As colleges around the country resumed in-person learning in the fall of 2021, many educators expected students to return to campus after taking a pandemic gap year. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Ivory Tower: even fewer students showed up than during the worst months of the pandemic in the fall … Continue reading
Filed under Data / Research …
Half of All College Students Take Online Courses
An analysis of newly available federal data shows that a far larger proportion of college students take at least one fully online course than was previously understood. The analysis, first conducted by the ed-tech consultant and blogger Phil Hill, shows that based on 12-month reporting — which the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System only … Continue reading
Report: Federal income-driven repayment ‘built to be a debt trap’
The federal government’s systems that allow student borrowers to repay loans based on their income are flawed and can end up saddling them with more debt, a new report argues. This can affect borrowers’ financial health and well-being, it says. While debt under these income-driven repayment plans can theoretically be forgiven after 20 to 25 years, … Continue reading
Why We Shouldn’t Take Peer Review As the ‘Gold Standard’
In July, India’s government dismissed a research paper finding that the country’s economic growth had been overestimated, saying the paper had not been “peer reviewed.” At a conference for plastics engineers, an economist from an industry group dismissed environmental concerns about plastics by claiming that some of the underlying research was “not peer reviewed.” And the Trump … Continue reading
Moody’s Predicts College Closures to Triple by 2017
Closure rates of small colleges and universities will triple in the coming years, and mergers will double. Those are the predictions of a Moody’s Investor Service report released Friday that highlights a persistent inability among small colleges to increase revenue, which could lead as many as 15 institutions a year to shut their doors for … Continue reading
How Much Do We Really Know About College
The link today goes to a video produced by the Washington Post and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It shows data that some in higher education are aware of, but students and others may not be. How Much Do We Really Know?
Seven Practices of Enlightened Leadership in Higher Education
This is the story about how truly enlightened leadership combined with authentic faculty engagement has the power to transform college culture and amplify student success. It is the story of Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, where we intended to study the implementation of a new course recommendation system. We quickly realized, however, that Austin … Continue reading
Billions in Pell Dollars Go to Students Who Never Graduate
A Hechinger Report analysis of Pell grant graduation rate data from a cross section of colleges and universities — which is not otherwise publicly reported anywhere — suggests that billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded Pell grants nationwide go to students who never earn degrees. And while some schools with large numbers of Pell recipients have … Continue reading
Information Technology: The Accidental Career for Ph.D.s
The United States has two major employment dilemmas. On the supply side, American universities produce a well-documented surfeit of Ph.D.s, far in excess of the number of tenure-track job openings. On the demand side, the American information-technology industry is greatly in need of skilled workers. But there has yet to be a move to direct … Continue reading
Liberty University Owes Rapid Growth to Federal Student Loans
Liberty University is not just your average school down the road. The once small Christian college founded in 1971 by the Rev. Jerry Falwell now has the largest student body of any private nonprofit university in the country. With over 70,000 students, the university has become a destination for political candidates seeking the GOP’s more … Continue reading
Professor Van Ry 