Links for 11/2/09

Eric Kelderman

Critics have sometimes blamed the accreditation standards of the American Bar Association for driving up the cost of law school and making it more difficult for students of color to be admitted to those programs.

But a report released on Monday by the Government Accountability Office says that most law schools surveyed instead blamed competition for better rankings and a more hands-on approach to educating students for the increased price of a law degree.

John F. Cullinan

While Yale's financial woes mount (its endowment dropped by 30 percent last year), Al-Waleed bin Talal's generosity proceeds apace, with £8 million gifts in May 2008 for both Cambridge University and the University of Edinburgh, also for Islamic studies. It's in precisely this context that Yale's incomplete and unconvincing explanations of its own actions in the Klausen debacle have inevitably fueled speculation on campus about what Yale's really up to.

Arnold Kling

I think we already know that the value of research in some fields is close to zero, but the taxpayers and patrons funding the research do not seem to mind.

I think that if value added in research and/or teaching become more measurable, the entire credentialist model could unravel. That would be huge. It would wipe out 90 percent of the present education industry, if not more.

Goldie Blumenstyk

The financial meltdown that has caused seismic upheavals in many other corners of the economy hasn't changed much about how colleges operate…

The challenge, says Mr. Lingenfelter, is for higher education's leadership to recognize that aiming to get back to pre-crash levels of financing or educational effectiveness is not enough. "We come across to the public as totally insatiable and resistant to change," he says. "We've got to improve productivity."