Links for 7/1/10

Francesca Di Meglio

new research suggests that the monetary value of a college degree may be vastly overblown. According to a study conducted by PayScale for Bloomberg Businessweek, the value of a college degree may be a lot closer to $400,000 over 30 years and varies wildly from school to school. According to the PayScale study, the number of schools that actually make good on the estimates of the earlier research is vanishingly small…

"Some universities are getting paid to have people show up, take a class, and flunk out," says Lee. "If you bought cars, and half the cars didn't work within the first six months, and you couldn't get your money back, people would be pretty outraged."

Rick Hess

The Republic of Georgia…

offers a terrific illustration of the difference between choice in theory and in practice…

the reforms have "not been as successful in achieving many of [their] objectives as had been hoped… In short, a seemingly elegant market design has been undermined by the familiar shibboleths of problematic funding formulas, incoherent governance, ambiguity about the practical extent of school autonomy, and the reluctance of state officials to keep their hands off the schools…

Once again, we can see all the ways in which school choice is not a self-executing strategy or a panacea…

Elizabeth Redden

India historically has restricted the entry of foreign higher education providers, which cannot confer university degrees in-country – although, in the absence of a regulatory framework, collaborative arrangements between foreign universities and private Indian institutions at the program level have proliferated, and hundreds of such programs now exist…

Now, in an attempt to regulate this market and dramatically increase the capacity of its higher education system, India appears poised to provide a path for foreign universities to establish branch campuses or otherwise offer government-sanctioned degrees…

the proposed barriers to entry are high…

Caralee Adams

This fall, it will cost students on average 4.5 percent more to go to private, nonprofit colleges and universities…