recent essay in The Atlantic, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus lament that most students have to take out college loans. They write: “At colleges lacking rich endowments, budgeting…
For-Profit v. Non-Profit Colleges–Which Use More Federal Cash?
Are for-profit colleges and universities getting a raw deal from the government compared to their more elitist peers in the private non-profit sector of American higher education? Vance H. Fried,…
Odd Tuition System: Big Sticker Price, Big Discounts
Tuition pricing for college is a strange business, combining a big sticker price (which few people actually pay) with big discounts in the form of institutional grants (which most people…
Why College Still Matters
A growing chorus of critics says a college education is finished as the ticket to economic success and a middle-class life. The economy of the future, these critics suggest, actually…
Malcolm Gladwell and Those Shaky Rankings
As the author of a college guide that tries to help college-going students identify schools that would be a good “match” for them as individuals, I’ve always had three main…
A Reluctant Vote for Legacies
…legacy issue. The case against legacy preferences presented by people like Kahlenberg, Golden, and Peter Sacks tugs at our meritocratic heart strings, but our pragmatic sense pulls in a different…
Students Who Learn Little or Nothing
…grads working at low-level jobs, books arguing that partying is the main activity of a great many collegians, and articles such as Peter Sacks’ here reporting on the all too…
When Students Are Rude and Disruptive
When Minding the Campus asked me if I would write something about two Canadian engineering professors walking out of class to protest rude and disruptive students in their classrooms, I…
Do Rich, White Protestants Have a Big Edge in Admissions?
Just how much are “legacies” – students with family ties to graduates – granted an edge in admissions to the most elite institutions in the United States? Until recently, the…
What Is Texas A&M up to?
…playing games with accounting gimmicks and give university presidents permission to do what’s right by their students and the public. ——————————————– Peter Sacks is a writer and economist. He is…
Don’t Pay Sticker Price, Part 2—the National Universities
————————————- Read Part 1 here. ————————————- In examining the gulf between sticker price and real cost, let’s consider the top 10 national universities as defined by U.S. News & World…
Don’t Pay Sticker Price for College
By Peter Sacks Jeffrey Selingo, the editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, should have known better. He told ABC News: “students that maybe 10 or 15 years ago came…
Having Fun, Not Working Hard
…games. Many critics of the college scene have made the same general observation, , including two who write for this site, Mark Bauerlein (The Dumbest Generation) and Peter Sacks (Generation…
Our Academic Freedom Forum
…these ingredients into rhetorical sludge and draw disdain from left, right, and middle. Peter Sacks faults Zimmer for hypocrisy. Zimmer promotes the principle of academic freedom the way The Museum…
Is Academic Freedom In Trouble?
…academics and other observers of the campus scene to post brief reactions to President Zimmer’s remarks. The comments are from Peter Sacks, Erin O’Connor and Maurice Black, Adam Kissel, John…
Probing The Black-White Achievement Gap
…of duty to stand up for the idea that racism is part of their experience, even if highly “subtle” (useful: a Stanford survey covered in David Sacks and Peter Thiel’s…
Less Writing, More Teaching?
…widespread lack of student achievement and attentiveness—the most dazzling of which is Peter Sacks’s 1996 book, “Generation X Goes to College”—generally argue that today’s students are fully capable of achieving…
Happy Holidays
…SAT debate? Downgrading SATs Makes Sense by Peter Sacks and Does the SAT Predict College Success? by Peter Salins And much more – check out our essays and keep informed….
Downgrading SATs Makes Sense
Many conservatives are groaning over a major new report from a commission of higher education luminaries calling on colleges to de-emphasize the SAT for college admissions. The catcalls from the…
If Students Fail, Fire The Teacher
…with disengaged students, who work very little but expect good grades. One is the book Generation X Goes to College, by Peter Sacks (Read more here). The other is “The…