On May 13, Preston Cooper published Why is Graduate School So Expensive? on the FREEOP substack called The Tassel.
At the beginning of the article, Mr. Cooper provides a few hard-hitting facts.
This week, the Heritage Foundation hosted a panel discussion about the Department of Education’s proposed income-driven repayment overhaul. Lindsey Burke, Director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, moderated the discussion. Panel participants included Preston Cooper, Senior Fellow in Higher Education at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity; Jason Delisle, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center on Education, Data and Policy at the Urban Institute; Andrew Gillen, Senior Policy Analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation; and Paul Zimmerman, Policy Counsel at the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies.
The headline of the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) press release noting the findings of their most recent annual tuition discounting study was not as meaningful as the subtitle – “average private college and university tuition discount rates reached new highs this academic year”.
The full report is unavailable unless your institution participated in the study, or you choose to purchase it for $750.
For years I’ve read articles and listened to speakers who have touted the difference in lifetime earnings between college graduates and high school graduates. Usually, they mention that the average college graduate will earn approximately $1 million more than the average high school graduate over a lifetime of working 40-45 years.
I’ve been suspicious of the $1 million dollar gap for a while.
The history of federal and state involvement in subsidizing the cost of higher education has filled books. From the federal perspective, Congress opted to support the students’ cost of college attendance through student loans versus grants beginning in the 1950’s. The need-based Basic Educational Opportunity Grant (now known as a Pell Grant) was initiated for the 1973-1974 academic year.
Last week, Inside Higher Ed released a print on demand compilation titled Compilation on Measuring the Value of Higher Education. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with Inside Higher Ed to publish the compilation. The first paper is a reprint of the Inside Higher Ed announcement about the Postsecondary Value Commission and their Equitable Value Explorer tool.
Last week, I quickly posted an article about the student loan forgiveness proposal from President Biden. I posted nine issues that represented my first thoughts about the proposal. Here are my observations as additional articles and responses have been published.
Issue 1 asked the question as to what taxpayers and voters who repaid their college loans think about this loan forgiveness proposal.
Yesterday, the White House announced a final Covid-19 related extension of the suspension of student loan repayments through December 31, 2022 as well as the long-awaited campaign promise of President Biden to cancel $10,000 in student loans. The administration also provided additional expansion of the federal student loan cancellation program.
I have many thoughts, most of them mixed.
I missed the 2U earnings release on July 28th and the press release on July 29th announcing their “new partnership model to increase access and affordability in higher education, embracing edX’s flexible approach to degree support.” I didn’t miss, however, the article in Inside Higher Ed describing its pivot.
The item that Inside Higher Ed co-founder Doug Lederman chose to focus on was 2U’s “reset of their core revenue sharing fee for degree programs” if its current partners lower the tuition that they charge students through the 2U online partnership.
I’m not exactly sure how I was directed to the Higher Ed Works website. Once there, I was fascinated by the organization’s purpose (It’s a non-partisan 501(c)3 public charity that supports public higher education in North Carolina) as well as the quantity and quality of information on its website.
Higher Ed Works publishes blog articles on a regular basis.
