On March 5th in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Robinson penned an op-ed on the California higher education budget crisis entitled “The Golden State’s Me Generation”. Robinson begins not with the finances behind the tuition hikes and protests, but rather with the framing of the reaction. He cites participants in the “Strike and Day of […]
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Both the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed have reported on a newly-released study regarding faculty salaries from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. Both articles highlight how, in the past year, around a third of professors around the country have seen their salaries reduced. (Only at private, research universities […]
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Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University, quit the board of directors of Goldman Sachs, citing the “increasing time requirements associated with her position as President.” What she didn’t cite were the two or three weeks of steady criticism from financial analysts and students and the student newspaper in response to belated awareness of her lucrative […]
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College investments dropped 23 percent in 2009, the most disastrous year since the National Association of College and University Business Officers began compiling investment statistics in 1971. Two observations can be made about NACUBO’s report, issued last week: One is: The richer the institution, the harder the fall, generally speaking. Harvard, the nation’s wealthiest university […]
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The headline in the East Bay Express a few weeks back probably didn’t surprise people in California, bracing as they have been for funding shortfalls in government services, including education: “Berkeley High May Cut Out Science Labs”. The first few words of the story delivered the distressing news that the School Governance Council had decided […]
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The New York Times reports today on a new marketing gimmick for colleges seeking to boost applications during this recession-plagued time when every tuition-paying body in a classroom counts: the fast-track application form that allows some high school seniors seeking admission to bypass the usual fees of $50 or so, the tedious filling out of […]
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The New York Times’ “The Choice” blog is running a helpful question and answer series on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Take a look if you’re puzzling through the process of filling the thing out.
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Shortly after his inauguration in January President Obama announced a proposal to get rid of a 44-year-old program known as the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program. In the FFEL system, the federal government guarantees loans to students from private banks and similar institutions under a variety of programs (the best known is the so-called […]
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As a regent of the University of California (UC), I voted against “fee” increases proposed by the administration as often as I voted for them, but with each vote I realized that UC was slowly moving toward the day when basic decisions would have to be made about how the university is financed, who can […]
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The College Board’s “Trends In Pricing” report, released this week, reveals that public university tuition rose by an average of 6.5% this fall while private university costs increased by only 4.4%. The discrepancy is no surprise, in an atompshere of reduced state education budgets, declining out-of-state enrollment, and notable increases in in-state applications (and attendant […]
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President Obama’s call for an increase in college graduation rates and the establishment of a $2.5 billion college completion fund begins to address a vexing issue for those of us employed in higher education, namely, how do we make the United States more economically competitive in a world that demands a well-trained, college-educated workforce? The […]
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“Fear of Debt Changes College Plans” from USA Today.
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“How To Pay For College As An Adult” from Forbes
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Curious about the starting and mid-career salaries of graduates of different colleges? Wonder no longer. Check out an interesting list at Payscale. Yes, Amherst is higher than Auburn, but there are some surprising results.
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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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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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“Maximize Your 529 College Savings Plan” from the Boston Globe
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By Harvey Silverglate With Kyle Smeallie Harvard University may be losing money like a hard-luck high-roller, but the Vegas tagline (what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas) certainly does not apply: what happens at Harvard reaches well beyond the Cambridge confines. For better or for worse, many schools follow in Harvard’s footsteps. What better place, […]
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If you thought last fall’s staggering endowment drops were the end of collegiate financial troubles, you haven’t been paying attention. Another minefield awaited – application season. It wasn’t simply colleges that were feeling a pinch, so were their future customers. After decades of tuition increases that failed to dent application numbers, colleges were suddenly forced […]
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“8 Tuition-Free Colleges” from Mental Floss
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Newspapers are folding right and left—the Rocky Mountain News in February, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in March, the Boston Globe any day now, it would seem—and, according to the American Journalism Review, some 15 percent of the newsroom jobs, about 5,000 of them, last year (with another 7,500 vanishing so far this year) at newspapers across […]
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In a recent article that received a fair bit of buzz, The New York Times spun a story of the supposed new reality in the recession-plagued U.S.—Students from more well-off families being given admissions preference at increasingly cash-strapped universities. But the Times article misses the larger point. Lawrence University, Colby College and Brandeis (some of […]
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Here’s a sign of colleges’ desperate need for tuition cash to make up for shrunken endowments and less generous donors in today’s economic downturn: many institutions are slinking away from their vaunted “need-blind” admissions policies that admits applicants deemed qualified regardless of their ability to pay and makes up any shortfalls with scholarships and other […]
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Finally, it would seem, colleges are doing something realistic to cut costs in this era of tight budgets and shrunken endowments: they’re scaling back or declining to expand their Ph.D. programs. Inside Higher Education reported last week that a range of institutions, including Emory, Columbia, Brown, New York University, and the University of South Carolina […]
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Many people think the colleges and universities are overreacting to the sharp drop in their endowments. Lynne Munson, former deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is one of these critics. In a letter (subscription only) to the Chronicle of Higher Education, she argues that higher ed endowments haven’t lost much value if […]
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Harvard University, trying to trim its operating budget in the face of a projected 30 percent decline in the value of its endowment stemming from the current financial meltdown, announced its intention to cut 13 of the 27 janitors who service its medical school and an unspecified number of custodial workers elsewhere at Harvard residential […]
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This article is adapted from the American Council on Education’s Atwell Lecture, delivered on February 8th by Dr. Gee, president of The Ohio State University The transformative effect of higher education, to change individual lives and to remedy global problems of all kinds, is without question. And it is shared equally among us. Public or […]
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By William Creeley & Harvey Silverglate Reaction to Brandeis University’s plan to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its esteemed collection was swift—and scathing. Within the Brandeis community, President Jehuda Reinharz’s proposed fire sale provoked howls of betrayal from students, faculty, alumni, and donors. In the art world and news media, the move was […]
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By Maurice Black & Erin O’Connor The current upheavals in the financial markets have left everyone confused. But in the midst of all the confusion, one thing has become crystal clear: A free country simply must be an economically and financially literate country. Amid the waves of failing banks, roiling stock exchanges, massive government bailouts, […]
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An interesting story: The NCAA has provided what Kretchmar describes as a startup grant for the advisory group and its journal. The association, he said, has no editorial review over the journal, and no controlling hand in the research or colloquiums. The NCAA is, in essence, funding a group of researchers striving to be as […]
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