Research Consulting

| Will the coronavirus crisis renew public trust in science? | As a global pandemic is declared, public health experts in universities have never been more visible. But do they think this episode will reshape perceptions of academia after the years of Trump and Brexit? [Note: Our two works on higher education, Outsourcing Student Success and Honors of Inequality, review the anti-scientific bent of numerous scholars of higher education (as a field of study) over the past 60 years. If coronavirus prompts a reflection on distrust in science, by all means, I say start with the scholars and academic discipline directly responsible for the study of higher education.]Continue Reading

| Op-Ed: Free Tuition at New Jersey Public Universities May Not Be a Good Idea | A broader policy approach should be explored under the new state strategic plan for higher education, prior to expanding the free college concept to universities from community colleges. The state should reexamine the complexity of shared responsibilities for paying for college, expected college outcomes, and how existing student financial aid programs can be improved to achieve access and affordability objectives. (Darryl G. Greer, PhD, served as Senior Fellow, Stockton University, 2012-2017, and was the founding CEO of the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities, 1986-2011.) [Note: What does it mean when state college and university leaders seek to forestall or squelch support for state legislation designed to make public higher education tuition-free?]Continue Reading

| Unraveling the Complexity of America’s Student-Loan Debt | Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who focuses on the economics of higher education, put it this way: “The data actually tell us that people who have very large student loan balances are actually doing pretty well. That’s because they have high income that they have access to because of their educational spending…”Akers, of the conservative Manhattan Institute, said she has been disappointed so far in the Democratic candidates’ focus on debt forgiveness and free college. Incremental changes to the existing student-loan repayment programs, she said, would do more to help students repay their debt. [Note: Umm, debt forgiveness and free college will do less to help students repay their debt than holding students accountable to the full repayment terms? Uh-huh. Did the Chronicle of Higher Education have to search far and wide to find this policy expert or is it the first business card in the editors’ Rolodex?]Continue Reading

| Serfs of Academe | Given the parlous state of academic publishing—with Stanford University Press nearly shutting down and all but a few presses ordered to turn profits or else—it should perhaps come as no surprise that one of the best recent books on the contemporary university was instead self-published on Amazon. [Note: Our latest book, Honors of Inequality, would never have been published by a university press. The book explores the neoliberal origins of higher education as a field of study — a history that the scholars of higher education, who control what gets published by university presses, prefer their colleagues in other disciplines and the public not know.]Continue Reading