Daily reCCAP: 02/15/12

Economist Valentines

Kevin Carey

Some students, disproportionately from privileged backgrounds, matriculate well prepared for college. They are given challenging work to do and respond by learning a substantial amount in four years.

Other students graduate from mediocre or bad high schools and enroll in less-selective colleges that don't challenge them academically. They learn little. Some graduate anyway, if they're able to manage the bureaucratic necessities of earning a degree.

The central problem in American higher education today is that most of the people running things in politics, business, and academe come from the first group, but most of the actual students enrolled in college are in the second group. The former cannot see the latter, because they are blinded by their own experience. And so they think the problems of the many don't exist.

tenured academics has worked a great scam.  They've managed to monetize peoples' affection for regio

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nal football teams, and their desire for a work credential, and then somehow diverted that money into paying academics to work on whatever they want, for the rest of their lives, without any oversight by the football fans or the employers…

we provide a five-year retrospective of what has changed in the aid application process, what has not, and the possibilities for future reform.

Many for-profit institutions that are not Title IV eligible offer programs and certificates that are similar, if not identical, to those given by institutions that are part of Title IV. We find that the Title IV institutions charge tuition that is about 75 percent higher than that charged by comparable institutions whose students cannot apply for federal financial aid. The dollar value of the premium is about equal to the amount of financial aid received by students in eligible institutions, lending credence to the “Bennett hypothesis” that aid-eligible institutions raise tuition to maximize aid.