Winter for Higher-Ed
State College Funding Makes a Comeback, But is it Too Little, Too Late?

After years of decline, states are beginning to put more money into public universities. This shouldn’t be cause for relief, though; no amount of funding can reverse the changes coming to higher ed.

Winter for Higher-Ed
Do Liberal Arts Grads Really Make More Than Their Peers?

Critics of liberal arts education argue that it risks trapping students in low-paying, dead-end careers. But according to a new study, they’re wrong. Although they may start slow, liberal arts majors eventually earn more than their peers with pre-professional or professional degrees. Unfortunately, this isn’t true of humanities majors who only have a liberal arts bachelor’s degree.

Winter for Higher-Ed
For-Profit Ed Falls on Hard Times

ITT Educational Services, one of the largest for-profit schools in the country, has gotten itself into hot water with the SEC and CPFB for its student lending practices, and the investigation could be a sign of big trouble ahead for the for-profit market. Like all for-profit higher-ed companies, ITT needs to make sure that no more than 90 percent of its income comes from federal loans in order to remain eligible for those loans. Unfortunately, the increasing student debt burden and declining wages have pushed up defaults, scaring off private lenders and making it more difficult for the school to meet this 90 percent threshold.

Winter for Higher-Ed
The Very Model of a Modern Major Terrible

The choir at Canada’s Simon Fraser University has produced an amazing video set to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.” It dramatizes in proper Anglosphere fashion the bad major choices college students these days feel they have. Definitely worth five minutes of your time to enjoy this video, and while you do so keep in mind this graph that continues to make the rounds, most recently on Instapundit.

Winter for Higher-Ed
Another Reason Not to Get a PhD

Graduate programs have been churning out far more PhDs than there are available academic positions, and on top of a desperate job hunt aspiring PhDs increasingly have another problem to worry about: student debt. Unlike other degrees, PhD programs often allow students to attend school for free, receiving tuition waivers, stipends, and fellowships to cover their expenses. But in some disciplines, at least, this is beginning to change as programs accept more students without funding, or provide only meager stipends.

Winter for Higher-Ed
Winter Is Coming, and Humanities Profs Can’t Wish It Away

PhD reform was a hot topic at the recent MLA convention last weekend, yet speaker after speaker managed to avoid the obvious fix: shrinking the size of their programs. But while professors are burying their heads in the sand, a number of schools are already beginning to cut back.

Winter for Higher-Ed
Financial Aid Puts a Squeeze on the Middle Class

Defenders of the higher-ed status quo are fond of defending sky high tuition by noting that “almost nobody pays full price for college.” This may have been true, but at many public schools “almost nobody” is beginning to cover an an increasingly large group of people. Although the concept of “set-asides,” where tuition rises on wealthier students to subsidize financial aid programs for poorer ones, is nothing new, cutbacks in state aid have decreased the money available to schools to the point where the students of increasingly modest means are being asked to pay for these subsides.

Winter for Higher-Ed
Is the College of the Future in New Hampshire?

Changes in the higher-ed marketplace are forcing colleges to radically rethink their approach to education, and those struggling with the challenge may find inspiration in Southern New Hampshire University, a small private school that has turned itself into an online-ed giant.

Winter for Higher-Ed
How to Fix College

Nearly everyone agrees that college is far too expensive; more difficult is determining exactly what changes need to be made. Over at National Review, Victor Davis Hanson takes a crack at this question, proposing 10 areas where colleges should be reformed to make them both more accountable and more affordable. Some of them are things we’ve discussed here before, others are new to us; all of them are worth a look.

Winter for Higher-Ed
The Column the Academy Hopes No-One Will Read

Here’s a column the academy hopes no-one will read: Glenn Reynolds’ insightfully advocating in the WSJ for deep reforms to the American college system. Reynolds argues that mounting college debt paired with stagnant wages will catalyze solutions that could drastically disrupt the academy. Any college president who isn’t taking Glenn’s concern seriously isn’t doing the job.

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