College Prices, Costs, and Outcomes: Things Worth Noting
College Prices, Costs, and Outcomes: Who’s Minding the Gap Between Higher Education and the Public? is “a survey recently conducted by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges...
View ArticleWhat to Think About New America’s Financial Aid Reform Recommendations
The writers over at the New America Foundation released a report suggesting reforms of federal financial aid. For those of us who haven’t had a chance to read the full thing yet, they helpfully...
View ArticleHERI Faculty Survey: Things Worth Noting
The Undergraduate Teaching Faculty The 2010-2011 HERI Faculty Survey , a survey of faculty at four-year universities by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA, contains some interesting...
View ArticleThe Elephant in the Room
Recently, several DC think tanks and advocacy organizations have issued a series of reports about how to improve and sustain federal financial aid programs. The recommendations have been varied –...
View ArticleThe Student Loan Problem is Worse than I Thought
Over at Zero Hedge, Tyler Durden highlights the findings of a new FICO report on student loans (available at the very bottom of his post). With all the news stories about the crushing weight of...
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Higher Ed Data Central: The Disruptive Growth of Online Education
It’s no surprise that a reader asked us to look into online education given all the attention it has been getting lately. The Department of Education asks colleges if they offer “Distance learning...
View ArticleA Last-Minute Addition to the State of the Union: A National Purpose for...
The final polishes have likely been put on President Obama’s State of the Union address for tonight, but if his speechwriters still have time might I suggest an addition: we need a national...
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Higher Ed Data Central: The SOTU and Tuition Growth
After putting colleges and universities on notice about rising tuition at last year’s State of the Union, President Obama used this year’s SOTU to “call on Congress to consider value, affordability,...
View ArticleWill 2013 Be a Great Year for Higher Ed Reform?
Two of the most important reforms of higher ed are looking a little more likely after some big news this week. The first is a plan to report information on college graduates’ earnings. To date,...
View ArticleTrouble Brewing in the CBO Loan Estimates
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their latest estimates of Pell grant and student loan program costs for the next 10 years. For the Pell grant, much of the attention focuses on the...
View ArticleEnglish, Ideology, and the Worldwide Spread of Ideas
The spread of English as the global lingua franca has been as pronounced in academia as anywhere else. On the worldwide conference circuit, presentations are invariably in English. So are white papers,...
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Higher Ed Data Central: Exploring Average Grant Aid
With college tuition ever-increasing, it’s no wonder financial aid—and access to it – is growing in importance. Student loans get a lot of (deserved) attention, but grants are important too. The three...
View ArticleThe Easiest (and Most Underrated) Financial Aid Reform: Replace Cost of...
When the Department of Education determines how much aid to award a student, the two biggest concepts are cost of attendance (CoA) and expected family contribution (EFC). EFC is how much the government...
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Higher Ed Data Central: Tuition Varies a Lot
The average tuition or the average debt load conveys a lot of important information. But averages can also obscure just how much variation there often is in the cost of higher education. Tuition is a...
View ArticleFive Ways to Improve the President’s Scorecard
The day after President Obama’s State of the Union address, the administration released a hallmark of his higher-education proposals from the night before: the College Scorecard. In the works for about...
View ArticleStudy Indicates Transfer Students Earn Less
We know that transferring among colleges, however popular it may be, is often a costly move for students, resulting in more time and money spent on the way to a degree. It also puts students at a...
View ArticleCollege Scorecards, Rankings, and Gnashing of Teeth
Ever since the White House introduced its College Scorecard, critics have emerged from every corner (including my colleague Jeff Selingo on this blog yesterday). The Scorecard is incomplete and does...
View ArticleMore Wisdom on IBR from Delisle and Holt
Jason Delisle and Alex Holt continue to uncover new and shocking information about Income Based Repayment (IBR) program, which I’ve officially upgraded from “boondoggle” to “fiasco”: [O]nce a borrower...
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Higher Ed Data Central: Exploring Net Tuition
Most of the information on tuition refers to published, or “sticker,” tuition. While that number is certainly informative since it is essentially the baseline cost, net tuition is a better measure of...
View ArticleHow Texting Can Keep Teens on Track to College
Summer melt might sound like something that happens to an ice cream cone in July. But in the world of college access, the term refers to a more troubling phenomenon: the significant number of high...
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