| Half in U.S. Now Consider College Education Very Important | About half of U.S. adults (51%) now consider a college education to be “very important,” down from 70% in 2013. Over the same period, the percentages rating college as “fairly important” and “not too important” have both increased, to 36% and 13%, respectively.Continue Reading
| Best of 2019: A crisis in confidence in the Board of Regents (This Viewpoint was originally published in CT Mirror on April 25, 2019.) | In the last two months, 11 academic senates or faculty and staff governing bodies have voted to endorse an online petition opposing the BOR’s plan for the consolidation of Connecticut’s community colleges — or have passed their own statement opposing consolidation…Readers should understand this for what it is: faculty and staff from across the state attempting to speak out—in the only way remaining to them—against a plan that they find deeply flawed and dangerous for students and the state.Continue Reading
| A Cash-Strapped University Bet on Student Success — and Grew | A major investment in undergraduate support, close attention to data, and a shift in the way it allocates resources gave the University of Rhode Island a lot to celebrate. [Higher education journalism’s lament: Why can’t more universities be like University of Rhode Island!]Continue Reading
The Free-College Fantasy | Any new federal free-college plan should be guided by four principles. First, help students who need help the most. Second, reward states that invest their own money in higher education. Third, create incentives for colleges to cooperate with one another. Fourth, make sure that college is good as well as free. At the same time, such a plan needs to avoid the pitfalls…which would reward the stingiest states and devote more money to four-year students, who are, on average, less needy. [NOTE: The subscription-based Chronicle of Higher Education has generously made the fantasy of free college freely available for everyone to read. In principle, one might think that readers should have to pay their own money to learn why college must not be free. The Chronicle‘s affluent readership easily can afford to pay for the subscription, which may have served to make this article good as well as free. Instead, the Chronicle grants a needless and gratuitous subsidy to all readers that threatens to diminish the quality of its journalism for the most needy.]Continue Reading
| Can higher education be saved in California? | In California, 80% of community college students were being sent to remedial courses in English or math, and only 16% of them earned a certificate or associate degree within six years, according to the PPIC. In response, in 2017, California’s community colleges began putting less-well-prepared students into credit-bearing introductory courses with extra tutoring. The CSU system, too, started doing this last year, and now also funnels students with low high school grades or standardized test scores into special preparation programs in the summer before their freshman years. Though some faculty members have objected to the changes, early studies suggest they’ve led to big improvements: 63% of community college students who went directly into transfer-level English composition courses with tutoring successfully completed them, compared to 32% who went to remediation.Continue Reading
