One of the things about student aid that makes it such great fun as a policy area is that it’s as much about framing as it is about actual policy. For instance, which of the following two policies would you like to have? a) A policy where students are asked to bear a huge amount of debt – over $100,000 in some cases for an undergraduate degree – over 25 years, and where three-quarters of students will never repay
I was going to start on a series about growth in non-academic staff numbers today, but the news out of Washington late last week was too spectacular, so I’m bumping it. Did Obama really say he wanted to make community college free? Well, yes he did. But he might not have meant it the way we all heard it. And whatever happens, it’s unlikely to occur any time soon. Let’s start with what he actually said (White House fact sheet,
One of the things that clouds mutual understanding of higher education systems across the Atlantic is the nature of the Arts curriculum. And in particular, the degree to which they actually have them in Europe, and don’t over here. When students enroll in a higher education program in Europe, they have a pretty good idea of the classes they’ll be taking for the next three years. Electives are rare; when you enter a program, the required classes are in large part already
One of the things foreigners always get wrong about the American higher education system is tuition fees. The external perception of tuition is driven by what’s happening at the famous private institutions, mainly in the country’s northeast. But that’s not even close to being the whole story. Figure 1: Tuition by Type of Institution, United States, 2014-15 It is true that tuition at private non-profits is pretty high – $31,231, on average; though it
Harvard’s Michael S. Teitelbaum came out with an interesting new book last month called, Falling Behind? Boom, Bust and the Global Race for Scientific Talent. Though it’s a very US- focused book, it’s worth a read as a corrective to the occasional hysterics that people have in Canada about our alleged STEM crisis. The book starts with a wonderful chapter called “No Shortage of Shortages”, which suggests that the current STEM-shortage panic is the sixth in the US since Sputnik. He
One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.
