Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• You Can't Have Cake and Eat it Too

  Number of comments: 1
  by Daniel L. Bennett
  
  Surely the temperature was warmer than the message delivered by Mark Wilson of the Florida Chamber of Commerce at last week's Higher Education Government Relation's Conference in Orlando: "Stop asking for money!"
  
  Wilson was quoted by Inside Higher Ed as saying: Colleges [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 3:00pm EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• The Student Loan Battle Continues, Part 2

  Number of comments: 0
  by Andrew Gillen
  
  As I noted on Friday, the CBO has now estimated that the lenders alternative to SAFRA would save $75 billion dollars. This intensifies the battle over SAFRA, as there is now a plausible alternative for the Senate to rally around. I can’t tell if this is [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 11:00am EST
  by ~

• Links for 12/7/09

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  DiscoverScholars.org
  the more money a school has, the less likely it is to use that dollar productively. It follows, then, that underfunded schools could actually do more good with the money that’s being heaped upon schools with large endowments…
  
  donations to schools with less funding are probably more [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by ~

• The Student Loan Battle Continues, Part 1

  Number of comments: 0
  by Andrew Gillen
  
  In response to the CBO analysis showing the alternative to SAFRA would save $75 billion, Chairman George Miller (D) attacked the scoring, stating that
  “You can dress this up 100 different ways and put a Santa Hat on it, but this is still the [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 12:30pm EST
  by ~

• Follow the Loser

  Number of comments: 0
  by Daniel L. Bennett
  
  Last week, I wrote about Northeastern's University's decision to eliminate its football program. Fellow Colonial Athletic Association member, Hofstra University, today announced that it will follow in NU's footsteps by ending its football program. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Hofstra's average' [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 4:19pm EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Links for 12/3/09

  Number of comments: 0
  KC Johnson on how Minnesota
  worries about people who exhibit a "denial of difference"---which is characterized by an "affective quality" that is "benign on the surface ('live and let live'), but potentially genocidal (!!) when pressed into cross-cultural contact." Such libertarian beliefs, the IDI report hilariously observes, might indicate [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 9:30am EST
  by ~

• Taking Profit Out of For-Profit Education

  Number of comments: 2
  by Daniel L. Bennett
  
  The Department of Education recently released details of its negotiated rule-making for higher education panel that includes proposed legislative changes. The 100+ page document contains several proposals aimed to reduce "improprieties" (could be read as competitiveness) of the for-profit higher ed sector. Central to [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 11:00am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Links for 12/02/09

  Number of comments: 0
  DANIEL HAMERMESH
  Our new study poses a conundrum: in a professional market (for economists), having more scholars pay attention to your research raises your reputation and your salary. Conditional on that attention, though, writing more papers lowers your reputation — but it raises your salary!Andrew J. Coulson
  A [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by ~

• What's the Matter with California

  Number of comments: 0
  by Andrew Gillen
  
  Michael O'Hare has an interesting post up about the philosophical issues concerning tuition
  education consumes real economic resources, hence has a real cost no matter what its price… European experiments with zero-price education have not gone so well…Giving it away at the college level seems' [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 4:59pm EST
  by ~

• Links for 12/01/09

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  Marion Lloyd
  "You pretend to teach, and I pretend to learn."…
  
  "In Latin America, the majority of professors are focused on their research and professional work, but they rarely see teaching as an intellectual challenge," says Mr. Malo. "They see it as a chore." [AG: I think this [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 12:59pm EST
  by ~

• Endowment Blues

  Number of comments: 0
  by Andrew Gillen
  
  Beth Healy reports on some details of Harvard’s endowment problems.
  Through the first half of this decade, Meyer repeatedly warned Summers and other Harvard officials that the school was being too aggressive with billions of dollars in cash…
  
  But the warnings fell on deaf [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 10:59am EST
  by ~

• CCAP in the News: December 1, 2009

  Number of comments: 0
  Richard Vedder was one of the featured experts in a NY Times Room for Debate forum: Since most of the financial benefits of college go to the student, he or she should pay a large portion of college costs. Even with the large tuition increase, University of California fees [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 7:59am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Links for 11/30/09

  Number of comments: 0
  Ofer Malamud
  I find that individuals from Scotland, where specialization occurs relatively late, are less likely to switch to an unrelated occupation compared to their English counterparts who specialize early. This implies that the benefits to increased match quality are sufficiently large to outweigh the greater loss [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 11:50am EST
  by ~

• Suck It Up, Berkeley Students

  Number of comments: 2
  By Richard Vedder
  
  This blog will demonstrate definitively what many readers already know --I am a grumpy old man. I wrote a little something in the New York Times on-line edition last Monday that has engendered lots of indignant emails to me privately, so let me comment more fully [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 9:11am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Links for 11/25/09

  Number of comments: 1
  Neil Shephard
  I think the Government should allow universities to charge their graduating students additional …“deferred fees” or income-contingent tuition fees…
  
  If the graduate’s income is not sufficient to make the repayments during their career, the fee is forgiven.David Henderson
  Milton Friedman used to remark that the [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 10:35am EST
  by ~

• Ayres v. Trujillo

  Number of comments: 2
  by Andrew Gillen
  
  The 32% increase in tuition in California is spurring quite a bit of discussion. One tangent that keeps coming up the idea of using price discrimination to fund discounts for low income students.
  
  Ian Ayres thinks that this is a good idea.
  Higher education [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 4:23pm EST
  by ~

• Links for 11/24/09

  Number of comments: 1
  Michael J. Offerman
  The idea that the most exclusive colleges represent quality actually begs the question of the real value added by colleges that take only the best and the brightest. The idea that cost equals quality is just as questionable. Exclusivity and cost have served as proxies for [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by ~

• Kudos to Northeastern University

  Number of comments: 5
  by Daniel L. Bennett
  
  Northeastern is a private University with a nearly $34k price tag. So what do students get for this? Not a football team as of next year. Today, Northeastern announced that it will discontinue its intercollegiate football team after the season, which ended this [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 1:45pm EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• What Should Public Universities do to Balance Fiscal Responsibility and Equal Opportunity?

  Number of comments: 0
  The NY Times Room for Debate Blog poses this question today. Richard Vedder chimes in, along with reputed higher ed voices such as Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, Ronald Ehrenberg and Jane Wellman.
  
  Here's what Dr. Vedder had to say: What Taxpayers Deserve to Know
  
  Since most of the [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 10:34am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Links for 11/20/09 - Graphics Edition

  Number of comments: 0
  Some very cool graphics for a late Friday afternoon.
  
  Ben Miller has the chart of the day.
  
  This reminds me of that scene in Outbreak where the virus spreads uncontrollably.
  
  Paul Kedrosky finds a empire one.
  
  Free Exchange on health care.[...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 3:35pm EST
  by ~

• Biting the Hand That Feeds You

  Number of comments: 13
  by Daniel L. Bennett
  
  Inside Higher Ed has a story this morning discussing how business and college leaders collaborate on many things, but differ on tax policy. This comes as no surprise as taxes have a negative impact on profitability and the ability to expand for the former, [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 10:26am EST
  by Daniel L. Bennett

• CCAP in the News: November 20, 2009

  Number of comments: 0
  The WCF Courier cited CCAP's study on the higher ed labor force last week: “According to the Center for College Affordability and Productivity the number of administrative staff at universities nearly doubled between 1987 and 2007. During that same time, the study shows full-time equivalent instructional positions grew [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Educational Methods in the 21st century = Medicine in the 19th

  Number of comments: 1
  by Andrew Gillen
  
  Perhaps I’ve been reading too much Caplan lately, but I had my signaling theory glasses on when I read this story about health care by David Leonhardt
  from the time of Hippocrates into the 19th century, medicine made scant progress. “The amount of [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 3:59pm EST
  by ~

• Are University Presidents Morally Superior to Prostitutes?

  Number of comments: 1
  By Richard Vedder
  
  Doug Lederman sent my blood pressure into the stratosphere this morning. I am not mad at Doug --who is arguably the best reporter covering higher education in America today. He is just the messenger. What was today's message? American universities added over 79,000 new employees last [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 2:00pm EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Federal Accreditation is Not the Answer

  Number of comments: 0
  by Peter Neiger
  
  Few people with any knowledge on the subject would say that the current higher education accreditation system is flawless. It is a system filled with abuses, secrecy and is a lethargic process that rarely protects students from failing universities. This is the same problem that you [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 11:45am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Links for 11/19/09

  Number of comments: 0
  Louis Menand HT: AR
  English was one of the fields surveyed in the two studies of the Ph.D. It is useful to look at, in part because it is a large field where employment practices have a significance that goes beyond courses for English majors. What the surveys suggest [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by ~

• Morality and College Assistance

  Number of comments: 0
  by Anthony Hennen
  In a November 8 article, the Chronicle asked a panel of experts (including CCAP director Richard Vedder) a central question: are too many students going to college? Most of the commentary focused on economic benefits of a college education and whether it’s financially solvent, but soon [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 12:35pm EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Links for 11/18/09

  Number of comments: 0
  Edububble
  What does boosting tuition 32% in two years get you? A place in the list of best college presidents.Mark Bauerlein
  every tenured and tenure-track faculty member at a research university is paid every month out of regular salary and benefits to do the very research they claim [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by ~

• Links for 11/17/09

  Number of comments: 1
  Mark Kantrowitz
  Education debt is a necessary evil… The bottom line is that college means debt, since student loans are unavoidable for all students except for those who come from the wealthiest of families.
  
  If education debt is evil, then defaulting on your student loans is a one-way [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by ~

• Links for 11/16/09

  Number of comments: 0
  Bryan Caplan on the signaling theory of education.
  Look at what people learn in the classroom. Look at what people do on the job. How much of a connection do you see?JUSTIN LAHART
  Engineering schools across the country report students are showing an enthusiasm for hands-on work that [...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by ~

• Edustimuli

  Number of comments: 0
  by Andrew Gillen
  
  I guess I'll weigh in on the Carey v Finn and Hess fight over whether saving teachers jobs was a good use of stimulus money. Finn and Hess said no, Carey said yes.
  
  Luckily Kevin's co-worker Chad neatly summed up the big [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 2:23pm EST
  by ~

• Links for 11/13/09

  Number of comments: 0
  Chester E. Finn Jr. & Frederick M. Hess
  Washington spent almost $68 billion more on education in fiscal 2009 than it otherwise would have…
  
  What has all that extra money actually bought? The main answer… is jobs, jobs, jobs
  
  Turning schools into a jobs program is a [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by ~

• CCAP Working Paper Discussing Administrative Bloat in Higher Education

  Number of comments: 1
  by Daniel L. Bennett
  
  Last week's release of college president salary data by the Chronicle of Higher Education has caused quite an uproar. The scrutiny of higher education's burgeoning administrative bloat is heating up, as the media, college trustees, students, taxpayers, and even Senator Grassley are astonished by [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 12:31pm EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• CCAP in the News

  Number of comments: 0
  ESPN writer Gregg Easterbrook mentioned Richard Vedder’s and Matthew Denhart’s article that appeared in last March’s WSJ on the exploitation of college athletes, as the antithesis to his argument that the NBA should increase the NBA age limit to 20.
  
  Richard Vedder agrees that there is no across-the-board [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 12:01pm EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Rebelling Against Big Time College Sports

  Number of comments: 0
  By Richard Vedder
  
  When budgets get squeezed, there is a tendency for various constituencies in universities to start to war with one another, trying to preserve their own share of resources by favoring reductions in the budget of others. That is a huge reason, but far from the only [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 11:07am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Links for 11/11/09

  Number of comments: 0
  Arthur Peng and James Guthrie on "The Phony Funding Crisis"
  If one relies on newspaper headlines for education funding information, one might conclude that America’s schools suffer from a perpetual fiscal crisis, every year perched precariously on the brink of financial ruin, never knowing whether there will be sufficient [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by ~

• Careers in English... or lack thereof

  Number of comments: 0
  by Peter Neiger
  
  With a struggling economy and job market, more and more recent college graduates are having trouble finding work. It has always a burden to find a tenure-track position and this year it is more difficult than usual.
  
  All you need to do is take a [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 2:00pm EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Rate of Return on Education Spending

  Number of comments: 0
  by Jonathan Leirer
  
  We at CCAP have demonstrated that while having a more educated work force tends to help economies, spending more money on education tends to have little effect. Good Magazine, as part of their Transparency series, has created a nice infographic looking at state [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 1:34pm EST
  by Jonathan L.

• Equal Opportunity is Good, Discrimination is Bad

  Number of comments: 1
  by Daniel L. Bennett
  
  Last week, IHE featured a story describing the results of a new book, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, which presents new data on the impact of affirmative action admissions to college. I have not read the book, so will not comment directly on [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 12:01pm EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Japanese University Crisis

  Number of comments: 0
  By Anthony Hennen
  
  The United States is not the only country plagued with problems in higher education; Japan has challenges of its own to overcome, albeit of a different variety. Lack of enrollment for private universities is threatening bankruptcy or mergers. The Chronicle reports that
  “According to the [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 11:00am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Links for 11/10/09

  Number of comments: 0
  Carter A. Daniel
  Fifty years ago … the simultaneous publication of two reports, by the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, on the state of business education in America... considered half a century later, can be more accurately described as something close to a catastrophe…
  
  instead of boldly [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by ~

• College Entitlement

  Number of comments: 1
  by Anthony Hennen
  
  In a recent article, Stanislaus Hamid Shirvani, president of California State University, promotes the need for pragmatism to save higher education.
  “Cutting costs is not enough. We need to break down expectations based on entitlement and focus on educational productivity and outcomes. Institutions should review redundancies, [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 3:30pm EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• The Market as Corrector

  Number of comments: 0
  by Anthony Hennen
  
  Sociologist Gaye Tuchman has published Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University, a criticism of a new trend she sees rising in American universities. The article reads,
  
  "Higher education should be seen as a public good" and supported accordingly, she said. When states spend [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 11:00am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Links for 11/9/09

  Number of comments: 0
  Michael W. Kirst
  In a new paper Carolyn Hoxby, Professor of Economics at Stanford demonstates while a few selective colleges have become more difficult to get into over past 5 decades, most colleges are easier to get into. For example, since 1955 the number of high school graduates is [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 10:03am EST
  by ~

• Links for 11/6/09

  Number of comments: 2
  Barbara Kiviat
  Because whether or not you want everything you're paying for is a different question. State-of-the art classrooms and more professors for each student sound great—but are you interested in tossing in another $10K to pay to build luxury dorms and Olympic-quality athletic facilities? For $50,000, you get' [...]
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  Posted: November 06, 2009, 9:44am EST
  by ~

• Measuring Student Learning Outcomes to Increase Value-Based Competition

  Number of comments: 0
  by Daniel L. Bennett
  
  A new report, Interpretation of Findings of the Test Validity Study, was released today that presents evidence that the 3 major tests (CLA, CAAP and MAPP) used by colleges to measure student learning outcomes are comparable. The results suggest that when the analysis is [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 10:16am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• The Winters of Our Discontent

  Number of comments: 0
  By Richard Vedder
  
  Borrowing from Shakespeare's Richard the Third somehow seems appropriate for today's blog. A former student, Marcus Winters, got started at the Manhattan Institute a number of years ago with some assistance from me, and has become an important writer on American education. Most of what Marcus [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 11:00am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity

• Links for 11/4/09

  Number of comments: 3
  Scott Carlson, Kathryn Masterson, and Jeffrey Brainard
  Fifty-eight private colleges now charge at least that much for tuition, fees, room, and board, a Chronicle analysis of College Board data shows. Last year only five colleges did.Neal McCluskey
  China has been cranking out college graduates at a breakneak pace, [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 8:00am EST
  by ~

• Links for 11/3/09

  Number of comments: 0
  Doug Lederman on priorities:
  But to the consternation of some faculty members at Berkeley, the university's sports program is running multimillion-dollar deficits -- on top of the annual institutional subsidies -- that are requiring the university to make short-term loans to the sports program...
  
  There's probably never a [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 3:00pm EST
  by ~

• CCAP in the News

  Number of comments: 5
  by Daniel L. Bennett
  
  CCAP has been cited in the major media quite frequently during the past week. In an effort to keep our readers up-to-date on the impact that CCAP is having on higher education reform, here are some of the links.
  
  Richard Vedder is quoted in [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 9:44am EST
  by Center for College Affordability and Productivity