Links for 10/28/09

Kevin Carey

The College Board announced today that the price of higher education increased significantly in 2009…

Following past practice, the College Board presented the findings in a light most favorable to its members, the colleges and universities that increased prices. Comparing this year’s announcement with last year shows this pretty clearly.

In 2008… The message: Tuition increased substantially but so did inflation so it’s not our fault…

[In 2009] The message: Tuition increased substantially but there was an economic crisis so it’s not our fault…

Trends in College Pricing is, along with the accompanying Trends in Student Aid, an invaluable, up-to-date compendium of vital information about how much college costs and how much students pay for it. It is the principal source of the data that informs the public dialogue about college price and affordability. Which is exactly why the College Board shouldn’t use its position as the holder of this data to annually spin the results to the advantage of its members.

Steve Kolowich

After several years of experimenting with “hybrid” Spanish courses that mix online and classroom instruction, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has decided to begin conducting its introductory Spanish course exclusively on the Web.

KC Johnson

In an era when the AAUP has essentially confined its mission of protecting academic freedom to issues involving the interests of the groupthink-immersed faculty majority, FIRE is all the more important. That the organization still has so many battles is cause for concern about the state of the academy, but FIRE's extraordinary record of accomplishment in fighting those battles is cause for celebration.

Sara Goldrick-Rab

the incentives colleges have to maintain the status quo-- that is, to continue making their current and former students and staff feel good with liberal actions, garnering attention in elite venues such as the New York Times, without fundamentally changing their overall enrollment demographics or costing too much money. Call me cynical, but as a sociologist it strikes me that this is exactly how power is effectively maintained in the face of pressure for socially responsible actions from powerful institutions.