February 26, 2010 – 12:43 pm
The AboveTheLaw blog brings us news from the University of Texas and William and Mary law schools where a few professors are still working on their grades for the fall semester. This isn’t some dorky gut course at a big diploma mill either, these are law students and some employees actually look at the grades. [...]
February 24, 2010 – 6:37 pm
It looks like Cryn Johannsen’s very personal approach to talking about the very personal costs of higher education debt is winning more fans. She writes from Korea that the Huffington Post is following her lead with their own project. Tune in, if you can stand the pain. Unfortunately news sites gauge the demand for their [...]
February 24, 2010 – 6:33 pm
Okay, I’m joking. I’m sure putting these deep thinkers in the same room won’t produce something ready for the World Wide Wrestling network. PBS really has the contract. But I enjoy Richard Vedder’s writing and so I’m guessing there will be something to like here.
February 24, 2010 – 6:30 pm
Something just hit me. Every academic contract I’ve seen offers sabbatical leave at 1/2 pay. That means you either get full pay for half a year (really 16 weeks of work!) or half pay for an entire year. Yet Karen Rothenberg got a check for $350,000 for giving up a sabbatical. Given that her regular [...]
February 24, 2010 – 6:27 pm
The idea seemed so simple: if you pre-pay your tuition for your kids, grandkids or great-grandkids, the university will invest the money and let them in the door when the time comes. It sounds fair and it sounds like something that might be able to take advantage of the legendary investment prowess of the university [...]
February 20, 2010 – 12:40 pm
In tough times, some bosses like to squeeze their employees and make them work holidays. Some companies are such pressure cookers that the culture discourages anyone from using all of their vacation time. The University of Maryland Baltimore is like that, but different at the same time.Just 24 hours ago, the Baltimore Sun’s Childs Walker [...]
February 18, 2010 – 11:44 pm
At this moment, there are 9th and 10th graders sitting in the back of some sweaty classroom gossiping about Sam Dillon’s story in the NY Times today. “Did you hear?” someone is saying. “If we pass an exam, we’ll be free.” The politicians supporting this one just earned millions of votes of high school kids [...]
February 18, 2010 – 9:17 pm
Daniel Bennett has a great piece on Forbes.com assailing the education industrial complex’s tunnel vision. He notes that this college-or-bust mentality is dangerous and costly: Whatever the reason, these students are being misdirected to college and set up for failure at a young stage in life, likely with onerous debts that will haunt them for [...]
February 16, 2010 – 6:19 pm
Do you remember how Elliot Spitzer treated us, some of us less figuratively than others? The NY State legislature is considering some of his left over proposals including one to let the individual campuses of the state university system set their own tuitions. In other words, letting the fox determine how many hens the farmer [...]
February 14, 2010 – 9:43 pm
There is wisdom in the crowd and from the sounds of it, many of the comment writers were given quite an education by the student loan scammers, just not the education they expected. Here are some good ones: He/she was promised a “free ride” by the “financial aid counselor” even though there was a huge [...]
February 14, 2010 – 9:30 pm
Alan Collinge, the blogger at the web site studentloanjustice.org, got to contribute a piece to the NY Times. It’s a nice piece that points out many of the problems caused by the glad handing folks dishing out “aid”. The long collection of sob stories contributed by good readers are enough to give everyone pause. Here [...]
February 14, 2010 – 1:19 pm
The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Pilon brings us the sad news of Michelle Busetti, a doctor who now owes someone $555,000 and more. Why? No one has time to parse all of the inane loan agreements, but there are some real sleeze bag moves described in the article. One collection agency added $53k in a [...]
February 9, 2010 – 2:06 pm
It takes strength to work through the wonderful bile pouring out of the blog “Big Debt, Small Law”, but there are some choice paragraphs about the challenges facing some of the most educated people on earth: Note that patience is required for finding the right pro bono opportunity. The need is great but some legal services organizations that put [...]
February 8, 2010 – 10:23 pm
David Moltz over at InsideHigherEd.com writes about the burgeoning “honors programs” at community colleges. These are attracting smarter kids with their lower prices. The research universities would like to believe they can charge top freight forever because the world’s just beating a path to their door, but now they have to compete with these programs. [...]
February 5, 2010 – 3:34 pm
The NYT’s Eric Lichtbau brings us news that the Obama administration is running into some steep resistance from the bankers who might be cut out of the student lending business and replaced by an automatic teller machine at the Department of Education. The taxpayer is on the hook for all of the loans so why [...]
February 5, 2010 – 3:29 pm
The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Pilon digs a bit deeper into the hypefest from last year and finds that we should be skeptical about the $800,000 extra that supposedly rains down on the heads of those anointed with college degrees. The College Board was just a bit too optimistic. Sure, they were pushing the number [...]
February 4, 2010 – 6:17 pm
The highest paid college president in the United States, Shirley Ann Jackson, just got a rejection note from the zoning board. The city’s engineers said the university’s plans to build a 41-44 foot high, 9000 square foot mansion didn’t come with a good enough reason to vary from the past rules. The average humans in [...]
February 4, 2010 – 6:07 pm
More education is always better, they say. Who is “they”? I don’t know. Probably someone from the academic industrial complex because it’s just part of the conventional wisdom. If you’re wondering whether it’s true, though, read through some of the comments about this post on TemporaryAttorney. One writes: Employers view a law license worse than [...]
February 3, 2010 – 4:05 pm
The Onion weighs in with their own wonderfully bitter sarcasm. Enjoy: “In the process, thousands of graduates have emerged with degrees, but few or no skills applicable to everyday life. And many are as unprepared to enter the job market as they were when they first enrolled.”
February 2, 2010 – 10:30 pm
Jacques Steinberg at the NY Times brings us news that Williams college is bringing back the student loan. For a few years the place tried to follow in the path of Princeton and offer pure grants, but more fiscally tough minds are now in charge. While I understand the temptation to squeeze the new graduates [...]
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