Maybe, I thought to myself, the problem is that we allow people who really have no concept of how higher education works to have too much say in the discussion. Higher education is a fairly esoteric little world; even accountants find it hard to move to a job in a university because the way we […]
A while ago, I wrote a guest blog post on the Washington Post, about using Google to manage the American college and university application process. I got some good response to it: A lot of people thought there was some merit to the idea; some thought I was crazy, and many suggested that this was an example […]
There has been a lot of discussion recently about several free tuition programs that are under consideration. Because I frequently point out that we’re not sending enough poor kids to college in this country, you’d think I’d be all gaga about the possibility. You would be wrong. This is because of one simple reason: Free […]
The teaser in email from the New York times was promising: It’s generally a good article, pointing out the arbitrary definition of need and how it varies from one college to another. It demonstrates how out-of pocket costs for any student can swing wildly, even among the institutions that claim to meet full need (do […]
We hear it all the time: Demographics are changing. And of course, they are. But turmoil in higher education goes way beyond just the numbers of people who might be graduating from high school. I’ve been doing a presentation on our campus to talk to people about how things are changing: Important economic and societal […]
Most dumb ideas are hatched by men, so I’m going to assume that whoever it was that first uttered “Students are our customers,” was probably a guy. I’d like to kick him on his butt, although since I’m generally a pacifist, I probably wouldn’t given the chance. Still… The idea has been floating around as […]
I had another title all picked out for this post: It was going to be “An Interesting Week for the College Board” or something like that. But after I typed the title, I realized that the College Board and the Catholic Church share a lot in common, at least from where I sit. (And this […]
This week, I wrote a guest blog post for Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post Answer Sheet. You can read it here.
It started sort of innocently enough: A post of a Facebook page for college admissions officers. It was one of those questions that high school or independent counselors post asking/complaining (often, with just cause) about some college practice. It was there, buried in a longer response: ” I wish I understood why yield was still a […]
It was a Sunday, a day like any other Sunday. I went to look at the NCES Digest of Education Statistics to see if any more tables from the 2013 version had been released. To my delight, I found some interesting stuff; but most of the NCES Tables are designed to be printed as reports, […]
