The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

Experts Debate Who Should Go To College

The rising costs of higher education, the burden of student loans and a less-certain job market have left many wondering: Are too many young people going to college? We sat down with a group of education-policy experts—Sandy Baum, senior fellow at George Washington University's Graduate School of Education and Human Development; James O'Neill, co-founder of the Thiel Foundation's 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship; Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity; and Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford University's Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance—to debate the question. Read more at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203960804577239253121093694.html

Plenty Of Higher Ed Technology But Still The Students Come

The beginning of a new academic year is about two months away. Despite abundant technology, vast resources placed online and floated into cyberspace for free, and all of the economies and conveniences of educational curb service, still the students come. Still, they come. For it is not just about what they get in the process of an education, it is just as much about who they become in the process. My teaching colleagues and I do not compete against the titans of technology; indeed, we are outmatched in platform and volume. We do compete for the hearts and minds of our students when we deploy the remarkable tools the technologists have created. Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-benton/whither-higher-education_b_1644657.html?utm_hp_ref=college

College Strategy Depends On Whether You Are At The Top Or Trying To Get There

The controversy over President Teresa Sullivan's ouster and reinstatement was framed as a question of whether academic or corporate values should govern higher education. This is the wrong framing. If we faculty rely on it, we will miss important questions. The right question is how any given institution of higher education should attack its long-range ambitions. How good are we in higher education at strategic thinking? Read more at:
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/160718075.html

Better Civic Engagement Programs Will Help Higher Educaton Transform

Colleges and universities find themselves in a double bind, one external and economic and the other internal and existential. Public tolerance is withering for increasing tuition as legislative appropriations shrink and student debt continues to grow. Amidst a weakening public commitment to learning about the breadth and depth of human experience and the natural world, universities and colleges are under growing pressure to reduce higher learning to merely a transaction as opposed to a transformation. I believe that comprehensive and demanding civic engagement programs will help colleges and universities find new relevance. Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-guarasci/civic-engagement-programs_b_1630919.html

Kevin Carey On What's Behind The Rising Cost Of Higher Education

The debate reflects the growing concern over the debt burden many take on to get a college education. About two-thirds of bachelor's degree recipients borrow money to attend college, and collectively, student debt has topped $1 trillion. Kevin Carey, the director of the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation, believes the student debt crisis reflects larger, troubling trends in higher education — among them excessive spending by colleges and universities, which drives up tuition, and declining government support for public universities as state and local governments face budget crises. Read more at:
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/155766786/whats-driving-college-costs-higher

Sullivan Is Back But Higher Ed Is Still Far From Out Of Trouble

Higher education is not one system. There are multiple layers and a wide variety of institutions. But they all have one thing in common: they have a mission to use knowledge to empower people to imagine a better life and transform society. If we like where we are, let’s just forget about it and roll back public support for higher education. But if we aspire to better things as a society, not just as individuals, then we should rediscover the vision of public higher education that inspired the University of Virginia in the first place. Read more at:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/06/teresa_sullivan_reinstated_as_the_president_of_the_university_of_virginia_.html?tid=sm_tw_button_toolbar#comments

Higher Ed Should Leverage Technology To Fix What Is Broken

Setting aside the specifics of the Virginia drama, university leaders desperately need to transform how colleges do business. Other information industries, from journalism to music to book publishing, enjoyed similar periods of success right before epic change enveloped them, seemingly overnight. We now know how those industries have been transformed by technology, resulting in the decline of the middleman — newspapers, record stores, bookstores and publishers. Colleges and universities could be next. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/opinion/fixing-college-through-lower-costs-and-better-technology.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss 

 

U Of Virginia President Controversy Demonstrates Why Higher Ed Is Failing

Higher education is in crisis, and leaders like Teresa Sullivan, the recently dismissed University of Virginia president, bear a heavy burden of responsibility for not effectively leading. Simply put, high-quality universities have become too expensive and increasingly inaccessible because their presidents and other top leaders have failed to recognize and address the challenges and opportunities posed to their institutions by new technologies. At the root of all this are the flawed performances of incrementalist presidents like Teresa Sullivan, who are more administrators than leaders—and the flawed governance models of universities. Read more at: 
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/21/ouster-uva-president-was-justified-sullivan-dismissal-highlights-what-wrong/#ixzz1yWR5EGDj

 

 

 

Let Private Investors Finance Students' College Education

To avoid the next credit bubble and debt crisis, we need to eliminate government subsidies and link tuition financing to the incomes of college graduates. These subsidies also distort the credit market. Since the government guarantees student loans, lenders have no incentive to lend wisely. Investors could finance students’ education with equity rather than debt. In exchange for their capital, the investors would receive a fraction of a student’s future income — or, even better, a fraction of the increase in her income that derives from college attendance. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/opinion/the-college-graduate-as-collateral.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120614

Federal Aid For College May Be What's Pushing Tuition Higher

Based on just my personal experience (thus far), I think that more expensive colleges tend to be worth their higher costs.  Certainly they must be worth their higher costs if they continue to attract students, and I know many students go to these expensive colleges without any subsidized aid–because they can afford it and decide it is worth spending their own money that way over other ways.  More expensive homes are worth their prices, too, given that (or to the extent that) there are people who demand such expensive homes.  The public policy question about whether we want to be subsidizing expensive homes, however, seems a more damning criticism than asking the same question about subsidized college aid, because there’s probably more value added–to society, broadly–in encouraging higher-quality educations that happen to come with higher prices, than in encouraging higher-priced homes that are made possible with larger mortgages.  Read more at:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Economist-Mom/2012/0613/Q-How-is-college-like-owner-occupied-housing