The relevance, cost and value of a college education have been hot topics lately on various media platforms. The discussion often seems to be just an exchange of point-counterpoint broadsides among proponents and opponents of a liberal-arts education. As president of a liberal-arts college, I won’t pretend to be neutral. I have benefited from, and […]

It’s 2013. Ebooks have been around since 1971. Yet tens of millions of students in kindergarten through college are still hauling around piles of heavy, quickly outdated paper textbooks that cost anywhere from $30-$200 per subject, per student. Open educational resources provide a free digital alternative to traditional books. Boundless, a startup that’s two and […]

In the 2012 international test that measures what 15-year-old students know, called PISA, private school students did only a smidgen better than public school students on the math test. Almost seven percent of American 15-year-olds attend private school and they scored an average of 486, only four points more than the average public school student, […]

Conventional wisdom is that top U.S. students fare well compared to their peers across the globe. According to this line of reasoning, the US doesn’t make it on the list of the top 25 countries in math (or top 15 in reading) because America has higher poverty and racial diversity than other countries do, which […]

Want more college graduates in the U.S.? One place to start is close to home. Foundations and community groups are partnering with twenty American cities as part of a new effort aimed at increasing the number of residents with postsecondary credentials. Everything from technical and planning assistance to data tools and access to a network […]

A recent paper published in Developmental Science reinforced how tactile experience is important to learning in the developing brain. The experiment looked at how toddlers in a high chair learned the names of novel (edible) substances. Those who were allowed to get their hands dirty, quite literally, exploring the texture of the different samples, picked […]

NEW ORLEANS — Jasmine Stewart applied to only one college — the historically black Southern University at New Orleans. It was near home, willing to take her despite her mixed academic record, and comparatively cheap. Stewart also didn’t want her mother, a hotel housekeeper, to have to pay more than one application fee. But after […]

As a professor of communication advocating for the liberal arts, I recently faced a tough crowd. The admissions event was filled with prospective first-generation college students and their parents. I knew that if these apprehensive young people completed applications and ACTs, and if they were accepted, and if they were able to borrow enough money, […]

Much can be said about the lack of access to enrichment opportunities for youth growing up in urban, high-poverty neighborhoods. But what about all those after-school programs that few kids bother to attend, or that never get off the ground to begin with? Anyone who knows a tween––of any economic bracket––knows how hard it is […]

It’s always been hard to get ahead in the largely poor and rural state of Mississippi, where the median household income is the lowest in the U.S. Yet Magnolia State residents do have slightly more opportunities to become upwardly mobility these days than they had two years — possibly due to lower unemployment rates and […]