Links for 6/10/10

Burck Smith via Douglas Crets

Just like a cell-phone with a proprietary battery charger for which it charges a premium if lost, a college wants to make it difficult to import credits…

a good idea is more likely to take root in higher ed because there is a consumer choice mechanism, even if it is badly distorted…

the “cost per start” for for-profit colleges. The median is about $3,000…

I was a Philosophy major with a degree in Public Policy, so I pretty much had to employ myself… Actually… I realized that education was and is almost completely unaffected by technology. I believe the reason lies with an outdated regulatory structure that keeps the sector from evolving. Higher ed, unlike K-12, has a consumer choice mechanism where there is hope of market-based pressure to make disruptive changes…

Alex Usher via Keith Hampson

I think what the university community needs to recognize is that the alternative to good learning indicators isn’t “nothing”, it’s “a lot of bad indicators. So throwing your hands up and saying “we can’t measure this” is effectively an invitation for rankers to do whatever they want. I firmly believe that universities get the rankings they deserve; if they choose not to engage on the issue of how to measure their own outputs, they’re going to be stuck with some bad ranking systems, simple as that...

Lucy Kellaway

Academia is the most famously nasty line of business there is, and so it is always advisable to limit the number of academics per marriage to just one. If this rule is breached, it is important that they should be in different fields.

Still, it is rather late for such warnings. You and your husband are in a really bad situation from which nothing good will come…

Sara Lipka

according to a new report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

In 2008, among Americans ages 18 to 26 whose total household income was near or below the federal poverty level, 47 percent were or had been enrolled in college, compared with 42 percent in 2000. Eleven percent of them had earned a degree, a proportion roughly equivalent to that eight years ago, according to the report…