NEWSData show poorer families are bearing the brunt of college price hikes
America’s colleges and universities are quietly shifting the burden of their big tuition increases onto low-income students, while many higher-income families are seeing their college costs rise more slowly, or even fall.
College, federal financial aid increasingly benefits the rich
It’s not just colleges and universities that are shifting their financial aid from lower-income to higher-income students. Tuition tax credits and other tax breaks to offset the cost of higher education—nearly invisible federal government subsidies for families that send their kids to college—also disproportionally benefit more affluent Americans. So do tax-deductible savings plans and the […]
How some families pay less for college than others
The sticker price at Pennsylvania State University runs about $30,000 a year for in-state students. At Swarthmore College, it’s nearly twice that. Yet Swarthmore ends up being cheaper for most students. That’s because this private liberal-arts college near Philadelphia offers many families a hefty discount, bringing down the average cost to even less than taxpayer-subsidized […]
U.S. teachers 6th highest paid in the world
I tend to think of US teachers being relatively poorly compensated in our society, especially when compared to say, private equity fund managers. And I always thought that many developed nations paid their teachers far more than we do in the United States. So I was surprised to see that U.S. public school teachers are […]
Effective teacher training critical to success of Common Core math
The quality of teacher training will be crucial to the success of the new Common Core State Standards in math, educators say, and the pressure is on districts to give elementary school teachers the skills they’ll need to provide students with a firm foundation in early arithmetic.
Selling Mountain Dew and other ways to improve access to technology in schools
Austin, TX. — When Erynn Petersen, a technology educator and advocate, wanted to prepare kids in rural parts of Washington state for technology and engineering jobs, she realized she needed to appeal to her audience. Compared to students in urban areas, many of the rural students she met had little access to technology, and no experience […]
Almost a third of college drop outs would have been more likely to graduate had they started at a two-year college
One of the knocks on community colleges is that many students who might have succeeded in completing a four-year college degree are unable to weather the college transfer process. They get their associate’s degree, but not their bachelor’s. Indeed, back in 2009, Bridget Terry Long and Michal Kurlaender found hard evidence that starting at a […]
Live from SXSWEdu: Who’s Khan Academy in bed with now?
The White House, the College Board, Bank of America, and Comcast. What do they have in common? They’ve all announced partnerships with Khan Academy, the nonprofit provider of free educational videos and analytics tools, in the last 12 months. These partnerships combine various aspects of cash, content, and distribution. But in each case, the stodgier […]
Why make the SAT essay question optional when verbal communication is the number one skill that employers look for?
The big news coming out of SXSWEdu Wednesday was the New SAT. It even has a hashtag: #NewSAT. The changes to the test taken by millions of students each year, which will start in 2016 with today’s 9th graders, are, at first glance, puzzling. The vocabulary section will be simplified, with fewer “gotcha” words. The […]
Should higher education produce happiness? Or should college focus on jobs and productivity?
Austin, Texas — In the midst of a passionate discussion about the future of higher education here on Tuesday, one young man stood up and wanted to know if the goal of higher education is to make people productive – or to make them happy. It was an unexpected query for a panel entitled: “Can […]
Live from SXSWEdu — Gates Foundation vs. Microsoft Education: What’s the difference?
On my first day in Austin I had a terrific hourlong conversation with Cameron Evans, Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft Education. He had a lot of candid observations and great lines: “The vast amount of data in our education system can be used for good, and also for bad actors and bad reasons,” and on […]
