Higher Education
Even as policymakers push to increase the proportion of Americans with degrees, university and college students and their families contend with ever-rising costs and debt, low success rates, and growing concern about equal access to a higher education. We cover the causes of these problems, and the innovations being tried to solve them.
COLUMN: Student loan default rates inch down as for-profit sector contracts
Rise in income-based repayment plans masks distress that default rates used to reveal
New routes to success in learning are popping up around the country
A sampling of Hechinger reporting for The New York Times’s Learning section
Some colleges seek radical solutions to survive
Many schools are trying strategies from the business world to stay afloat
Questioning their fairness, a record number of colleges stop requiring the SAT and ACT
Results are mixed, but suggest that making these tests optional is improving diversity on campus
COLUMN: Harvard critic finds white jocks and rich kids get preferential treatment in admissions
Economist estimates that three-fourths of white students who are athletes, legacies, big donors or faculty children would have been rejected
Will colleges with sky-high default rates face consequences?
New federal data reveals schools where more than half of students default on their loans. Will the government take action?
The students disappearing fastest from American campuses? Middle-class ones
Anxious about diversity and their bottom lines, more schools offer money to the middle
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Nearly all the seniors at this charter school went to college. Only 6 out of 52 finished on time
In 2012, almost all of Sci Academy’s seniors were accepted at college; seven years later, 65 percent had dropped out
Hispanic-serving institutions set to lose $100 million
Congressional leaders disagree about how to continue funding for colleges that serve minority students
Spotlight swings to for-profit middlemen that may be driving up the cost of online higher education
In hiring companies known as online program managers, universities give up what is often a large share of revenues