Higher education does not produce many flashy, innovating entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Peter Thiel, or Elon Musk. The non-profit, highly subsidized, and low-incentive culture that universities operate in promotes conformity and risk avoidance. Despite that, there are some college leaders who stand out from the rest. Paul LeBlanc, for example, has taken Southern … Continue reading “Mitch Daniels Has the Right Stuff for Purdue”
It might have been drilled into your head from a young age that the only way to be successful in life is to get a college degree. You might have bought into the idea that college would be the best four years of your life. Replete with parties, filled with office hours with inspiring professors, … Continue reading “What Future Journalists Should Know About Journalism School”
The Department of Education’s method for awarding college students financial aid has many perverse effects. It contributes to rising tuition, keeps students in the dark about their aid eligibility for too long, gives some colleges unfair special treatment, and does not incentivize colleges to improve. But a small tweak would address those problems: replacing the … Continue reading “How to Stop Student Aid from Driving Up Tuition”
Each year, higher education seems to become less and less affordable: As tuition prices continue to rise, an increasing number of students leave college with crippling amounts of student loan debt. Yet, some state university systems have managed to keep the cost of attendance down. One is in North Carolina, where the average cost of … Continue reading “North Carolina’s Universities Are Affordable—But There’s Room for Improvement”
In the first installment of this series, I offered several reasons why conservative families ought to consider sending their kids to the local community college. This time, I would like to examine some of the reasons why conservative state legislators and other policymakers should be supportive of the two-year colleges in their states. I do … Continue reading “Why Conservative Policymakers Should Support Community Colleges”
Too often, universities use studies about themselves as marketing opportunities rather than a chance to understand reality. This is especially true with “economic impact” studies that purport to examine a university’s effect on a local economy. One recent example, for the University of North Carolina at Asheville, unfortunately, follows this mold. Produced by a consulting … Continue reading “Fun with Numbers: UNC-Asheville’s Economic Impact Study Is Marketing, Not Fact”
For many parents, the prospect of sending their kids off to college can be daunting. If the price tag alone doesn’t scare them silly, there are more than enough stories about campus rape culture, fatal binge drinking, the opioid crisis, snowflake syndrome, attacks on free speech, and lack of due process to keep parents awake … Continue reading “The Conservative Case for Community Colleges, Part I: To Parents”
Once again, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has kicked the hornet’s nest, this time by changing the rules for deciding if a student will be relieved of his or her obligation to repay federal college loans. The way our higher education finance system works, the federal government makes it easy for students to borrow money for … Continue reading “The Furor Over Student Loan Forgiveness”
It’s been 30 years since then-Education Secretary William J. Bennett took to the pages of The New York Times to chide colleges for their “greedy” behavior. He decried the negative effect federal student aid seemed to have on tuition, namely, that it allowed universities to raise prices without feeling the consequences of reduced demand or lower-quality … Continue reading “Does the Bennett Hypothesis Still Matter?”
In last year’s campaign for the presidency, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders tried to attract votes with promises of free college. In the British elections earlier this year, one reason for the Labour Party’s surge was its pledge to do more to help students afford college. Higher education has become a very big political issue, … Continue reading “If There’s a College Affordability Crisis, What Should We Do About It?”