November 29, 2008 – 1:00 pm
In the budgets of big universities, $6m is not a big chunk of change. But the new tutoring center at the University of Illinois is meant just for athletes. So I think it’s a good example of how the money from the average student and average taxpayer is being sucked away by some special interest.
November 25, 2008 – 4:15 pm
Alas, it’s not what you think. Florida Gulf Coast University isn’t cutting tuition or reducing debt for the students. Nope. The president is just banning Christmas parties, trees and any decoration. In the past, the leaders gave the proles bread and circuses. Now the poor, debt-laden students can’t even have that.
November 25, 2008 – 4:11 pm
Liz Pulliam Weston offers a very sobering and useful analysis of how much debt is too much. She argues that just borrowing $23,000 is about the maximum for a business major or accounting major. A salary of about $36,000 after college will allow you to carry that debt.
November 24, 2008 – 3:53 pm
This story from Allyson Dickman at Southern Maryland Online cites a number of students who are planning to ride out this recession/depression by sucking down some serious debt. One is borrowing $60k to go to a school for public affairs. It sounds like a plan, I guess, but it sure sounds like a plan that’s [...]
November 24, 2008 – 1:20 am
According to Tamar Lewin at the NY Times, some of the university presidents are starting to realize that they’re a big, fat target. Their salaries are widely reported and some schools have been very generous to their schools. In my book, I go through some of the numbers from last year. They’re not pretty. But [...]
November 21, 2008 – 3:29 pm
A short, pithy piece by Michelle Oftedahl echos much of what my book said: most education is underutilized and so it makes little sense to overpay for it unless you’re rich. In other news, the Onion reports that most people don’t use what they learn from their physical education classes either.
November 21, 2008 – 3:26 pm
I’m not sure whether this plan floating out of the University of Tennessee is (1) a craven act or (2) a sensible decision to accept reality. It’s probably both. “A student who’s in a program that has good job opportunities, good pay, and is in an expensive program — we ought to look at whether [...]
November 20, 2008 – 4:06 pm
The WSJ reports that the colleges are now asking donors to help supply financial aid to the students. This sounds nice, I guess, but there’s something odd about the whole process. Colleges can cut the demand for financial aid very easily. They just lower the price and, in the long run, spend less on gold [...]
November 19, 2008 – 5:39 pm
What do you know? According to this story, American universities have been talking foreigners into taking out big loans with their local banks. Those banks are beginning to pick up on the credit crisis. If the American banks won’t extend loans on future income, why should foreign banks?
November 18, 2008 – 2:00 pm
Andrew Cuomo is investigating the colleges again according to this story from the NY Times. This time he’s wondering if the colleges are getting a good deal for their students when they purchase bulk medical insurance. There’s probably a bit of padding in these contracts because, lets face it, most students are magically healthy despite [...]
November 18, 2008 – 1:57 pm
WJLA has some good footage and a story about a protest over high debt at the Department of Education. The reaction they get will probably teach them more about the world than any college education ever will. There doesn’t seem to be any tear gas this time, but I guarantee that all of the language [...]
November 17, 2008 – 1:03 pm
Oops. If colleges were better able to work together, they might find a way to keep the salaries of their presidents in check. But no. The salaries keep rising faster than inflation. The latest news shows the median salaries up 6.5% at private schools. The number of schools paying more than $500k went up 10%. [...]
November 17, 2008 – 12:59 pm
Our relentless quest for fancier and fancier educations is also squeezing the universities. Now, as the economy heads south, the weaker colleges are folding too. They couldn’t be all things to all students and so they lost to the bigger, the bolder, and the ones with the fancier gyms.
November 11, 2008 – 12:29 pm
I’ve always thought that Harvard was remarkably prescient when it cut back dramatically on student debt. They saw this bubble bursting long before I did. But that still won’t insulate their endowment from the brutal investment environment. Their endowment is off more than 12% on some of their portfolios and the President is calling for [...]
November 11, 2008 – 12:27 pm
There’s a review on Slashdot today. I’m not sure if I agree that you can just skip Chapter 7, but they did spell the book’s name correctly. The comments are wonderful. There’s a deep collection of insightful advice in the debate. Many people posted good summaries of how they managed to get a good education [...]
November 11, 2008 – 12:46 am
Business Week’s Jane Porter takes a good, careful look at community college, a cheaper way to spend the first two years of the rest of your life. It’s a good alternative to many of the bigger schools. But I don’t know if it’s a great idea if your goal is to transfer to a small, [...]
November 11, 2008 – 12:40 am
In a fascinating reply to the incoming President’s new plan for college finance, a thoughtful and considerate person pokes a big fat hole in the idea of increasing the size of Pell Grants. Sure, these are “grants” to the student, but they’re paid for by everyone. And given the huge deficit, they’re just a loan [...]
November 8, 2008 – 12:39 pm
The US government is wading deeper into the college loan business and buying more and more loans according to this article by Jonathan Glater and Eric Dash at the NY Times. But I think the article is still missing the depth of the problem. It is filled with incredulous quotes like this: “It goes to [...]
November 8, 2008 – 12:35 pm
Tamar Lewin of the New York Times ends story filled with a general scare survey with a great kicker: “Several years ago, we started thinking about sustainability in environmental terms,” said Dick Celeste, the president of Colorado College. “Now we need to be thinking about sustainability in economic terms.”
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