...While Brennan's situation, and the remedy he is pursuing, may sound extremely ambitious, guidance counselors across the country say they can recall no prior year in which so many applicants' families have been squeezed by so many financial pressures. Not only have families' incomes been falling as their savings have dwindled, but also tuition has been rising -- including proposed increases of nearly 10 percent next year throughout the University of California system...
It's an admissions officer's dream: ever-growing stacks of applications from students with outstanding test scores, terrific grades and rigorous academic preparation. That's the pleasant prospect faced by the University of Virginia and some other U.S. colleges, which are receiving a surging number of applications from China...
Higher education traffics in reputations. To thrive as an institution means keeping up with competitors while setting yourself apart. But as good as colleges have become at building brands, the game is shifting to social media, where there is perpetual motion and little control. Image gains importance in admissions season, and this one's a doozy...
President Obama's goal of putting the United States atop all countries in college-completion rates by 2020 is "ambitious" but attainable, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Thursday in an interview with The Chronicle...In a wide-ranging, 30-minute conversation, the secretary said that he would use his "bully pulpit" to press colleges to rein in spiraling tuition but that the real pressure will come from consumers, rather than the government... (paid subscription required)
The deadline for colleges to sign up as
Yellow Ribbon institutions has been extended from May 15 to June
15 -- and it's a good thing, too, as many colleges are still grappling
with the program's many complexities. Numerous private colleges --
large and small, internationally-known and regional, near and far
from military bases -- are signing up, even as others hold back.
Under the new, Post-9/11 GI Bill, and the Yellow Ribbon Program specifically,
colleges can enter into dollar-for-dollar matching agreements with
the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to cover any outstanding
tuition and fees above those covered by the base GI Bill benefit,
which varies widely across the nation because it is pegged to the
highest resident, undergraduate public university charges in each
state...
Among the hundreds of new regulations in the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) passed by Congress in August 2008 are new mandates that require colleges -- and, more specifically, college owned or operated bookstores -- to publish the ISBN numbers and retail prices for textbooks, other trade titles, and related course materials that faculty recommend and students buy for classes...No question that the ISBN mandate will fuel changes already under way that affect how and where college students buy textbooks...(Author: Kenneth C. Green, founding director of the Campus Computing Project)...
