Links for 12/8/10

Peter F. Lake

corporate law permits most private, nonprofit institutions of higher education to operate without any significant external legal accountability…

the general public—or the student body—has no standing to challenge perceived wrongs…
One might hope that faculty members would provide some oversight. However, they, like students, lack the legal standing…

We can either remedy this crack in corporate-governance law or wait for an earthquake. Accountability may be the best way to preserve our colleges and help them grow. Accountability is not the end of self-governance. It is the necessary response to corporate behavior that can cause lack of innovation from within…

Kevin Carey

The only way we know how to rate college quality in this country is by wealth, fame, and exclusivity. But most students -- about four out of five -- attend colleges that have modest resources, are easy to get into, and are relatively obscure. Lacking any other way to distinguish among these choices, these students usually attend whichever college is cheapest and closest to home.

That's unfortunate. While there's little difference among elite colleges in the grand scheme of things - Princeton, Brown, tomato, tomahto - it's a real problem when students enroll in colleges that do a poor job of teaching them and helping them graduate, as many do...

Ben Miller

extends the American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC)…

In short, the tax compromise keeps in place a benefit that costs about $17.4 billion over two years, more than half of which will go to students who probably aren’t even Pell Grant eligible. At the same time, the Pell Grant program, which is the best targeted federal benefit to the lowest income students, would need about $11.4 billion over the next two years…

Edububble

The university could have approached this entirely differently. It could have put the professors back in the classroom– something that Mark Yudof doesn’t want to do to his precious number one rated English professors. They might fly the coop and head for another school that pays them not to teach…