Duke University graduate students’ years-long effort to unionize is a microcosm of a growing national trend that is splintering opinion about the form and future of a traditional academic province. … Continue reading “A Successful Grad-Student Unionization Effort at Duke”
Recently, I argued in a Martin Center article that the fourth year of study for the bachelor’s degree is probably relatively unproductive and that enormous resources could be saved by … Continue reading “Higher Education and the Law of Diminishing Returns, Part II”
The past decade has ushered in dramatic growth in the number of postsecondary degree options available to US students. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of … Continue reading “Are More Options Always a Good Thing? The Backfiring Effects of Academic Proliferation”
Preston Cooper, a researcher at The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity studying the economics of higher education, recently published a wide-ranging analysis of almost 14,000 U.S. graduate degree programs. … Continue reading “The Numbers Are in: Are Graduate Degree Programs Worth It?”
Student enrollment dipped at the beginning of the pandemic, but the numbers went from bad to worse a year later. As Inside Higher Ed reported, spring undergraduate enrollment fell almost … Continue reading “Did You Know? College Enrollments Fall Again”
Many students since the pandemic have questioned whether they should attend graduate school or change their career plans altogether. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that 17 percent of graduate … Continue reading “Did You Know? For Some Post-Graduate Plans, Employer Tuition Reimbursements Is the Way”
Since the pandemic, many colleges have gone from giving letter grades to offering students a pass/fail grading option for their courses. Letter grades become a passing (P), which gives students … Continue reading “Did You Know? Grad School Can Affect Whether Students Take a Class Pass/Fail”
I’m sometimes asked why it is so difficult for PhD students of a conservative bent to survive and flourish in history graduate programs these days. It’s not enough to say … Continue reading “How to Renew Traditional Historical Study in Graduate Schools”
Many college graduates think to themselves, “I don’t have any immediate job prospects that are attractive and I can easily get into grad school with the chance of eventually getting … Continue reading “Are You Sure You Want to Go to Grad School?”