Higher Ed News
October 30, 2012
Proposed Income-Based Loan Repayment Plan Helps Wealthy, Not Low-Income Borrowers
The New America Foundation recently released a report on impending changes to the federal Income-Based Student Loan Repayment Program (IBR). The report claims that these changes will benefit high-income, high-debt borrowers, not low-income students with moderate student loan debt (note that the current average undergraduate debt load is $26,000). IBR is a system in which borrowers…
October 29, 2012
California’s Prop 30 Loses Ground in the Polls
Last week, a Los Angeles Times/USC poll found that support for Proposition 30 is dwindling. Only 46 percent of registered voters now approve the California ballot initiative designed to deflect almost $1-billion in state higher-education cuts—a 9-point drop over last month’s poll by the same organizations. Meanwhile, 42 percent of respondents oppose the proposition. If…
October 24, 2012
Largest U.S. For-Profit University Closes Half Its Locations
The New York Times reported last week that the University of Phoenix will be shutting down 115 of its 227 locations over the next year—25 main campuses and 90 learning centers. The roughly 13,000 students affected by the closings (4 percent of the total student body) will have the option of either transferring to the…
October 23, 2012
Average Student Debt in 2011 reaches $26,600
The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) recently released a report detailing average student debt amounts for the class of 2011. Of the students that earned a bachelor’s degree that year, two thirds held student debt amounting to $26,600 per student on average. The highest levels of debt were found in the Northeast and…
October 18, 2012
Universities Propose Innovative Deals in Attempt to Stabilize Tuition Rates
A recent Insider Higher Education article describes the inventive deals that a handful of public universities are pursuing in an effort to keep tuition rates from rising. By offering tuition freezes in exchange for either (1) increased state funding or (2) individual student efforts to graduate on time, universities hope to meet public demands to…
October 16, 2012
New Study Suggests Liberal Arts Colleges Are Disappearing
A landmark study from 1990 classified 212 US institutions as liberal arts colleges, but new research shows a 39 percent decline in that number—only 130 institutions currently meet the original study’s classification criteria. Of the 82 institutions no longer classified as liberal arts colleges, a handful were subsumed by larger institutions, while about half had…
October 11, 2012
Supreme Court Justices Hear (and Question) Arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in the landmark affirmative action case Fisher v. University of Texas (UT) (please see our previous blog for more information). Four Justices will need to support UT if it and, potentially, public colleges across the nation are to continue using race and as a factor in admissions decisions….
October 4, 2012
Getting Teenagers Hooked on Computer Science
The Association for Computing Machinery estimates that, from now until 2020, 150,000 new jobs in computer science fields will open each year. Despite such high demand for computer science skills, just 40,000 American students graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (CS) in 2010. While the technology industry in Seattle has boomed in the…
October 2, 2012
UW’s Impressively-Low Student Loan Default Rates Contrast with National Averages
Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Education released its annual update on federal student loan cohort default rates (CDRs) and, although national CDRs are gloomily high, UW’s rates are impressively low. As the Department is in the process of switching to a more accurate three-year CDR measure, this year’s report includes both the FY 2010…
September 27, 2012
Just 43 Percent of College-Bound Seniors College Ready, College Board Finds
On Monday, the College Board released a report indicating that only 43 percent of the 1.66 million college-bound seniors taking the SAT in 2012 are “college ready,” as defined by achieving a score of 1550 or more on the SAT. The College Board claims a student scoring 1550 or higher on the SAT has a…
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