Links for 9/17/10

Jessica Wakeman

I regret that I took as many gender and sexuality studies courses as I did…

Stephen Burd

One of traditional higher education’s best kept secrets is the extent to which colleges are undermining the goals of the federal Pell Grant program.

When Congress created Pell Grants in 1972, it expected that the federal government would work hand-in-hand with colleges (as well as states) to eliminate the financial barriers that all too often keep low-income students from attending college. But as we have seen, both public and private four-year colleges are increasingly working at cross purposes with the government by using their institutional aid dollars to try and lure in the students they desire, rather than to meet the full financial need of their students. As a result, Pell Grant recipients who choose to enroll in these institutions often have little choice but to go deeply into debt to do so…

Clara M. Lovett

But, by and large, the offshore "clones" of American business schools attracted significantly different student bodies: young men from an emerging urban middle class whose families struggled to send them to an American business school, and young women for whom study abroad was neither financially possible nor culturally appropriate.

Those new, and potentially far larger, student populations seeking an American business education did not easily meet the standard criteria for admission, such as SAT scores for undergraduates and GMAT scores for prospective M.B.A.'s. Not all applicants were ready for English-only curricula and for Western norms concerning such matters as relationships with faculty members, respect for deadlines, and definitions of plagiarism. These issues aside, AACSB-accredited business schools could not provide programs of study at prices that middle- and low-income students could afford. Their business model is dependent on the use of research-active full-time faculty members with terminal degrees in business disciplines. That is expensive faculty, even by American standards. The model was simply not viable in environments where enrollments of masses of students, limited resources, and inadequate infrastructure were the norm…

The Economist updates us on the state of human capital contracts.