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Blog:  Higher Ed Gamma I’ve gotten a fair amount of pushback on my piece on K-12 school reform and the failure of grade schools, middle schools, and high schools, to close achievement gaps.  Those comments deserve a detailed response. As some of my correspondents have pointed out: 1. The standardized tests used to assess student learning don’t count toward students’ grades and may therefore provide inaccurate and misleading measures of student knowledge and skills. 2. Performance on the tests varies substantially among the states, with some, like Massachusetts, reporting much higher rates of student achievement and much smaller gaps in performance.  As the noted legal commentator who goes under the banner of Unemployed Northeastern puts it: “Some states are busy banning books, other states are busy educating students.” 3. It’s certainly true that college graduation rates have risen sharply in recent years even as student diversity has grown, suggesting that the purported

University of California graduate student workers voted Friday to approve new contracts with substantial wage increases, ending a strike that started in early November, the Los Angeles Time s reported. For academic student employees, the contract will raise minimum pay from about $23,250 to about $34,000 for nine months of part-time work by Oct. 1, 2024. The rate at UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UCLA would be $36,500 because of the high cost of living in these cities and higher pay needed to compete for top talent. The United Auto Workers represents the graduate students. The union said those gains are among the highest ever won by academic workers. They represent a 46 percent increase in salary scales compounded over 2023 and 2024, compared with 6 percent for the 2018 contract at UC and 9 percent for Harvard University in 2021 and for Columbia University in 2022. Rafael Jaime, UAW 2865 president, said in a statement, “These agreements redefine what is possible in terms of

Blog:  Higher Ed Gamma You may have read that Georgetown University is launching an online part-time bachelor’s degree completion program in liberal studies in partnership with Coursera. Georgetown already offers an on-campus version of this program through its School of Continuing Education to a student body that consists of 62 percent students of color and 40 percent military-connected learners.   The online program will be offered worldwide for $400 a credit hour, which would add up to $48,000 for a complete 120 credits – but which could be as “little” as $22,400 if transfer credits and military training were applied.  That figure is much cheaper than  average list price of $1,586  for an in-person education at a private institution.  But it’s substantially more expensive than the cost of face-to-face, interactive learning at a community college or at many broad access regional or urban publics.  The average per credit cost a community college is $158 and $266 for in-st

University of California graduate student workers voted Friday to approve new contracts with substantial wage increases, ending a strike that started in early November, the Los Angeles Time s reported. For academic student employees, the  contract will raise minimum pay from about $23,250 to about $34,000 for nine months of part-time work by Oct. 1, 2024. The rate at UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UCLA would be $36,500 because of the high cost of living in these cities and higher pay needed to compete for top talent. The United Auto Workers represents the graduate students. The union said those gains are among the highest ever won by academic workers. They represent a 46 percent increase in salary scales compounded over 2023 and 2024, compared with 6 percent for the 2018 contract at UC and 9 percent  for Harvard University in 2021 and for Columbia University in 2022. Rafael Jaime, UAW 2865 president, said in a statement.: “These agreements redefine what is possible in terms o

Blog:  Higher Ed Gamma The past’s meaning only becomes clear in hindsight.  Who would have guessed during the 1970s, a decade when it seemed like nothing happened, that a series of developments were underway that would transform the future:  the politicization of evangelical religion, accelerating de-industrialization, the deregulation and financialization of the American economy, a profound shift in the nation’s demographics. Even as we fixate on headline news, the true drivers of transformation occur out of sight. It’s these long-term developments, processes, and trends, which take place under the surface, that even the most powerful politicians or institutions must respond to. This is the case in politics, but it’s also true in higher education.  Shifts in demography, the economy, and cultural values have far greater influence than the stories that dot the higher ed press. What were the most important events in higher education in 2022?   The list would certainly includ

Former students are suing the University of Southern California over false rankings for its education school based on data submitted by the university to U.S. News & World Report , the Los Angeles Times reported. The class action suit was filed Tuesday. “People certainly paid a premium given how expensive the school is,” said Kristen Simplicio, a lawyer representing the students. “That ranking was one of the reasons that school was able to charge as much as it did.” An outside investigator released to the university a report on the rankings in May . The report found numerous instances in which false data were submitted. For instance, the university submitted data on Ph.D. students but not Ed.D. students, which resulted in higher rankings. USC had a ranking of No. 11 among education schools in May. USC told the Times that it had not received the suit and so couldn’t comment on it. Ad keywords:  admissions Is this diversity newsletter?:  Hide by line?: 

Blog:  Beyond Transfer The broken record of broken transfer seems to be on constant repeat in the higher education sector. Going back decades, many states, systems and institutions have enacted sweeping policy changes and invested significant resources in supporting transfer student success. Yet student outcomes have shown little improvement and appear to have even regressed during the pandemic. The question is not whether transfer remains a problem, but why it persists to such a degree despite extensive efforts to fix it. One key barrier to improving outcomes involves the way that higher education institutions typically identify and implement solutions, often derided by those working in the trenches as “solutionitis.” While well intentioned, too often change efforts proceed along the following sequence: a problem is identified, little or no data are collected to fully understand the complexity of the problem, a strategic planning meeting is convened, a “solution” is arrived

Former students are suing the University of Southern California over false rankings for its education school based on data submitted by the university to U.S. News & World Report, the Los Angeles Times reported. The class action suit was filed Tuesday. “People certainly paid a premium given how expensive the school is,” said Kristen Simplicio, a lawyer representing the students. “That ranking was one of the reasons that school was able to charge as much as it did.” An outside investigator released to the university a report on the rankings in May. The report found numerous instances in which false data was submitted. For instance, the university submitted data on Ph.D. students, but not Ed.D. students, which resulted in higher rankings. USC had a ranking of 11 among education schools in May. USC told the Times that it had not received the suit and so couldn't comment on it.   Ad keywords:  admissions Editorial Tags:  Live Updates Is this diversity n

Image:  Congress is planning to increase the maximum Pell Grant award to $7,395—a $500 increase—and put more money toward several student success grant programs as part of a $1.7 trillion spending package for fiscal year 2023. The 4,155-page draft spending plan, unveiled early Tuesday morning, will be voted on this week as lawmakers in the Senate and House of Representatives plan to work quickly to avoid a government shutdown. The resolution currently funding the government expires Dec. 23. Lawmakers are expected to pass the bill after appropriators on both sides of the aisle worked over the last several weeks to reach an agreement on the plan. The bill boosts funding levels for a range of federal higher education programs, including $137 million more for historically underresourced institutions. However, the Biden administration, advocates and interest groups had hoped to see higher increases across the board. “This is not a budget in which they were doing extraordinary

Understanding the rising cost of producing higher education starts with the fact that the wealthiest, most elite colleges and universities, which set the norms in higher education, are admitted "cookie monsters," whose insatiable and competitive need for revenue has long been viewed as beneficial -- until recent decades. Questions about higher education's production cost -- the cost of producing the education -- have persisted for a century, and new modes of generating revenue and wealth to pay that rising cost have ignited sharp criticism during the last four decades as student debt has swelled. The history of these closely related developments over the past 150 years is explained in our forthcoming book , Wealth, Cost and Price in American Higher Education: A Brief History (Johns Hopkins University Press) . Annual alumni funds, national fundraising drives and endowment building emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century to help pay the production cost of