When it comes to American higher education tuition and fees, “What goes up never comes down.” According to Kevin Carey, who is with  Education Sector, a think tank, American higher education has this remarkable gravity-defying characteristic.  Carey is quoted in a recent issue of The Economist (“University Fees: Degrees of Pain,” March 13, 2010) explaining why fees are unlikely to return to pre-recession levels once the economy recovers. Read more »

Slashing budgets at colleges and universities across the land due to the current depression is mostly coming at the expense of  liberal arts programs. This may another case of the old government school trick of  cutting meat and bone first to help rally public outrage so that eventually even the fat may be spared.  But this time universities may no longer be able to discern the difference between bone and fat. Read more »

Colleges and universities have been changing their entrenched, but weakened system of undergraduate disciplinary and vocational specialization at glacial speeds. So it looks like it’s going to take the major money interests–especially in industries most negatively affected by today’s partially trained, poorly educated graduates–to move that hopey, changey thing along in the academy.

The Gates Foundation announced Monday at the American Council on Education’s annual convention that it is going to insist on “transformational change” in how schools are doing business. Gates isn’t interested in backing the same failed approaches that pour money into schools which produce ill-educated widgets for industry.  Instead, the foundation is going to back a new initiative with $3.6 million to help students learn through more structure and fewer choices. Read more »

We just had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Nick Lantinga, executive director of the International Association for the Promotion of Christian Higher Education, here at New Saint Andrews College.  He was kind enough to speak at our Graduate Forum and at today’s Disputatio.

Nick and his IAPCHE colleagues are doing a good work, especially among our Global South Christian brothers and sisters and their communities, encouraging and even inspiring integrative Christian scholarship and education at a growing number of Christian colleges and universities around the world.

I commend Nick and IAPCHE to you.

The previous story on student debt requires this news from the San Jose Mercury be classified among the obscene. A decision by the Board of Trustees  to raise tuition 3.5 percent means that the cost of attending Stanford University in 2010-11 will surpass the $50,000 mark.  Tuition at Stanford is already obscene, Read more »