Blog

How Do You Value a College Degree?

Writing in the Washington Post recently, Nick Anderson noted that “ . . . a great number of students and parents want to know their financial bottom line before they commit to enrolling in a college that could cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a four-year degree.” He noted that the federal government attempts to address this issue through publication of the College Scorecard and that several states are also publishing information about the labor market.

The Call to Nationalize Private University Endowments

Crain’s Chicago Weekly published a fascinating, head-scratching and troubling opinion piece recently by two professors from the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northeastern Illinois University critical of the “wealth hoarding” of large private research institutions.

Do government leaders at the federal and state level really represent the best “hands on the purse strings” given the professors’ analysis of the state of the public higher education impasse in Illinois? When Harvard’s Drew Faust has to explain to Congress how endowments are built from a combination of restricted and unrestricted funds, is the primer so basic that the Congressional hearing is at best premature or maybe even unnecessary?

Repairing the Potholes on the College Transfer Pathway

It has been instructive to watch how higher education leadership, including policy makers, work to improve how students transfer from community colleges to four-year colleges and universities.

Everyone with “skin in the game” recognizes that the best approach is to create a seamless pathway, removing obstacles that students face when they transfer. The approaches run the full gamut, from local grassroots efforts with particular groups on specific problems backed by local corporate and foundation support, to grand bureaucratic solutions mandated by state governments.