Finance & Policy News

D. Michael Lindsay, president, Gordon College, writes: Commencement should be a day to commemorate and elevate the tremendous accomplishments of our graduating students, in a proud celebration with their families and their faculty mentors. The very real possibility that the most meaningful moments of this day might be overshadowed by a marquee guest should be reason enough to reconsider the merits of this approach.

On Thursday a bipartisan group of senators and representatives introduced the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act. It seems pretty straightforward. Students, families, and policymakers have questions. And this legislation would provide answers. But the day after the legislation was introduced, an unnamed senior Congressional education staffer said of the effort, "But a federal unit record system is only designed to answer...

The latest version of a bill from Sens. Marco Rubio and Ron Wyden that would require the disclosure of salary data (among other statistics) revives one of the more politically controversial policy proposals in higher education. This time, the bill's sponsors, who include Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) as well as Rubio and Wyden, also call for a federal "unit record" database - a database administered by the Education Department that could...

The problem is that we have tried to adapt a mid-20th-century process to the students of the 21st century. Some colleges seem to purposely make things more difficult, to add to the mystique and prestige of the institution. If you think that's a silly way to do business, you're not alone. Yet tradition holds sway. But it should be incumbent upon 21st-century administrators to improve the process: If we could reinvent the college-...

Numerous information-gathering requests that colleges must complete to receive federal student-aid funds can divert time and money from their mission to educate students, says a recent report from the Government Accountability Office. The GAO analyzed the concerns of 18 college financial-aid officers, representatives of higher-education associations, and researchers who study financial aid, regarding the requirements institutions must...

Both Wake Forest and Winston-Salem State Universities are offering more financial literacy counseling and parental workshops, but Wake Forest says it is also working to raise more money in it's capital campaign to use for scholarships, and is also working on student career placement. Last year 95% of graduates reported having a job within 6 months of graduation. University officials say that helps ensure students can pay the loans...

The University of New Hampshire is one of 32 members of the National College Health Improvement Project that Dartmouth College created two years ago. The goal was to help participants scientifically measure their progress in reducing binge drinking and then spread their strategies to other campuses. So far, participants appear pleased with the results. The national project promotes a model that boils down to this: pilot something...

A report published last week by the New America Foundation found that even top schools with the means to do so aren't making great financial offers to smart kids from poor families -- they are, instead, competing for the wealthiest students and leaving low-income kids behind. The one Maryland college that the report mentioned -- and in a good way -- is McDaniel in Westminster. The school has succeeded in recruiting bright, low-income...

According to the US commentator Christopher Newfield: "The distinctive feature of Mooc marketing in 2013 is the shift from being an intriguing experiment to being pushed as a workable solution to budgetary and access crises." This is clearest in the US, where outstanding student loan balances are now thought to exceed $1tr. Bill Clinton recently told Times Higher Education that the only way to address the student debt crisis was to...