Since the cost of going to college is an important concern for a large segment of voters, the 2016 presidential candidates are all advocating policies aimed at making a college education more affordable. The Democrats want to use government resources to offer more financial aid and lower the interest rates on federally guaranteed student loans. The Republicans,…
Read More
Documents released in a federal lawsuit against Trump University have put presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the defensive. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is now highlighting the fraud that is at the center of the case. In the process, many commentators are identifying the Trump University business model as further indication of the fraudulent activity seen to be endemic…
Read More
College graduates of the new millennium are different than previous generations. Not just because they prefer Snapchat to email and have mountains of school loans, but also because of their choices of where to live. In the past, several factors such as the proportion of a city’s workers who are college educated, job prospects, income levels, and…
Read More
August is here, and many families are preparing their children for the next academic challenge – a college education. By and large, a college degree is viewed as an important credential for gainful employment and professional success. At the same time, college is costly, and college financing strategies are complex. Students and their families use…
Read More
Students are bombarded with an array of competing opportunities during college, all with the promise that each will lead to a better job or higher earnings upon entering the “real world.” One such option is the double major, in which a student earns two bachelor degrees at once, sometimes in entirely different disciplines. But will…
Read More
The unemployment rate has plunged to about the lowest level in half a century. Yet at least one group of Americans is being left behind: men who didn’t go to college. Just 78 percent of men aged 25-54 who never went to college were employed in 2016, the latest year for which data are available in the American…
Read More
Should college majors be a thing of the past? That idea received a fresh airing when author Jeffrey Selingo suggested that it’s “time to end college majors as we know them.” As a researcher who studies higher education, I concede that something about the way colleges and universities educate students in the United States needs to…
Read More
In a 2009 speech, President Barack Obama proclaimed that by 2020, the United States will “once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” As we near 2020, it is worth asking how close are we to reaching that lofty goal and what have been the results of focusing so intently on college graduation…
Read More
The rising amount of student loan debt can pose serious challenges for individual borrowers. For that reason, colleges and universities and even the federal government have been pursuing solutions to alleviate the burden. But what are the best ways to go about student debt relief? Who should qualify? And what practical effect will debt relief…
Read More
Students who are the first in their family to attend college tend to see it as a means to improve their personal lives and as an opportunity for social mobility. That contrasts with the main message students get from policymakers and universities that largely emphasize career growth. This is the main finding from interviews we conducted with…
Read More