Higher Ed Policy
March 5, 2014
President Obama Releases His FY2015 Budget
Yesterday, March 4th, President Obama submitted his fiscal year 2015 budget request to Congress. The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) has published their analysis of the budget as has the Education Policy Program at New America. TICAS states that the President’s proposal “takes important steps towards making college affordable for Americans by reducing the need to…
March 3, 2014
“Pay It Forward” Is really “Pay It Yourself and Pay More Than Ever”
On Thursday, The Equity Line, a blog by The Education Trust, posted a critique of Pay It Forward (PIF) that discusses some of PIF’s major flaws. As a reminder, under PIF, instead of paying tuition and fees upfront, students would pay back a certain percent of their adjusted gross income for 25 years. For more…
January 21, 2014
News Roundup on “Increasing College Opportunity” Initiative
As you may have heard, President Obama recently announced his “Increasing College Opportunity for Low-Income Students” initiative, which aims to help more low-income and underrepresented minority students attend and complete college. On January 16th, the White House hosted a summit of the more than 100 colleges, universities, nonprofits, and foundations that made commitments to increase…
January 7, 2014
Trend Towards Flat Budgets, Performance-Based Funding in Higher Education
After years of budget cuts, most higher education lobbyists across the country expect flat or slightly increased funding for higher education during upcoming state legislative sessions. According to a survey by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, three-quarters of states increased spending on higher education by more than 3 percent in the current…
January 2, 2014
Higher Ed Roundup–Happy New Year!
Now that news sources are back from their holiday hiatus, we have a couple of noteworthy stories to bring you. Both articles highlight the continuing trend toward greater accountability. Florida’s new rules linking tenure with student success are upheld: Last week in Florida, a judge upheld new rules by the State Department of Education that…
November 13, 2013
Gainful Employment Regulations Anger For-Profits, Cheered by Consumer Advocates
Consumer advocates applauded the Department of Education’s second—and substantially more stringent—set of draft regulations for the “gainful employment” rule, released on Friday. They claim the metrics, which apply to vocational programs at for-profit institutions and community colleges, will better measure the program’s loan default and repayment rates. Programs that do not meet the Department of Education’s…
October 17, 2013
California Introduces Two-Tiered Tuition
As of last Thursday, select California community colleges can charge differential tuition for their most popular extension courses. California’s Governor Jerry Brown supported the bill as an “experiment” that would give a limited number of colleges some flexibility to offer more sections of their most popular courses. The system, which has suffered many years of…
Supreme Court Hears Michigan Affirmative Action Case
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to be in favor of upholding a Michigan referendum, known as Proposition 2, which banned the use of affirmative action in the state’s public colleges and universities. The case, Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, is not about whether it is permissible for public colleges to consider…
October 9, 2013
National Nonprofits Critique “Pay It Forward”
In anticipation of last Monday’s “Pay It Forward” working conference in Philadelphia, national education groups and nonprofit organizations released a joint statement opposing the proposal. For more information about PIF, please review our post about Oregon legislation requiring “consideration” of a “Pay It Forward, Pay Back” pilot. A comprehensive brief about the proposal’s UW application is available here.
October 2, 2013
Stagnant SAT Scores, College Readiness Prompt Changes to the SAT
Last week, the College Board released its 2013 Report on College and Career Readiness, which found that the percentage of students who are unprepared for college-level work has remained essentially unchanged for the past five years. According to the College Board, only 43 percent of graduating seniors in 2013 had achieved their “SAT College and…
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