Free Republic

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl plans to propose a 1 percent college-education privilege tax to council today, in a move that's likely to set off a fight with the city's schools of higher learning. College and university representatives met with the mayor on Wednesday and argued against the tax, which would be assessed on a college student's tuition. It technically would not be a levy on the students or their schools, but rather on the privilege of getting a higher education in Pittsburgh. "They weren't pleased to hear that this was an option we were pursuing," Mr. Ravenstahl said. But he...

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports* that $50,000 is quickly becoming the typical cost for a year at one of the nation's elite colleges: Fifty-eight private colleges now charge at least that much for tuition, fees, room, and board, a Chronicle analysis of College Board data shows. Last year only five colleges did. Talk about sticker shock. Could it be time for Kenneth Feinberg to decide how much colleges are allowed to charge? Members of what the Chronicle dubs the "$50K Club" include Sarah Lawrence ($55,788), Georgetown ($52,161), NYU ($51,993), Johns Hopkins ($51,690), Columbia ($51,544), Wesleyan ($51,432), Washington University in...

College By...Subscription? by: Bethany Stotts, October 05, 2009 Is subscription-based online education a successful strategy for remedial education? Burck Smith, co-founder of SMARTHINKING argues in a September publication that “call center” style online courses would prove more affordable for both students and colleges. “According to one recent report, the cost of offering these courses exceeds $2 billion a year, of which approximately $800 million is borne by students and families in tuition and fees,” writes Burck for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Educational Outlook. He was referring to the 2008 Strong American Schools Diploma to Nowhere report, which was...

Hopeless Higher Ed Change by: Bethany Stotts, September 29, 2009 This July, President Barack Obama called for America to “once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world” by 2020. At the Education Sector’s forum on “what the Obama administration’s new focus on higher education means for the future of American colleges and universities,” at George Washington University (GWU), a university official reacted with surprisingly candid skepticism over whether this would occur. Panelist and Southern New Hampshire University President Paul LeBlanc noted that he thought the “bigger impediment” to increasing the number of college graduates “is...

Mom Panhandles For Son's Tuition Moms will do anything for their children--even stand at freeway on-ramps to beg for money to pay for their children's school tuition. That's what one mother in Bellevue, Wash., is doing. Shelle Curley's 17-year-old son, D.J. Strong, has the chance to do his senior year of high school at the prestigious Idyllwild Arts School in California. Strong is a talented dancer and received a $45,000 scholarship, but his recently laid-off, single mom was still thousands of dollars short. Tuition costs $53,000 a year. [Pic in URL]D.J. Strong on the left. Strong told Momlogic.com that she...

With states across the country facing huge budget deficits and potential devastating cuts to services, the time has come to start charging parents tuition for their children’s public school education. If parents of the 47 million students in the United States who attend kindergarten through 12th grade were billed $360 per child per year — that’s $2 a day for each of the 180 days of instruction — nearly $17 billion would be generated. Can half of America’s parents afford $360 per year for each of their children? For the price of a cup of coffee, a child can get...

During an economic slowdown, prices usually fall. But there’s just one sector of the economy that’s bizarrely insulated from reality: Academia. Tuition, room and board at Sarah Lawrence College just hit $53,166 per year. That’s like buying a C-Class Mercedes every year — without the car. Other colleges are comparable, with even state school tuition rising to levels some parents find impossible. We figure it’s worth it. Universities offer students not just a degree that’s valued in the marketplace, but a chance to broaden their interests and deepen their souls; to gain a solid grounding in the fundamentals that made...

And now, unbeknownst to many, as we deal with banking and housing issues. . . are three more bubbles that'll pop. . . and soon. #1: Higher education will be next So say Joseph Marr Cronin, secretary of education in Massachusetts, and Howard E. Horton, president of Boston's New England College of Business and Finance. And we agree. The next bubble to burst will be higher education. No doubt about it. You see, higher education is big money for institutions and lenders alike. . . and they're in big trouble. What most people who are not directly involved with higher...

Asked whether the state can continue to grant in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in an opinion Friday that there's not enough legal precedent to answer the question with certainty. Abbott said the sections of the Texas Education Code that permit illegal immigrants to pay resident tuition at state colleges and universities could conflict with federal law. But he added, "Given the paucity of judicial precedent, we cannot predict with certainty that a court would so find."

I have received a number of e-mails over the years from disgruntled parents griping about the left-wing indoctrination their kids are forced to undergo at colleges and universities all over America. One minute, it seems the kids are sane, or at least as sane as one can expect of 18-year-olds, and the next thing you know they’re parroting the likes of Ward Churchill, William Ayers and Noam Chomsky, bad-mouthing America and yodeling the praises of such left-wing troglodytes as Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers and Barack Obama. I feel their frustration. Even if the little nincompoops can’t do long division...

I can only guess what this knowledge transcript would look like -- something like a résumé or credit report, perhaps. I picture a scrawny tree drawn on a page, with the branches representing the fields of learning and the student tasked with extending them. Perhaps vocational certificates would be listed, too. Maybe, once the tree reached a prescribed fatness, we'd call the student a bachelor of arts. But employers could select whatever tree shapes suited them, and college would no longer be a degree-or-nothing affair. Learning would be available everywhere and at a moment's notice, and would be rewarded right...

Illegal Immigration: As California issues IOUs to its citizens, another ballot proposition may be brewing to cut off benefits that are draining the state budget. From education to welfare to crime, the cupboard is bare.California is a leader in both government debt and the sanctuary city movement. But as its citizens seek shelter from the economic storm, the question has arisen anew whether its non-citizens and the better life they want takes precedence over its citizens and the better life they are entitled to. In this mother of all recessions, it's getting harder to argue that illegal aliens are here...

Students stay closer to home and schools are paying the price ___ State colleges and universities, battered by declining endowments and state funding cutbacks, are facing a new and potentially far more troubling financial challenge. Out-of-state students, who pay a huge tuition premium to attend, are doing something no one ever thought they would: They're staying home. Hammered by the recession, they're opting in larger numbers to attend schools in their home states. In a recent study conducted by the College Board and Art & Science Group, a consultant to colleges and universities, 41 percent of high school seniors said...

In an era when college students commonly take longer than four years to get a bachelor's degree, some U.S. schools are looking anew at an old idea: slicing a year off their undergraduate programs to save families time and money. Advocates of a three-year undergraduate degree say it would work well for ambitious students who know what they want to study. Such a program could provide the course requirements for a major and some general courses that have long been the hallmark of American education. The four-year bachelor's degree has been the model in the United States since the first...

Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. In my own religion department, for example, we have 10 faculty members, working in eight subfields, with little overlap. And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems. A...

Nickle and Dimed by: Malcolm A. Kline, April 22, 2009 Long before America became accustomed to corporate fat cats asking for handouts like well-dressed homeless people, a cadre of millionaires has been subsidized by Uncle Sam with precious little oversight. Of course, we’re talking about college presidents. How Colleges Grade Themselves “One measure of the effectiveness of higher education spending is the degree to which public universities and colleges in the state successfully competed for grants and contracts,” Dr. Ernie Gross of Creighton University alleges in a report published by the Nebraska-based Platte Institute. Apparently, literacy and the transmission of...

Wading into the politically charged immigration debate, a group of colleges and universities is urging Congress to give illegal immigrants tuition aid and a path to citizenship in light of efforts in several states to block them. The College Board, made up of 5,000 schools and best known for its SAT college admission tests, released a report Tuesday that cites a need for federal legislation that would open up in-state college tuition, financial aid and legal status to many illegal immigrants in the U.S. Speaking publicly on the issue for the first time, the board is making its push after...

BOULDER, Colo. — Sharon Harper, coordinator of scholarship services at the University of Colorado, posed a challenge to a group of college-bound students: Apply for a national scholarship granted to vegetarians, and a second one sponsored by McDonald's. Her point: "There are scholarships out there for literally everybody," she said. (In fact, Harper will buy a roll of duct tape for high-schoolers willing to go to prom in a dress or suit made of the material. Turns out, duct tape offers a $3,000 "Stuck at Prom" scholarship for such a wardrobe). Financial-aid experts say the economic crisis, coupled with rising...

We need to fix the problem of colleges sending graduates out into the world with mountains of debt and degrees that are increasingly deflated because everyone gets one. The sources of this problem are the three-fold: 1) college prices are high because everyone wants in (supply and demand), 2) degrees are worth less because universities grant them with increasing rapidity while holding students to increasingly low academic standards, and 3) government has the misplaced idea that it is somehow democratic to fund college education based on economic standards and not student merit. Government policy toward education should be to assist...

College Students as Pawns by: Daniel Allen, April 14, 2009 Financial aid for higher education has become an unjustified burden on taxpayers, encouraging unprepared studeIt was surprising to hear the word “surplus” on Capitol Hill on April 7th, having grown accustomed to the usual news about deficits. But the Cato Institute pin-pointed one surplus that is, because of the mismanagement of government funding, harming the system. The surplus is in college graduates. nts to attend schools where they do not acquire necessary skills, and has caused our educational system to become outdated and disproportionately expensive. Andrew Gillin, of the Center...

snip But it's easy to understand the confusion. The Pew Research Center estimates 5,000 newspaper jobs were lost in 2008. Since 2001, more than 10,000 newspaper journalists have lost work, leaving the total count of those still employed at 47,000 nationwide. It's getting worse, fast. Erica Smith, who runs the online layoff tracker Paper Cuts, counts nearly 7,500 newsroom jobs lost so far this year. Yet punishing times for journalism have been an unlikely boon for journalism schools. Would-be Woodwards and Bernsteins hiding out from the bad economy or learning new skills to compete stormed the admissions offices of top-tier...

With about $8,000 still to be paid off in loans for my son’s fine education at the University of Washington, I can sympathize with parents of college-age students and the students themselves who read the latest headline out of Olympia: Gov. Chris Gregoire, The Seattle Times’ Andrew Garber reports on the Politics Northwest blog, has proposed allowing four-year universities to increase tuition up to 14 percent over the next two years because of the state’s project multi-billion-dollar budget deficit, that appears to grow with each new fiscal forecast. Community colleges could increase tuition by up to 7 percent. If you’re...

Nanny-state student-aid programs significantly contribute to the ballooning cost of college tuition. So says a report out this month from the Center for College Affordabilty and Productivity. Executive Summary Financial aid programs are supposed to improve access and affordability in higher education. The effectiveness of these programs is increasingly being questioned as college attainment figures stagnate and the financial burden on students and families continues to climb year after year. This report identifies the main culprit for this unsatisfactory state of affairs as a misunderstanding of the effect of financial aid on schools. Currently, financial aid programs take costs per...

CAPITAL REGION — Private liberal arts colleges, including Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs and Union College in Schenectady, are seeing a decline in admission applications and increased requests for financial aid. “It’s no surprise, looking at the economic climate,” said Robert Shorb, associate dean and director of student aid and family finance at Skidmore. Some students’ parents have lost their jobs, he said. Some families’ college investments have declined dramatically with the stock market. At the same time, the small liberal arts colleges have also lost money on their endowment investments. Skidmore’s $223 million endowment, for example, is down 23...

SB799, the Arkansas in-state tuition for illegal aliens bill, is on the Senate agenda for Friday April 3rd for the afternoon session. They are trying to sneak this bill through just like they did during the Senate Education Committee. We need calls, emails, and as many activist to come by the Arkansas Capitol. Last time, the AR Senate started at 1:30pm and SB799 was behind about a dozen bills and didn't get reached until around 4:00pm. This time, it will probably be up around 2:00pm or so. Here is the link to the bill from the AR legislature: www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/2009=SB799

<p>A bill allowing illegal immigrants to pay in-state college tuition in Colorado has survived a 5-4 vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee.</p> <p>Republican committee member Ted Harvey, an opponent of the bill, was absent from Wednesday's vote because of a family emergency. Had he been present, the vote would likely have been 5-5, stalling the bill.</p>

SB799, the bill that would have given in-state tuition for illegal aliens, was defeated in the Senate Committee on Education. As part of the effort to defeat SB799, conservative activist testified against SB799. Below is some video footage of that event: The first video is of Secure Arkansas President Jeannie Burlsworth testifing against SB799, the in-state tuition for illegals bill. Sen. Mary Ann Salmon rudely tries to dismiss legal opinions that are against SB799 and Sen Jeffress gives a hypothetical situation involving an illegal alien student. Sen. Hendren gives his opinion about Sen. Salmon's behavior and SB799. The second video...

As private colleges nationwide worry that the recession may drive students away to lower-priced public schools, one West Virginia campus is trying out a novel approach. It's matching public campus prices. Davis & Elkins College, a liberal arts campus of 600 students in the east-central part of the state, promises to hold its tuition equal to the tuition and fees at the state's flagship school, West Virginia University. It's a move that also will bring Davis & Elkins much closer to rates at other public campuses with which it competes, including Fairmont State University. The offer -- a reduction of...

Lawmakers ask: Can we tap college fund? By Amy Hollyfield, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau Published Sunday, March 8, 2009 TALLAHASSEE — They are desperate for money. Hurting for ideas. And it has come to this: What about the money the Florida Prepaid College Board is sitting on? The popular family program benefits one out of every 10 children in the state. Parents invest tens of thousands of dollars — sometimes in small monthly installments over 18 years — to lock in present-day tuition rates for their future college students. More than 1.3 million contracts have been sold since it started in...

On Wednesday 030509, State Senator Joyce Elliott introduced Senate Bill SB799. The summary of the bill is "TO INCREASE ACCESS TO POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION". This bill is designed to give in-state tution and scholarships to illegal aliens. It is very similar to HB1535, which almost passed with the support of democrats and then RINO Governor Mike Huckabee. The text of the bill is below: Arkansas 87th General Assembly A Bill Regular Session, 2009 SENATE BILL 799 By: Senator Elliott For An Act To Be Entitled AN ACT TO INCREASE ACCESS TO POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION; AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES. Subtitle TO INCREASE ACCESS...

The debate over offering in-state college tuition to undocumented immigrants is making its way through the state Capitol again... It's the fourth time this decade Colorado's Legislature has taken up the issue, which crosses party lines. Democratic Sen. Chris Romer, the bill's sponsor, said he hopes lawmakers see it as an educational and economic matter instead of an immigration issue. Ten states have passed legislation since 2001 granting in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants who meet certain requirements. Those states include California, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New York, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, Oklahoma and Texas. New Jersey has tried several times.

College Recruiting Roulette Rules by: Deborah Lambert, January 27, 2009 Kathleen Kingsbury, in a Daily Beast exclusive, lets college admissions officers tell their personal stories about why some students make the cut and others don’t. She advises students who’ve mailed off their applications to “recalibrate your expectations based on your race, your wealth, and whether the NFL team in the city where that college is located is on a losing streak. The shadowy world of college admissions has left millions of confused and frustrated rejects in its wake. (So stop practicing the oboe.) Current and former admissions officers from colleges...

Literary Deficiencies Identified by: Bethany Stotts, January 16, 2009 Speaking at a panel on “Why Teach Literature Anyway?,” Professor Walter Benn Michaels argued that teaching social justice to rich students was hypocritical in the face of ongoing economic disparities between college students and the poorer populations who, he argues, can’t get access to these schools. The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) professor argued at the 2008 Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention that “the gap between the rich and poor” has “become much greater” over the last 30 years. According to Heritage Foundation scholars Robert Rector and Rea S. Hederman,...

A precept for Americans to follow in determining what is right - appropriately dubbed "American Rule of Thumb Number One" - is to identify what consensus the rest of the world has come to on any given issue, then take the opposite position. A second rule of thumb says that if the word "studies" is tagged onto the end of any college course, e.g., Environmental Studies, Native American Studies, Africana Studies, Toe Jam Studies, it is coming from a perspective far left of center. Rule of Thumb Number Three says that only a leftist - in this case a Women's...

Colleges Bite the Bullet by: Deborah Lambert, January 07, 2009 Could the global economic crisis actually force the nation’s colleges and universities to rethink their priorities? The Wall Street Journal’s Eric Gibson noted, after a recent tour of campuses, that today’s student life resembles something like the Court at Versailles. “One college tour guide proudly informed us that upon arrival every freshman is issued a brand-new laptop. Even students who already have one? ‘Why yes,’ the guide replied.” The lavish school menus cater to every ethnicity, food group and taste… And it doesn’t take long to realize that maintaining this...

More Money for Academia? by: Bethany Stotts, December 22, 2008 As reported by Accuracy in Academia, thirty prominent academic associations have lobbied Congress to request six percent, or approximately $60 billion, of the upcoming economic stimulus bill be allocated for higher education. The December 15 letter drafted by Molly Corbett Broad, President of the American Council on Education requests that Congress: • Immediately increase the Pell Grant maximum award by $700 (15 percent) and retire the shortfall the program has accumulated,” • “Double the funding for the Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant (SEOG) Program” to $1.87 billion, • “Create a Higher...

On August 6, 2008, the Washington Post reported that tuition and fees at public colleges in Virginia will increase by an average of 7.3 percent this year. The article was four sentences long and ran in the Metro section, below the fold, in space reserved for unremarkable news. The drumbeat of higher education price increases has become so steady in recent years that it barely merits attention. But the cumulative effect is enormous: the average price of attending a public university more than doubled over the last two decades, even after adjusting for inflation. The steepest increases came in the...

Brother, Can You Spare an Endowment? by: Bethany Stotts, October 20, 2008 The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued a new questionnaire which asks some tough questions of college leaders. The new “compliance questionnaire,” labeled the “first stage” of the “Colleges and Universities Compliance Project” by the IRS, was sent to 400 American universities and colleges on the first of this month. It delves into schools’ financial information with considerable depth. “Among other things, the questionnaire will gather information from the schools about how they report revenues and expenses from their trade or business activities, classify their activities as exempt...

Duke to Parents: Please Save by: Bethany Stotts, September 18, 2008 College tuitions have risen dramatically over the last two decades, with the average private four-year college costing parents $14,755 in 1991. Today that same four-year private college would cost $23,712 (2007 dollars), according to statistics released by the College Board. As Accuracy in Academia has documented, some scholars attribute the rising costs to ever-available federal financial aid, and some to an unnecessary emphasis on higher education. But Duke University’s former financial aid director, Jim Belvin, asserts that federal financial aid has “many positives,” including a “streamlining” effect and raising...

A state appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit challenging a policy that allows some illegal immigrants to pay lower in-state tuition to attend California's public colleges and universities. The 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento said Monday that a lower court erred in dismissing the suit brought by 42 students who paid far more to attend college because they were out-of-state residents. At issue is a 2002 law that made any California high school graduate who attended at least three years of high school in the state eligible for in-state fee breaks, regardless of immigration status.

Reality Check on College by: Lance Nation, September 15, 2008 Does everyone need a college education? According to Charles Murray, “No, too many people are going to college. A Bachelor of Arts in and of itself tells you nothing. We have exalted a meaningless document.” Murray, a W. H. Brady Scholar at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), does not argue that people should not be educated. “Everyone deserves a liberal education. However, they do not need to attend a four-year college or university to obtain it,” he said recently at AEI. Murray discussed his new book. Real Education: Four Simple Truths...

Tuition Economics Bethany Stotts, September 15, 2008 A recent speech by the Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), which studies trends within its thirty member-countries, brought home the fact that while tuition costs are rising in America, other developed countries face a similar higher-education financial crunch. Angel Gurría said that “the demand for education in OECD countries has been growing at an accelerating pace, and this rising tide is creating budgetary pressures to increase the offer of education without compromising quality, but tertiary education is not managing to meet this growing demand in many countries and...

Warning: Tuition Hike Ahead by: Jeff Waldmann, August 13, 2008 As Congress and the President continue to squabble over consolidating the federal budget, they pass bills that simultaneously undercut their efforts and expand government, says Brian M. Riedl, a Heritage Foundation fellow. Riedl gives a glaring example of one such bill that counteracts any comparatively minor budget cuts that have been made. He writes, “virtually unnoticed, the House of Representatives voted 354 to 58 on February 7 to add $169 billion in new higher-education spending and create at least 50 new federal programs. In other words, one step forward, ten...

Deval Patrick, already arguably the worst governor in the United States, has announced that he intends to give illegal immigrants free tuition to Massachusetts state colleges. "It's a simple matter of justice," he is quoted as telling reporters. As the station notes, out of state US citizens are required to pay a higher-than- instate rate to attend the same schools.

The Arkansas Department of Higher Education has begun checking students’ Social Security numbers and alerting colleges and universities if they appear invalid. Jim Purcell, the department director, said Thursday that the goal is to ensure that illegal aliens aren’t allowed to pay instate tuition rates when state officials think they’re ineligible under federal law. The investigation into the Social Security numbers began last week after Purcell alerted institutions, at the direction of Gov. Mike Beebe, that they need to ask students for evidence of legal residency before allowing them to pay the cheaper in-state rates. Purcell said the first check...

American Degree Mills Exposed by: Deborah Lambert, May 27, 2008 If someone in your family is heading off to college shortly, here’s something you might want to think about. A new study by the non-profit Delta Cost Project found that although the cost of college tuition outpaces inflation by a country mile, it doesn’t necessarily translate into better results, according to USA Today. For example, this year “the sticker price increases ranged from 4.2% at community colleges to 6.6% at public four-year institutions.” Since a college degree is still the must-have “ticket” for every American student, steady tuition increases are...

Governor Deval Patrick has decided against taking action to allow illegal immigrants to pay resident tuition and fees at state colleges and universities this fall, an administration official said yesterday, crushing advocates who were counting on the governor to deliver on a pledge to support the students. Earlier this year, Patrick said he was considering ways to offer illegal immigrants in-state rates, such as issuing a regulation, adding that it would be "the right thing to do." The governor declined to comment yesterday, but an administration source who spoke on condition of anonymity said Patrick decided that there were "significant...

Episcopal Seminaries Struggle With Costs Long-Held Training Model Faces an Uncertain Future By G. Jeffrey MacDonald Religion News Service Saturday, May 17, 2008; B09 In the cloistered world of Episcopal seminaries, time sometimes seems to stand still as clergy-in-training gather in stone chapels to pray in ways familiar to their forebears centuries earlier. But the semblance of timelessness can be deceiving. Some of the 11 seminaries affiliated with the Episcopal Church are slashing core programs, while others report rapid growth in enrollment. Still others are reexamining conventional wisdom about what it takes -- and how much it costs -- to...

WASHINGTON, April 21, 2008 – A piece of legislation aimed at easing transitions for military children switching schools adheres to an armed forces adage: Recruit the servicemember, but retain the family, a Pentagon official said today. Developed by the Council of State Governments, education experts and the Defense Department, the Compact on Education Transition for Military Children addresses common problems that affect military students as a result of frequent moves and deployments. “The interstate compact is a major new tool and opportunity for the nation really to show its appreciation to military families,” Leslye A. Arsht, deputy undersecretary of...

Colleges and universities are the richest institutions in the history of our nation --136 U.S.c olleges and universities have endowments larger than $500 million, 74 of which top $1 billion-- yet tuition continues to skyrocket while tax-free school endowments grow ever fatter. Lawmakers now question whether school endowments should remain unregulated and exempt from taxes, and are considering requiring schools to spend a percentage of their value each year, as private foundations must. Several schools have announced plans to dip into their endowments to defray students’ tuition expenses, but are they doing as much as they should in the area...