American higher education is struggling. Even before the coronavirus struck, schools all over the country were dealing with declining enrollment. In an effort to replace lost revenue they sought out international students, developed online degrees, and courted non-traditional students. That helped for a while. But now many schools are back in trouble. Even before COVID-19, … Continue reading “Shedding Light on Lumina and Its College Agenda”
Universities have been assessing students by grading their work since the Middle Ages. Sometimes students complained that the professor wasn’t fair, but nobody thought the system was fundamentally flawed. Then, about three decades ago, a new idea arose in American universities—that campus bureaucrats needed to assess student learning outcomes. This occurred as part of a … Continue reading “Assessment and Power in the University”
In 2013, North Carolina stopped giving automatic pay raises to public school teachers who earn master’s degrees. In the legislature, the debate focused on teachers and whether graduate degrees make them better at their jobs. There is little reason to believe so, as this and other studies show. Overlooked in this discussion is the predatory … Continue reading “Automatic Pay Raises for Teachers Create Perverse Incentives in Graduate Education”
Happily, college campuses are typically pretty safe places compared with the rest of the society. The strident debate on the issue is a tempest in a teapot, more about the political symbolism of guns than it is about safety.