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| The Tyranny of the Market | American colleges and universities exist within a highly competitive marketplace. Individual institutions compete for students, faculty, research dollars, external funding, donations, visibility and prestige, and, in some cases, survival. Indeed, one of American higher education’s most distinctive features, from the early 19th century onward, has been its market-driven character. [Note: This is a fabricated history of higher education in America invented in the late 1950s by right-wing academic activists who sought to frustrate the efforts of statewide coordination and planning, and aided by funding from anti-New Deal big business foundations.]Continue Reading

| Recalibrating Our Understanding of Failure | In a nutshell, Tony Carnevale and his colleagues at CEW lay out data that illustrates that poor kids with higher intelligence and aptitude are less likely to succeed in school than more well-to-do kids with lower intelligence and aptitude. Let me put that another, less diplomatic, way. Despite our best efforts and intentions, when it comes to academic success and persistence to date, schools tend to sort kids by income and zip code, not aptitude, and colleges complete the job.Continue Reading