In her New York Times Op-Ed, SUZANNE METTLER, points out how college now increases inequality. This is no surprise to readers of this blog. Here are the relevant posts. American 15-Year-Olds Fall Further Back in Math No Jobs for Ph.D’s? Depends on what you mean by Ph.D. Professor Alfred Doesn’t Know What is Wrong with […]
Good News: WSJ article notes that “Cash-Conscious Families Clamor for Numbers on How Much Students Learn”
February 21, 2014 by
The article is here. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304899704579391513428597546 Here is my comment. “I am a former professor. Far too many universities cater to their naive and uneducated customers – once quiantly called “students”. They do this even when it means NOT educating them – just fooling them into believing they are getting the education they need. This new […]
On New York Times Editorial “Making College Pay”
February 13, 2014 by
I’m glad to see that the Times Editorial Board finally has some questions about college. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/opinion/making-college-pay.html?hp&rref=opinion I think they are still missing the main point and conflating college degree with college education. I also think that their statistics paint too rosy a picture. It is important to dig into the data to see which college grads […]
Statisticallyl Interesting Report
January 25, 2014 by
In my previous post “Highly Educated” (From The Atlantic)? I Say Maybe “Highly Degreed” I referenced Jordan Weissmann’s Atlantic article http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/highly-educated-highly-indebted-the-lives-of-todays-27-year-olds-in-charts/283263/#comments I think his statistics are wrong but very interesting and I expressed this in my comment. “If 84% of all of today’s 27 year olds have some college, then the number of 27 year olds with […]
Former Dep’t. of Education official “…thought we were doing God’s work…” when they were WHAT?
January 3, 2014 by
When they were strengthening collection of students loans through what the New York Times characterizes as “ruthless tactics”. (See today’s NY Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/us/loan-monitor-is-accused-of-ruthless-tactics-on-student-debt.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=us) Here was my response, “The former Department of Education official “…thought we were doing God’s work…” when they were strengthening collection of money from students, many of whom had paid that […]
Costs Rising Quickly, Quality of Product Slumping – What Could This Mean?
December 26, 2013 by
I gave my view in a comment on this informative article ( http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304244904579276850992941142) in the Wall Street Journal today. “So, over a few decades, costs have been going up dramatically, while quality of education has been going down.That should be a warning. The view from the inside (I am a professor.) is simple. This is what […]
Op-Ed Piece in New York Times Disagrees with Obama’s Ratings Plan but….
December 18, 2013 by
Here is the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/opinion/the-wrong-college-ratings.html?ref=opinion#commentsContainer I wrote my view of what we need. “Today’s colleges and univesities want to act like businesses. They use powerful marketing techniques that many times trump education. They are well aware that their consumers are young and susceptible to sales techniques, from boosting their egos (by not teaching anything really […]
Education First? or, Endowment First?
There is a new post on the Economist site (http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/02/higher-education-0) that discusses new research on how universities spend their endowments when times are hard, and when times are good. Essentially, they “hoard” as much as possible, no matter what. The article summarizes the paper better than I can here. I also recommend looking at the paper. […]