The Other 85 Percent

Jane Wellman and Dennis Jones offer some important challenges to conventional wisdom about college costs in this Inside Higher Ed article. They see a developing national agenda for higher education driven by the goal put forward by President Obama to return the U.S. to world leadership in degree attainment levels by 2020. Achieving that [...]

I have written before about the problem of relying on reputation to judge a college or university’s quality, and I recommended that we need to measure outputs, especially learning outcomes. But I had not really thought about how that reliance on reputation as an indication of quality has impacted the rising cost of college. [...]

The American Enterprise Institute recently released its study titled “Diplomas and Dropouts:  Which Colleges Actually Graduate Their Students (and Which Don’t).”  There are parts of the study that are good.  There is an attempt to compare institutions with similar missions, and there is a strong emphasis on success, as in completion.  But, there is a [...]

As reported on the Inside Higher Ed Web site,  the American Federation of Teachers released analysis of ten-year’s worth of data on the decline of faculty who have earned and been awarded tenure. I think this quote from Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress that is the AFT chapter at CUNY, captures [...]

This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education has been getting a good deal of attention at schools across the country.  It certainly addresses the problem of increasing costs for higher education. The authors’ statement that “Consumers who have questioned whether it is worth spending $1,000 a square foot for a home are now asking [...]

As stated by Inside Higher Ed, reporting on a newly released meta-analysis of research by the U. S. Department of Education, “online learning has definite advantages over face-to-face instruction when it comes to teaching and learning.”  Wow—this is what those of us involved in online learning have been arguing for some time in the face [...]

The premise of this blog is that the prevailing view about who attends college, and how they engage, is way off the mark.  The general assumption is that students go directly to college after high school, live on a campus, and study full time. That view drives public policy decisions even though it addresses a [...]

This is a perfectly silly piece. To assert that a study by the Association of American Colleges and Universities demonstrates that assessment of learning outcomes is widespread but students don’t know about it is really more than silly.  What is the purpose of assessment if students don’t know it is happening, what the results are, [...]

There has been considerable discussion and concern about how well the United States is ranked internationally on the proportion of our population that has a college degree.  College degree attainment is seen as critical for our ability to compete globally and maintain a healthy economy.  The National Center for Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) has estimated [...]

Recently the National Center for Educational Statistics released data about distance education at degree-granting postsecondary institutions. This data is worth reviewing because we know that distance education, particularly online, is heavily utilized by adult and other part-time students – the other 85 percent.