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Recently, I argued in a Martin Center article that the fourth year of study for the bachelor’s degree is probably relatively unproductive and that enormous resources could be saved by introducing three-year degree programs like those found in Europe. What works at Oxford should also work at, say, Appalachian State University. Yet I told only half the story: Many students go on to get graduate or professional degrees. Does the Law of Diminishing Returns apply to these programs, as well? Yes. Universities offer such programs at least in part to collect tuition revenues and to allow faculty to teach the...

Preston Cooper, a researcher at The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity studying the economics of higher education, recently published a wide-ranging analysis of almost 14,000 U.S. graduate degree programs. In his investigation―which used a similar methodology to a related study he conducted on the value of undergraduate degrees―Cooper calculated the return on investment (ROI) for graduate programs across the country, determining which degrees pack the best payoff and which ones are likely to yield negative financial returns. So, how do North Carolina’s schools stack up? While Cooper found that more than forty percent of master’s degrees have a negative...

For ten years I served on the GRE Literature Exam committee. The exam is one of the special subject matter exams separate from the regular GRE (with math, verbal, analytical sections), and several English departments require that applicants take it. Each year five of us would meet for several days at Educational Testing Service’s campus outside Princeton to pore over data on prior tests, review the performance of each question, and select new passages and craft new questions for the next administration. During my tenure, five years of it as chairman, the number of departments in the United States including...

A number of colleges around the country are temporarily loosening their standardized testing requirements amid the coronavirus pandemic. All eight Ivy League schools will be test-optional for the coming admissions cycle. Initially, this applied only to SAT and ACT exams. But more and more graduate schools have started accepting students without GMAT and GRE scores, as well. U.S. schools reconsidered their application processes for the upcoming academic year because of the unfavorable consequences of COVID-19 coupled with stricter immigration policies toward foreign students, which adversely affected application rates. Within the last month, several MBA programs, including the University of Virginia’s...

Many college graduates think to themselves, “I don’t have any immediate job prospects that are attractive and I can easily get into grad school with the chance of eventually getting my PhD and then a tenured professorship; I guess that’s what I’ll do.” If you know anyone in that situation, do him or her a big favor by suggesting a new book by Georgetown University philosophy professor Jason Brennan: Good Work If You Can Get It. This year (at least before COVID-19 struck us), about 80,000 students were planning to begin doctoral programs, but, Brennan cautions, “most are destined for...

WASHINGTON—The U.S. government will forgive $207.4 billion in student debt for Americans who take out loans over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. The biggest benefits will go to borrowers who attend graduate or professional school. The CBO projects the government will originate $1.05 trillion in new loans from 2020 to 2029. Much of that will end up in income-driven repayment plans, which set monthly payments as a share of a borrower’s income and then forgive balances that remain after 20 to 25 years, or 10 years for workers in public-sector jobs. The biggest benefits will go...

Hillsdale College, a premier conservative Christian college in southern Michigan, has launched a graduate school of government in Washington, D.C. The college announced the new school on Constitution Day. "Today, the connection between liberty and learning is widely forgotten, and their mutual support has grown tenuous," Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale, said in a statement. "Repairing the breach is a task both urgent and noble." The Steve and Amy Van Andel Graduate School of Government offers a Master of Arts in Government, combining the study of political thought, American founding principles, and statesmanship, the college explained. "Our students will...

In May, The Chronicle of Higher Education asked four academics from across the country to weigh in on the “adjunct crisis.” The results were predictable, with most of the blame directed at the usual suspects: bean-counting administrators, complacent, tenured faculty members, tight-fisted state legislators, and, of course, those evil Republicans. Solutions generally involved pressuring colleges and universities to fork over more money for tenure-track positions—irrespective of enrollment and at the expense of students and taxpayers. Here’s an idea that wasn’t considered: What if we awarded fewer PhDs? A scarcity of humanities PhDs, rather than a glut, would create more demand,...

In many fields, graduate degrees offer distinct benefits for your extra years in school. Employees armed with a graduate education are often a more attractive hire and can make a higher salary than colleagues who have only a bachelor's degree. However, for some industries the benefits of going to graduate school are comparatively low and don't justify the extra investment. Using the recent "Hard Times" report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, we examined salary and unemployment data of experienced college graduates and experienced holders of graduate degrees. These are workers whose ages range from 35 to...

"I am not a welfare queen," says Melissa Bruninga-Matteau. That's how she feels compelled to start a conversation about how she, a white woman with a Ph.D. in medieval history and an adjunct professor, came to rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Ms. Bruninga-Matteau, a 43-year-old single mother who teaches two humanities courses at Yavapai College, in Prescott, Ariz., says the stereotype of the people receiving such aid does not reflect reality. Recipients include growing numbers of people like her, the highly educated, whose advanced degrees have not insulated them from financial hardship. "I find it horrifying that someone who...

Lately the efforts of a trio of advocates to sue law schools on behalf of unemployed graduates have gained much media attention. Eager, but out-of-work graduates make compelling figures on the evening news, especially when they are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and have passed the bar but are working in bars because they can't even get a job interview with a law firm. The lawsuits, alleging that the schools have been misleading students about their postgraduate employment prospects, have helped stoke a certain amount of indignation because job prospects for lawyers have been declining for years, yet...

More bad news for those budding Ernie Pyles of the world as The Daily Beast ranks journalism at the top of its most useless degree list. 1. Journalism Median starting salary: $35,800 Median mid-career salary: $66,600 Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -4,400 Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -6.32 Undergraduate field of study: Communications Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009: 78,009 When those now-degreed students entered college, journalism was still doing fine, though beginning to feel the first effects of the Internet. But by the 2008-2009 period, the landscape had radically changed and anyone actually able to find...

The Educational Testing Service wanted to help graduate school applicants prove they are more than a set of test scores. So it developed a tool to rate students across a broad sweep of traits -- creativity, teamwork, integrity -- that admission tests don't measure. The Personal Potential Index, unveiled this week, looks suspiciously like another set of scores. An applicant's personality is distilled into six traits, and the applicant is rated on each of them by various professors and former supervisors on a scale of 1 to 5. Officials with the nonprofit organization, based in Princeton, N.J., say the index...

One of the most significant transformations in U.S. graduate education and the international market for highly-trained workers in science and engineering during the last quarter century is the representation of students from outside of the United States among the ranks of doctorate recipients from U.S. universities. In all but the life sciences, the foreign share of Ph.D. recipients now equals or exceeds the share from the United States. Students from outside the United States accounted for 51 percent of Ph.D. recipients in science and engineering in 2003, up from 27 percent in 1973. In 2003, doctorate recipients from outside the...

It used to be, well, perhaps it still is, that Indian students did their darndest to come to the US to go to grad school, learn business, or master the technology of the computer. Now, there has been a turn. American college grads are opting to go to India. A stint working in India can be quite an addition to a young worker's resume. India's high-tech and banking companies need skilled workers. A company like Infosys, which has grown from 500 workers to 50,000 workers in the past dozen years, has hired many young Americans. Of course, the biggest obstacle...

Stewart said, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned, including international competition modeling itself after the U.S. system -- and getting stronger -- and high dropout rates in some graduate programs. Then there is the issue of international applications. Relief swept the world of graduate education when the council recently released a report showing an increase in international applications. But what got lost in the excitement, Stewart said, was that the increase still doesn't make up for the decline in the past decade. International applications are still down 23 percent from 2003, she said, at a time when foreign...

Disappearing Act The Invisible Adjunct shuts down her popular Weblog and says goodbye to academe By SCOTT SMALLWOOD Through the blurry glass of the classroom door, a professor can be seen at the front of the room. It is a woman, but the thick window obscures any clues about how old she is or how tall or what color hair she might have. Maybe brown. She's the Invisible Adjunct. Or at least, she used to be. After five years of being an adjunct and a year after starting one of the most popular academic Weblogs, she is giving up and...

<p>The Pentagon yesterday ordered a review of how it recruits military chaplains, particularly Muslim clerics endorsed by two groups with ties to radical Islam.</p> <p>Pentagon officials yesterday informed senators of the review as Sens. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, and Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, announced upcoming hearings on whether the radical Wahhabi sect has infiltrated the U.S. military chaplain corps.</p>