Free Republic

theodp writes "Writing in Washington Monthly, Kevin Carey has seen the future of college education. It costs $99-a-month, and there's no limit on the number of courses you can take. Tiny online education firm StraighterLine is out to challenge the seeming permanency of traditional colleges and universities. How? Like Craigslist, StraighterLine threatens the most profitable piece of its competitors' business: freshman lectures, higher education's equivalent of the classified section. It's no surprise, then, that as StraighterLine tried to buck the system, the system began to push back, challenging deals the company struck with accredited traditional and for-profit institutions to allow...

The next generation of online education could be great for students—and catastrophic for universities.Like millions of other Americans, Barbara Solvig lost her job this year. A fifty-year-old mother of three, Solvig had taken college courses at Northeastern Illinois University years ago, but never earned a degree. Ever since, she had been forced to settle for less money than coworkers with similar jobs who had bachelor’s degrees. So when she was laid off from a human resources position at a Chicago-area hospital in January, she knew the time had come to finally get her own credential. Doing that wasn’t going to...

Article in the WSJ regarding college costs.... New numbers from the U.S. Education Department show that federal student-loan disbursements—the total amount borrowed by students and received by schools—in the 2008-09 academic year grew about 25% over the previous year, to $75.1 billion. The amount of money students borrow has long been on the rise. But last year far surpassed past increases, which ranged from as low as 1.7% in the 1998-99 school year to almost 17% in 1994-95, according to figures used in President Barack Obama's proposed 2010 budget. Oh oh. 25%?! Also, the rising levels of borrowing may ironically...

Want to try out this new course at Oberlin College? For a hefty $4,950 you'll get to examine why "only citizens ... 'get' to claim queerness, whereas undocumented immigrants are always presumed to be heteronormative." In other words, you'll study why people "always" assume that illegal immigrants are straight. ...

Now, schools like Boston College, DePaul University and Tufts University also want to measure prospective students' personalities. Using recently developed evaluation systems, these schools and others are aiming to quantify so-called noncognitive traits such as leadership, resilience and creativity. Colleges say such assessments are boosting the admissions chances for some students who might not have qualified based solely on grades and traditional test scores. The noncognitive assessments also are being used to screen out students believed to be at a higher risk of dropping out, and to identify newly admitted students who might need extra tutoring. Big nonprofits that administer...

Thomas Aquinas College is not your typical modern university. Students read the classics, not textbooks. Girls must wear skirts or dresses to class. There’s a curfew of 11 on school nights. Yet the conservative Catholic college, nestled in the hills of Santa Paula, is attracting national attention for its small classes, generous financial aid and strong academics. U.S. News & World Report this month ranked it among the nation’s top 100 liberal arts colleges.... Above all, Thomas Aquinas is known for its Great Books program. Instead of using textbooks, students learn every subject — from literature to science — by...

Students would pay out-of-state tuition and wouldn't get government grants or loans Community colleges in North Carolina would be required to admit students who are not legal residents of the United States if the state approves a proposed policy. The state Board of Community Colleges will consider a proposal that would admit students who aren’t in the country legally and require them to pay the out-of-state tuition rate.

A College Dream Ends Too Soon I worked hard to get into Berkeley and I worked even harder when I got there. But when my funds ran out, I had to leave.

BERLIN (AP) - German prosecutors are investigating about 100 professors across the country on suspicion they took bribes to help students get their doctoral degrees, authorities said Saturday. The investigation is focused on the Institute for Scientific Consulting, based in Bergisch Gladbach, just east of Cologne, which allegedly acted as the intermediary between students and the professors, said Cologne prosecutor's spokesman Guenther Feld. Feld confirmed reports of the investigation in both Focus magazine and the Neue Westfaelische newspaper, but would not give further details. The Institute for Scientific Consulting did not answer its phone Saturday. According to the two publications,...

During an economic slowdown, prices usually fall. But there’s just one sector of the economy that’s bizarrely insulated from reality: Academia. Tuition, room and board at Sarah Lawrence College just hit $53,166 per year. That’s like buying a C-Class Mercedes every year — without the car. Other colleges are comparable, with even state school tuition rising to levels some parents find impossible. We figure it’s worth it. Universities offer students not just a degree that’s valued in the marketplace, but a chance to broaden their interests and deepen their souls; to gain a solid grounding in the fundamentals that made...

College tuition and fees in the U.S. have risen 7.74% annually since 1978, which is about twice the inflation rate for all goods and services (3.9% per year), and even higher than the average annual increase in the cost of medical care (6% per year), see chart above.

AUGUST 19, 2009 College-Entrance Test Scores Flagging ROBERT TOMSHO Only about a quarter of the 2009 high school graduates taking the ACT admissions test have the skills to succeed in college, according to a report on the exam that shows little improvement over results from the 2008 graduating class. The Iowa City, Iowa-based ACT said 23% of this year's high school graduates had scores that indicated they were ready for college in all four ACT subject areas, or had at least a 75% chance of earning a grade of C or better in entry-level courses. Last year, a similar ACT...

Parents will be forbidden from receiving and accessing their dependent child's grades at colleges and universities - even when they pay for the entire cost of the child's education. Just pay up and don't ask questions

<p>Would you buy a healthcare reform plan from this kid?</p> <p>Or change his college grade?</p> <p>It's been 28 years now.</p> <p>But President Obama, it has been learned, still disagrees with an Occidental College professor who gave him a B on a paper during his collegiate days in Eagle Rock.</p>

The Buck Stops Where? by: Deborah Lambert, August 14, 2009 How is the recession affecting the free-spending habits of America’s colleges and universities? It depends on who you ask. Although Harvard’s 22 percent income drop did nothing to alter their recently announced plans to install a “chair in Gay Lesbian Transgendered and Queer Studies,” the university has had to lay off 300 employees, according to Anthony Paletta, senior editor at the Manhattan Institute's MindingtheCampus.com. In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Paletta noted that Harvard’s new austerity policy also included a temporary suspension of operations of its “Office of...

Teachable Moments by: Malcolm A. Kline, August 12, 2009 What do they expect?The Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education found that “during the fall semester of 2008, first-year college students who used alcohol drank an estimated 10.2 hours per week, compared to studying only 8.4 hours per week.” One wonders if they were registered to vote. Hoping for spare changeIt’s really tempting to compare the youth vote to statistics on economic literacy among the young. The Center for Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy (CEEL) found that among college students that the CEEL surveyed: • “54% reported having overdrawn their bank account”;...

In 2007, a faculty member discovered that under the College’s existing Health Insurance Plan, anti-life and anti-family products and procedures were potentially covered, including abortion, contraception and sterilization. The College, a Catholic institution committed to the infallible teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the sanctity of life, removed the provisions. President Thierfelder explained this action in a letter he sent to students, faculty and friends of the College with this refreshingly clear statement: “The teaching of the Catholic Church on this moral issue is clear. The responsibility of the College as a Catholic College sponsored by the monks of Belmont...

College senior Raymond Vetter gets up at dawn to fit in a run or a workout. Then, hair shorn neatly and pants pressed, he marches into breakfast, where he sits in an assigned seat. After six hours of instruction in such subjects as Japanese literature and systems engineering, two hours of intramural sports and another family-style meal with underclassmen, Vetter rushes to return to his room by the 11:30 p.m. curfew. Most college students, we think, do not march to meals. A goodly number of them drink into the wee hours, duck morning classes and fail to hit the gym...

And now, unbeknownst to many, as we deal with banking and housing issues. . . are three more bubbles that'll pop. . . and soon. #1: Higher education will be next So say Joseph Marr Cronin, secretary of education in Massachusetts, and Howard E. Horton, president of Boston's New England College of Business and Finance. And we agree. The next bubble to burst will be higher education. No doubt about it. You see, higher education is big money for institutions and lenders alike. . . and they're in big trouble. What most people who are not directly involved with higher...

While former candidates for president released their college grades and records, including George Bush, Al Gore and John Kerry, Barack Obama has insisted on keeping his secret. The question being asked is why?

In urging professors at Southern Methodist University to “teach naked,” José A. Bowen is not suggesting they doff their pants. Instead, SMU’s dean of the Meadow School of the Arts is asking teachers to shed classroom computers, tedious PowerPoints and long-winded lectures. Nor should his decision to strip computers from SMU classrooms be considered evidence of a lunatic anti-technology bias. A jazz musician by training, Bowen is a longtime champion of smart technology on campus, penning a compelling article on the topic for the National Teaching & Learning Forum (www.ntlf.com/html/ti/naked.htm). Last week, Bowen revisited the theme in an interview with...

The news business continues to be in a freefall thanks to a deep recession and changing reader and viewer habits but graduates from the Columbia School of Journaiism are relatively upbeat about their future. From the Village Voice In a down economy, the smart play is to go to school to learn new skills, network, and ride it out. At least, that's the case in a normal industry. But conventional wisdom has it that planning for a future in journalism makes as much sense as signing up for a career as a Pontiac dealer. That's not how members of the...

STATE COLLEGE, Pennsylvania — Penn State University is now the No. 1 U.S. party school. The school known partly for its football tailgate weekends and fraternity and sorority scene snatched the title away from the University of Florida in the 2009 Princeton Review survey of 122,000 students nationwide. Florida, last year's winner, finished second in the annual survey released Monday. It's the first time Penn State has finished first in the dubious category. The school has been on the list the last seven years and ranked third in 2008. The listing covers Penn State's main University Park campus in State...

“Nearly All My Professors Are Democrats. Isn’t That a Problem?” is the title of a wonderful opinion piece at the Christian Science Monitor by University of Oregon journalism student Dan Lawton. Lawton’s investigation into the liberally funded diversity program at the University of Oregon yielded some interesting results: “The University of Oregon (UO), where I study journalism, invested millions annually in a diversity program that explicitly included "political affiliation" as a component. Yet, out of the 111 registered Oregon voters in the departments of journalism, law, political science, economics, and sociology, there were only two registered Republicans.” When Lawton published...

I can only guess what this knowledge transcript would look like -- something like a résumé or credit report, perhaps. I picture a scrawny tree drawn on a page, with the branches representing the fields of learning and the student tasked with extending them. Perhaps vocational certificates would be listed, too. Maybe, once the tree reached a prescribed fatness, we'd call the student a bachelor of arts. But employers could select whatever tree shapes suited them, and college would no longer be a degree-or-nothing affair. Learning would be available everywhere and at a moment's notice, and would be rewarded right...

President Barack Obama plans to announce a community-college initiative designed to boost graduation rates, improve facilities and develop new technology. The effort will involve $12 billion in spending spread over the next 10 years. While small compared to the $100 billion in stimulus money the Obama administration has to spend on education, it would mark a substantive increase in direct federal spending on community colleges. A recent report by the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank, estimated the federal government provides community colleges with about $2 billion a year in direct support, about a tenth of what it spends on...

When I began examining the political affiliation of faculty at the University of Oregon, the lone conservative professor I spoke with cautioned that I would "make a lot of people unhappy." Though I mostly brushed off his warning – assuming that academia would be interested in such discourse – I was careful to frame my research for a column for the school newspaper diplomatically. The University of Oregon (UO), where I study journalism, invested millions annually in a diversity program that explicitly included "political affiliation" as a component. Yet, out of the 111 registered Oregon voters in the departments of...

Community colleges are deeply unsexy. This fact tends to make even the biggest advocates of these two-year schools — which educate nearly half of U.S. undergraduates — sound defensive, almost a tad whiny. "We don't have the bands. We don't have the football teams that everybody wants to boost," says Stephen Kinslow, president of Texas' Austin Community College (ACC). "Most people don't understand community colleges very well at all." And by "most people," he means the graduates of fancy four-year schools who get elected and set budget priorities. Many politicians and their well-heeled constituents may be under the impression that...

In all the focus on Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal’s proposed changes in the school system, his suggestions for higher education have got neglected. To some degree, this was redressed in the discussion in Parliament on Tuesday, where the HRD Minister spoke of making it easier for quality institutions to call themselves full-fledged universities, rather than merely deemed universities. The implication was that if an institution could be trusted with making intellectual and physical investments and maintaining standards, it needed to be freed from the shackles of the bureaucracy in New Delhi. Similarly, the idea that first-rate foreign universities...

15 Must-Have Web Apps for Students June 28, 2009 in Tips and Tools Welcome! If this is your first time here, you may want to subscribe to get updates in your RSS feed reader. Thanks for visiting! This is a guest post from Karen Schweitzer. For more from Karen, check out her blog about Online College Courses, or follow her on Twitter. College students are increasingly reliant on computers – and, for many of us, that means spending tons of money software that we’d rather not use anyway. The reality, though, is that there are a ton of great, free...

PHOENIX — Saying it will make people safer, state senators voted Friday to let people with concealed weapons permits carry them onto college and university campuses where they are now forbidden. The 15-6 vote on the provision in HB 2439 came after backers said they believe that having people who are licensed by the state to have weapons should cut down on the number of massacres that occur on campuses. And Sen. John Huppenthal, R-Chandler, said that has happened in Arizona. He did not refer by name to the 2002 incident at the University of Arizona where three instructors at...

The Bible calls the Church "the Body of Christ." Today, that body is bleeding profusely, says a Christian author and sought-out speaker. "The next generation of believers is draining from the churches, and it causes me great personal and professional concern," said Ken Ham, founder and president of Answers in Genesis and a Young Earth creationist. Hoping to shed light on what he believes is a monumental problem, Ham enlisted the services of America's Research Group to study why young people were leaving. The results, published in Already Gone, will shake many churches to their very core, Ham states in...

For the first time in years, there is good news for college students who borrow to pay for their education. Starting Wednesday, the federal Education Department will begin offering a repayment plan that lets graduates reduce their loan payments, based on their income. “We know today’s borrowers are concerned about their ability to repay student loans in the current economic environment,” Arne Duncan, the education secretary, said in a statement. “This new plan addresses the issue head-on by giving them the option of a reduced monthly payment tied to their annual income.” Also on Wednesday, the interest rate on new...

Repaying a student loan could soon be a little less painful. Starting this week, anyone with a federal student loan can apply for a program, run by the Department of Education, that caps monthly payments based on income, and forgives remaining balances after 25 years. Those choosing to work in public service could have their loans forgiven after just 10 years. Eligibility for income-based repayment (IBR) is determined by a person's income and loan size. A calculator at http://www.ibrinfo.org can help borrowers determine their eligibility for the plan, which becomes available Wednesday. "It's a way to borrow for college without...

Sometimes you just have to laugh out loud at those who consider themselves to be "conscious, enlightened, and progressive". HawaiiReporter: "The University of Hawaii has confirmed that from January 2008 to May 2009, the editor, Kris DeRego, made up the names of 21 sources in his articles and quoted eight people identified as students who were not enrolled at the time the articles were published." Akamai readers will remember that the Honolulu Advertiser endorsed DeRego for Board of Education in 2006. After semi-naked pictures emerged of Mr DeRego with airbrushed wings emerged on the internet, he was defeated by John...

What does it cost to get an unqualified student into the University of Illinois law school? Five jobs for graduating law students, suggest internal e-mails released Thursday. The documents show for the first time efforts to seek favors -- in this case, jobs -- for admissions, the most troubling evidence yet of how Illinois' entrenched system of patronage crept into the state's most prestigious public university. They also detail the law school's system for handling "Special Admits," students backed by the politically connected, expanding the scope of a scandal prompted by a Chicago Tribune investigation. In one e-mail exchange, University...

The College of William & Mary in Virginia is looking for a few good mascot ideas. One suggestion? An asparagus stalk. More than 400 nominations have been submitted to the 15-member William & Mary Mascot Search Committee since April 1. On Monday a headline in The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot boldly asked, "Wanted: William & Mary mascot. Got an idea?" "It's been fun," Susan T. Evans, a committee member who created the online communities to open up the process, told the Virginian-Pilot. "We have a lot of great options to consider." More than half of the suggestion have come from William &...

Universities serve as society’s critics and conscience. We are meant to be producers not just of knowledge but of doubt—of understanding rooted in skepticism and constant questioning, not in the unchallenged sway of accepted wisdom. More than perhaps any other institution in our society, universities are about the long view and about the critical perspectives that derive from not being owned exclusively by the present. For nearly four centuries now, Harvard has looked beyond the immediately useful, relevant, and comfortable to cast current assumptions into the crucible of other places and other times. Universities are so often judged by their...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jonathan Dunlop managed to score an internship this summer with Morgan Stanley, but some of his Yale University classmates were not so fortunate. Contending with a tough economy and uncertainty in the financial sector, major investment banks have dramatically reduced the number of interns they are employing this summer. "I definitely had a couple of good friends come up empty," said Dunlop, 28, who worked in the fashion industry in New York for five years before enrolling at Yale's School of Management. "It is disappointing because it is such a long recruiting process." Barbara Hewitt said...

Liberty University’s student Democratic club has reached an agreement with the school on its status. Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said today that a change in university policy will allow the Liberty University College Democrats to exist as an unofficial club. The policy change, which took effect yesterday, also changed the College Republicans from an officially recognized campus group to the new unofficial status. Liberty withdrew official recognition of the Lynchburg school’s club last month because it supported the Democratic Party’s platforms and candidates. Under the new policy, the unofficial organizations won’t receive school funding but may use the Liberty name...

In this commencement season, I myself gave the commencement address for a bunch of high school dropouts. Mind you, the school was Bard College at Simon's Rock, where students enter after tenth grade instead of twelfth, immediately beginning college work and never looking back. It would be a good thing for America if these students' experience was more ordinary--except that it would also be a good thing if there were many, many fewer college students at all. The President has called for more people to go to college (for at least some time), which makes sense--but only because of the...

The soaring costs of a college degree are prompting colleges to consider a three-year degree program. Britain has long granted a degree for three years of college. I would like to suggest a one-year degree program. And I don’t mean an associate’s degree. Here are some hard facts most colleges will never tell you and most parents could not tolerate hearing. The general requirements of the first two years at most colleges are what high school should have been. That is what junior should have learned had he not been busy getting high, getting drunk, and being socially promoted. Better...

Loyola College's Jesuit tradition calls for it to serve students who did not start with every economic, social or geographic advantage. Widespread research, meanwhile, shows that standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT favor those from privileged backgrounds and that such tests are less predictive of college success than excellent grades and a rigorous course load in high school. So, in search of a more diverse and accomplished student body, Loyola has joined a growing list of colleges and universities that no longer require applicants to submit an SAT or ACT score. ... Test-optional policies might calm the widespread...

A broadcast of an interview of Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn by CSPAN Founder and CEO, Brian Lamb will air this Sunday, June 14, on CSPAN's program Q & A. For more details, please click here: http://www.q-and-a.org.

The admissions team at Reed College, known for its free-spirited students, learned in March that the prospective freshman class it had so carefully composed after weeks of reviewing essays, scores and recommendations was unworkable. Money was the problem. Too many of the students needed financial aid, and the college did not have enough. So the director of financial aid gave the team another task: drop more than 100 needy students before sending out acceptances, and substitute those who could pay full freight. The whole idea of excluding a student simply because of money clashed with the college’s ideals, Leslie Limper,...

The Pell Grant Pendulum by: Alana Goodman, June 05, 2009 President Obama’s recent commitment to raise the U.S. graduation rate to the highest in the world has left education policy experts conflicted on how to best increase college access and affordability. At a panel discussion on the future of student financial aid hosted by the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) and the Rethinking Student Aid Study Group (RSASG) presented differing proposals on steps the Obama administration can take to reform federal student aid. The RSASG recommending that...

Executive Summary In the fall of 2001, nearly 1.2 million freshmen began college at a four-year institution of higher education somewhere in the United States. Nearly all of them expected to earn a bachelor's degree. As a rule, college students do not pack their belongings into the back of a minivan in early September wondering if they will get a diploma--only when. For many students, however, that confidence was misplaced. At a time when college degrees are valuable--with employers paying a premium for college graduates--fewer than 60 percent of new students graduated from four-year colleges within six years. At many...

Boston - Ivy League university Harvard is to endow a professorship of gay, lesbian and transgender studies, the organisers have said. The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus announced that the USD 1.5 million chair, funded by members and supporters of the group, will "enable Harvard to regularly invite eminent scholars studying issues related to sexual minorities." The first visiting faculty member is expected to be appointed for the fall of 2010 and will teach at the university's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, usually in affiliation with the women's studies committee, the announcement said on Wednesday. The chair is to be...

About five years ago, shortly before my term ended as a Regent of the University of California (UC), I was having a casual conversation with a very high-ranking UC administrator about a proposal that he was developing to increase "diversity" at UC in a manner that would comply with the dictates of California's Constitution and the prohibition against race, gender and ethnic preferences. As I listened to his proposal, I asked him why he considered it important to tinker with admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. In an unguarded moment, he told me that unless...

[Summary of stories at site] June 2, 2009 Clout Goes to College: Clout list put on suspension The University of Illinois announced Monday that it will temporarily suspend the use of a clout list in the admissions process -- a practice school officials first downplayed after it was described in a Tribune investigation. June 1, 2009 U. of I. more difficult to get into To understand why someone applying to the University of Illinois would seek help from a trustee or legislator -- as detailed in a Tribune series that began last week -- consider how the battle for admission...