Can the college student-loan debt crisis get any worse? According to the latest Federal Reserve Bank of New York report, the answer is, “Yes, and it already has.”
As Texas, the nation’s second largest state, moves through its biennial legislative session, a simple, short transparency bill has been proposed in both houses that would lift the veil hiding a little-known but nonetheless devastating crisis in higher education—grade inflation.
Across the country, state legislators have introduced over 200 measures aiming to prevent the enforcement of federal laws and regulations they believe to be unconstitutional. Here in Texas, 25 such measures have been filed.
A 'more efficient' higher education system would be met with great applause by the students, their parents, and the taxpayers who help fund public higher education, as evidenced by a Pew Research Center national study, which finds that 57 percent of prospective students believe a college education today costs more than it is worth.
The foreboding bottom line is this: “America’s universities now have “more full-time employees devoted to administration than to instruction, research and service combined.”
This commentary originally appeared in Forbes on January 13, 2015. A new book by Frank Mussano, former dean of York College of Pennsylvania,and Robert V. Iosue takes on the crisis of tuition hyperinflation. The book’s title conveys its conclusion: College Tuition: Four Decades of Financial Deception. Summarizing their work in a recent article, Mussano and Iosue argue that...
The year 2014 was a discouraging one for American higher education. Over the last twelve months, too many universities have been squandering what has been up until now their greatest source of support—the public’s respect and loyalty. This drop in consumer confidence has been some time in coming. A 2012 national Pew survey finds...
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the last two years have seen a substantive decrease (930,000) in the number of college enrollments nationally. Aside from the rebounding economy — when jobs are scarce, some high-school grads and adult students see college as a more attractive option — at least two factors account for this decline:...
Last week, President Obama convened a “Summit on College Opportunity.” The gathering at the White House focused on “supporting colleges to work together to dramatically improve persistence and increase college completion.” For his part, the President lamented that “higher education increasingly feels out of reach.” True enough. Nationwide, college tuitions have increased 440 percent...
Many in higher education worry continuously over the fact that only roughly half of students who enroll in college ever graduate, and that those who do graduate often take more than four years to do so. But few seek to go to the roots to attempt to discover the ultimate causes explaining these depressing...
Over 6 million students enrolled in at least one online course during the fall 2010 term, an increase of 560,000 students over the previous year. With each additional online course taken, the need for space decreases.
Attempting to keep pace with these price hikes, students and their parents have amassed historic debt, which now stands at $1.2 trillion. For the first time, national student-loan debt is higher than national credit-card debt.