With new data on student debt and earnings released by the Department of Education, high school graduates can make better decisions about which school and major they choose. Looking at the data for East Carolina University, most graduates get a useful degree without too much debt—but there are a few caveats. First, the data pertains … Continue reading “Did You Know? How Majors at East Carolina U Pay Off”
For years I have railed against the dysfunctional federal student loan program. The availability of cheap federal student loans has enabled universities to increase tuition fees aggressively, helping fund an unproductive academic arms race that, among other things, has led to sizable administrative bloat on most campuses. The proportion of recent college graduates from the … Continue reading “New Research Shows Federal Student Aid Is Worse than We Thought”
About 40 percent of Americans who enroll in college drop out before earning a certificate or degree. A high percentage of those who drop out are from poor families; they attended K-12 schools where academic standards were low and students who really tried to learn faced peer rejection for “acting white.” Still, some graduate and … Continue reading “The Overhyped College Dropout ‘Scandal’”
Among presidential candidates, many campaign platforms have a plan to lower college costs. There’s no question that college costs have increased, but textbook prices have seen the sharpest increase—88 percent since 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Textbook companies work the same as any other large corporation: They strive to maximize their profits. … Continue reading “Did You Know? College Textbook Prices Have Increased 88% Since 2006”
In the past few years, large public universities have garnered headlines by freezing tuition. Purdue University, the Pennsylvania State System, and every public four-year university in Virginia have all frozen tuition and fees. And three University of North Carolina schools—UNC Pembroke, Western Carolina University, and Elizabeth City State University—have cut tuition to $500 per semester … Continue reading “Cutting Tuition Prices So Students Can Borrow Less”
When students take federal loans to pay for college, the government declares them to be in default if a student doesn’t make a payment for 9 months. According to the Department of Education, North Carolina has an 11.6 percent federal student loan default rate. That rate is slightly higher than the national average of 11.3 … Continue reading “Did You Know? The North Carolina Colleges with High Student Default Rates”
The College Scorecard, a Department of Education initiative that publishes data on student debt and earnings after graduation for thousands of schools, just got a major update. Previously, the Scorecard’s major shortcoming was that it only reported data at the institution level—so we could see how much a typical graduate from the University of North … Continue reading “The Majors that Pay and the Degrees that Don’t for Graduates”
Since the 2008 financial crisis, the history field has seen a precipitous decline in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in American colleges. As Benjamin Schmidt, a historian at Northeastern University, reported in the American Historical Association’s Perspectives, the number of history degrees awarded fell by 30 percent—from 34,642 to 24,266 in just nine years … Continue reading “Why Students Should Still Pick a History Major”
A college endowment is a fund where an institution keeps its financial assets and donations and can invest that money for the college’s long-term stability. In North Carolina, the largest college endowments saw their market value increase between 8 percent and 20 percent from 2017 to 2018. Endowment increases weren’t simply a case of the … Continue reading “Did You Know? The Biggest NC Endowments Keep Growing”
There is general agreement among higher education observers and reformers that tuition and fees at public universities have increased at an unsustainable pace. It’s equally uncontroversial to note that financial aid hasn’t kept up with unrelenting tuition increases, leaving students in the lurch. In his new book, “The Impoverishment of the American College Student,” James … Continue reading “How Colleges Have Made Students Poorer and Undereducated”