An independent report on American higher education flunks all but one state when it comes to affordability — an embarrassing verdict that is unlikely to improve as the economy contracts. The biennial study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, which evaluates how well higher education is serving the public, handed out Fs for affordability to 49 states, up from 43 two years ago. Only California received a passing grade in the category, a C, thanks to its relatively inexpensive community colleges...
The USA has made modest gains since the early 1990s in preparing students for college and providing access, a report says today. But other countries are advancing more quickly, and if trends continue, the picture is only going to get worse, the authors warn...
The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families...
Other countries are outpacing the United States in providing access to college, eroding an educational advantage the nation has enjoyed for decades, according to a study released today by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education...
...the positive developments in the latest iteration of Measuring Up are overwhelmed by the “buts” (small gains in college preparation are mitigated by drops in high school graduation, increased enrollment among traditional college-age students offset by declines in enrollment of adult students) and, Callan and the report argue, by the increasingly global context in which American higher education’s performance must be viewed...
It's no secret that colleges and universities are relying increasingly on part-time instructors or other faculty who are neither tenured nor on track for tenure. But a flurry of recent studies draw troubling conclusions about what kind of impact that is having on the quality of a student's education...
Harvard officials say the university's largest-in-the-nation endowment lost about 22 percent of its value, or $8 billion, in the four months since the end of the last fiscal year. The endowment was worth $36.9 billion as of June 30. Harvard will have to take a "hard look at hiring, staffing levels, and compensation," university President Drew Faust and Executive Vice President Edward Forst wrote in a letter informing deans of the losses...
As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office in January, all eyes are on his plans for higher education -- an area of concern for one of his biggest groups of supporters...
