Links for 12/9/09

Bruce Bartlett

The median total time span from baccalaureate to doctorate among graduates was 9.4 years; median duration between starting and completing graduate school was 7.7 years

Constantine Curris on presidential compensation

Peer comparisons have contributed to a pattern of marked increases in presidential salaries, the equivalent of a compensation arms race. No governing board wishes to be at the bottom of any list, much less a peer list. Across the higher-education spectrum, board members believe that, much like the children in Lake Wobegon, their leaders are "all above average," and the relentless pressure to be atop, or near the top, of the peer group results in an escalation in salary and benefits exceeding the most-liberal inflationary indexes.

Mark Wilson, president and CEO of the Florida Chamber of Commerce

"Stop asking for money!"…

Colleges can't just engage in their usual tack of asking business leaders to help them lobby legislators for more money, Wilson said; instead, they must show a propensity to "match up their supply of students with the demand for jobs.... I'm confident there will be more money available for degrees that the business community needs," but not necessarily more money for the status quo.

SLA

what it costs the government to originate a loan… $3.60

Kevin Carey

a low-income student without a Pell grant in 1980 was better off than a low-income student with a Pell grant today.

How did that happen? Simple: college got much more expensive, overwhelming the many billions of dollars poured into the Pell grant program, and then some…

Yet people tend to treat this like some kind of inexorable naturally- occurring phenomenon, like boy bands or the phases of the moon, rather than a function of conscious choices by institutions and public policymakers, choices that could have been different in the past and should be different in the future…