Author: Grace Peasley

For more than a century, the American bachelor’s degree has been defined not by what students learn, but by how long they sit in classrooms. Thanks to the Carnegie Foundation’s pronouncement in 1906 that retirement pensions for professors would only be provided to colleges that adopted the 120-hour secondary standard, the 120 credit hours over […]

Read More… from The 120-Credit Illusion: Why the 3-Year Bachelor’s Degree is on the Rise

Parents are understandably anxious. Artificial intelligence is moving quickly. Tools that did not exist three years ago can now draft memos, analyze financial statements, generate computer code, design marketing campaigns, and summarize legal briefs. Headlines routinely suggest that entire categories of entry-level jobs may disappear or be radically redefined. In this environment, it’s natural for […]

Read More… from Reassessing the Value of Liberal Arts Education in the Age of AI

You would have to be a hermit, living a life removed from all forms of media and conversations with people, to be unaware of the multiple crises endangering institutions of higher education today and in the future. The intro to Deloitte’s most recent trends report does not pull punches about the current state of play. […]

Read More… from Crisis and Opportunity: Deloitte’s 2026 Higher Education Trends Report

I received a LinkedIn email notification from a good friend and former colleague last week. He asked me if I had seen a LinkedIn post from one of our former colleagues that referenced an article on the New America website. The article was titled The Subprime PLUS Loan Crisis: How Dozens of Universities Steer Low […]

Read More… from The Parent PLUS Loan Crisis is Worse Than You Think

Over the past few weeks, I’ve published several articles about private colleges in the US. My first post discussed two articles by Daniel Greenstein, whose research of more than 1,000 private colleges indicated that enrollment scale and admissions selectivity were key indicators for these institutions’ ongoing financial success or financial risk. To analyze the reasonableness […]

Read More… from The Tuition Discounting Trap: Understanding Net Price at Private Colleges

I had planned to take a break from writing about private colleges. Last week’s LinkedIn postings from several colleagues motivated me to read several articles about private four-year colleges in Iowa. The posts that I read discussed a proposed bill in Iowa that would allow two-year colleges to offer four-year degrees. The four-year private colleges […]

Read More… from Iowa Private Colleges Protest Community College Bachelor’s Degrees

[Note: This article follows some of the format from three previous articles commenting on Daniel Greenstein’s analysis of more than 1,000 private colleges across the U.S., and my thoughts about his analysis utilizing data from 15 private colleges and universities in Maryland, 24 private colleges in Virginia, and 30 private colleges and universities in Florida. […]

Read More… from Which Private Colleges and Universities in Pennsylvania Can Survive Small Enrollments?

A month or so ago, I wrote an article about two of Daniel Greenstein’s papers, which discuss the financial status of private colleges and universities. The first of his papers, titled The Fragility of Small Scale, concluded that total college enrollment below 2,500 students is where “fragility becomes structural.” The second of Mr. Greenstein’s papers […]

Read More… from Small Private Colleges Need to Break the Cycle and Innovate