In the words of Clay Shirky (professor at NYU and a few other things): Of the twenty million or so students in the US, only about one in ten lives on a campus. The remaining eighteen million—the ones who don’t have the grades for Swarthmore, or tens of thousands of dollars in free cash flow, or four years free of adult responsibility—are relying on education after high school not as a voyage of self-discovery but as a way to acquire training and a certificate of hireability. Though the landscape of higher education in the U.S., spread across forty-six hundred institutions, hosts … [Read more...] about Why is Higher Ed Reform Inevitable?
Thriving at College
What’s the Deal with People Not Reading?
Jordan Weissmann, writing for The Atlantic: "The number of non-book-readers has nearly tripled since 1978." Read the rest of Weissman's piece--he goes on to find hope in that the decline of reading among young adults appears to have abated. In my view, the best book on the paucity of young adult reading and its ill effects is The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future(Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) by Dr. Mark Bauerlein of Emory University (discussed in this post). Dr. Bauerlein was kind enough to endorse my forthcoming … [Read more...] about What’s the Deal with People Not Reading?
Education or Reputation: A New Look at Top-Ranked Liberal Arts Colleges
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group, is out with a new report called Education or Reputation: A Look at America's Top-Ranked Liberal Arts Colleges. Kathleen Parker writes in the Washington Post, "the trends highlighted are not confined to smaller, elite institutions. These include an increasing lack of academic rigor, grade inflation, high administrative costs and a lack of intellectual diversity." Read the rest of Parker's remarks. Meanwhile, Bloomberg posted this graph last August on the rising costs of college in comparison to … [Read more...] about Education or Reputation: A New Look at Top-Ranked Liberal Arts Colleges
How Are 27 year olds doing these days?
Jordan Weissmann has an interesting collection of graphs in The Atlantic on the financial, educational, and social status of 27 year olds today. It comes from a data set of about 15,000 young adults who were high school sophomores in 2002 and have been tracked as part of a longitudinal study. Of those who expected to earn a bachelor's degree, only about 1 in 3 (34 percent) actually did. … [Read more...] about How Are 27 year olds doing these days?
Does Where You Go to School Matter to Employers?
Great post from Lynn O'Shaughnessy on whether you need to attend an elite school to be successful. An excerpt: I am involved in recruiting for a very selective federal agency. Our jobs require very high level skills, including a minimum of a master’s degree. Most people I work with are brilliant. They get their jobs here by passing a rigorous entrance test on knowledge of foreign affairs, foreign language aptitude, writing samples, oral exam (to determine presentation skills), quantitative skills, and a psychological battery.... We have people from famous and not-so-famous colleges. We … [Read more...] about Does Where You Go to School Matter to Employers?
What It Takes To Get Into an Elite University
I discussed what to look for in a college in a lengthy chapter of Preparing Your Teens for College (see the Table of Contents). College admissions has changed profoundly over the last two decades as an increasing number of high school graduates are pursuing higher education. Among most universities, there is increasing competition for students. These colleges are vying for numerical growth and/or better students in the hopes of moving up the ranks (raising their average SAT/ACT score, boosting their graduation rates, and so on). But among elite universities, the competition from students has … [Read more...] about What It Takes To Get Into an Elite University