Reminder: We've Moved

This site has moved to http://blog.centerforcollegeaffordability.org.

Reminder: CCAP Blog Has Moved

Our new and revamped site is now live: http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/ (alternatively, if you want a much shorter url, use http://theccap.org/. We have migrated our blog, which you can access at http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/blog, over to our new site; we will cease posting our blogs on out blogger account. Please update your bookmarks as necessary.

If you use our RSS feed, please note that you must now use our Feedburner Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/theCCAP.

Thank you so much for your patience and we look forward to continuing to engage in discussions related to higher education policy.

The CCAP Blog Has Moved

Our new and revamped site is now live: http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/ (alternatively, if you want a much shorter url, use http://theccap.org/. We have migrated our blog, which you can access at http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/blog, over to our new site; we will cease posting our blogs on out blogger account. Please update your bookmarks as necessary.

If you use our RSS feed, please note that you must now use our Feedburner Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/theCCAP.

Thank you so much for your patience and we look forward to continuing to engage in discussions related to higher education policy.

Links for 3/3/11

Andrew Ferguson

Like most parents with kids about to apply to college, I’d heard how the process had descended into Absurdistan. But it wasn’t until I saw the feral squint of parental ambition in the faces of these well-to-do moms and dads that I realized how weirdly competitive and confused the whole thing had become…

the Principle of Constant Contradiction, a law of nature as ironclad as anything Newton came up with: for every piece of college admissions advice you receive, you will soon receive an equally plausible piece of advice that directly contradicts it…

Higher education is a highly competitive industry run by people who 1) won’t admit it’s an industry and 2) won’t admit they’re in competition with one another…

There’s no consensus about what American higher education is for. Some of us cling like Matthew Arnold or Cardinal Newman to the idea of the university as a place to nurture the young into the glories of civilization -- to furnish their minds with the best that’s been thought and said, as a preparation for a spiritually fulfilling life. Others of us in buck-hustling America see a college education in purely utilitarian terms, as a way to train for a high-paying job. Still others see it as a tool of social transformation, righting the inequities of society. And a very large number of people, particularly those under the age of 22, see it as a four-year booze cruise.
The result is a system of higher education that’s neither one thing nor the other -- a perfect recipe for frustration and disappointment…

Dean Dad

San Diego Community College district… colleges don’t set their own fees, and don’t get to keep the money. Therefore, the only way they can stay within their budgets when their allocations get cut is to turn students away…

I hadn’t realized just how badly the California system was designed until that moment. When revenue is completely decoupled from services, then growing your way out of the problem is off the table. My sympathies to the citizens of California, who are trapped in a system that makes absolutely no sense…

Bill Gates

We know that of all the variables under a school's control, the single most decisive factor in student achievement is excellent teaching. It is astonishing what great teachers can do for their students.

Yet compared with the countries that outperform us in education, we do very little to measure, develop and reward excellent teaching. We have been expecting teachers to be effective without giving them feedback and training…

Compared with other countries, America has spent more and achieved less. If there's any good news in that, it's that we've had a chance to see what works and what doesn't. That sets the stage for a big change that everyone knows we need: building exceptional teacher personnel systems that identify great teaching, reward it and help every teacher get better…

Jeffrey R. Young

Actually Going to Class, for a Specific Course? How 20th-Century.

Links for 3/2/11

Michael Finnegan and Gale Holland

In one respect, trouble was inevitable: Voters had put $2.2 billion under the control of seven of the region's most obscure elected officials. They would be spending it with almost no public scrutiny — despite their promise of "strict oversight"

[P.S. You won’t believe what they did.]

Erin O’Connor and Maurice Black

This is not the profile of a profession that deserves the public trust. And yet academe has far fewer checks and balances than other peer review professions. Doctors can lose their licenses. Lawyers can be disbarred. But incompetent or dishonest professors are often forever...

Joanne Jacobs

Many districts turn merit pay into a small across-the-board pay boost, write Green and Buck. In Houston, 88 percent of teachers qualified for a small “merit” bonus. That’s nothing compared to Minnesota, where 22 school districts gave Q Comp bonuses to more than 99 percent of teachers…

Terry Ryan

The New Teacher Project (TNTP) reports that 14 states actually have laws on the books that force quality-blind layoffs…

Lloyd Armstrong

The rhetoric generally tells us that the crisis in American higher education is a financial one, not an educational one. However, it seems increasingly clear that the educational goals we have set for ourselves and our students are the goals appropriate to 20th century United States that had few real economic competitors. Much of our education has assumed that our graduates would go into a profession, and work in that profession for one, or at most a few, companies during their lifetime. That assumption is increasingly incorrect. Many of the professions for which we train students are in a decline as their functions move overseas. Graduates are increasingly required to change the focus of their work (not just jobs) several times in their working lifetime. As has been noted before, the offshoring phenomenon continues to move up the educational scale. Consequently, more traditional education - which was the answer to many problems in the 20th century - is not necessarily the correct answer in the 21st century…

Update on CCAP Website Redesign

CCAP will be launching its revamped website within the next day or so. When it does go live, we will complete the process of transitioning our blog from blogger over to our new server. For those of you who use our blog's rss feed, we will provide you with the new rss information as soon as we go live. Thank you for your patience.

Links for 3/1/11

Publius Audax

the total bill (at UT-Austin) runs to at least $95,000.

Can we really reduce that cost by nearly 90%, while maintaining or even improving quality? Yes, we can, if we do two things: intelligently exploit the huge economies of scale in higher education in Texas, with 950,000 students in college; and take full advantage of technology…

ROBERT M. COSTRELL

The showdown in Wisconsin over fringe benefits for public employees boils down to one number: 74.2. That's how many cents the public pays Milwaukee public-school teachers and other employees for retirement and health benefits for every dollar they receive in salary. The corresponding rate for employees of private firms is 24.3 cents…

Judith Scott-Clayton

Of all the potential merits of for-profit colleges, perhaps the most useful is simply the role they serve in upsetting the status quo…

Jamie Merisotis

Problem: College degrees are poorly understood in terms of the learning they represent.

Solution: Develop a degree qualifications profile (DQP) to define the specific learning outcomes of every degree issued by accredited colleges and universities.

Problem: Higher education programs and degrees are defined by seat time rather than learning outcomes.

Solution: Develop a new system of learning credits that are based on outcomes, not time…

Oliver Staley

With $10 million from hedge-fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin, List will track the results of more than 600 students-- including 150 at this school. His goal is to find out whether investing in teachers or, alternatively, in parents, leads to more gains in kids’ educational performance…