Links for 7/12/10

Patrick Welsh

I had great students… But I also had other seniors whom I still feel guilty about passing, and they, too, are among the 80% whom we boast about going to college…

though colleges blame us in the high schools for sending them kids who are woefully unprepared, they blithely pocket the tuition from such students…

But how much students with low skills, little motivation and lousy study habits are going to profit from going to college is not so clear. Over the past five years, I have seen students who didn't have the skills one would expect of a ninth-grader going off to four-year colleges where fewer than 30% of entering freshman graduate.

That means that 70% of the freshman class is likely to end up not with a diploma but a pile of debt…

SAM DILLON

American colleges are spending a smaller share of their budgets on instruction, and more on recreational facilities for students and on administration, according to a new study of college costs...

Jack Stripling

In conjunction with its third annual “Trends in College Spending” report, released today, the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability provides a publicly available database that allows journalists, policy makers and anyone curious about higher education an opportunity to decipher where college funding comes from and where it goes…

Greg Forster

From the NEA $10 billion coke-and-hooker-slush-fund grab to the inevitable subversion of national standards by the blob, it’s a joyful romp through the lighter side of soul-crushing tyranny.