Friday, December 11, 2009

CCAP in the News: December 11, 2009

Andrew Gillen was quoted in Chicago Talks discussing Illinois' scholarship program.
Given the state’s recent history, both at the governor’s office and U of I, serious consideration should be given to the elimination or radical restructuring of the program
Richard Vedder discuss the ROI of a college education along with College Parents of America President Jim Boyle and independent education consultant, Steve Goodman, in this Podcast.

Richard Vedder was quoted in this CNBC story on the vocational school enrollment boom.
“The number of new jobs requiring a college degree is now less than the number of young adults graduating from universities, so more and more graduates are filling jobs for which they are academically overqualified"
Richard Vedder discussed the rising costs of college in an article for the Daily Kent Stater:
“[tuition] continues to rise because universities have no incentives to lower costs… The colleges have raised the cost of going to school so much simply because they can get away with it.“
There are enormous incentives in the traditional market sector to keep costs down," he said. "Those incentives are much less intense in higher education

"There's a bit of a country club dimension to universities these days," Vedder said. "They're all trying to keep up with their competitor. So they each feel they have to have nicer and nicer facilities, and that adds some to the cost."

Vedder said some universities have lost sight of their mission, neglecting research and instruction in favor of nicer facilities.

"Their main mission is providing instruction to students, particularly undergraduate students, and their secondary mission is research," he said. "Everything else is extra."

Because there are a lot of students who pay for services they don't use, Vedder said he is an advocate of letting students vote on paying those fees.

"What universities do is bundle several services," he said. "There's nothing wrong with all of these other things, but the other things are sort of dominating now."

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