Higher Education News

According to an article on cnn.com, some educators and policy makers are shifting their focus from getting students into college to making sure they graduate. Only 54% of students who had entered college in 1997 had graduated 6 years later. As the article notes, those that drop out have often accumulated significant debt.

The author says,

It's known that elite schools have generally higher graduation rates than non-elite schools. But what's less clear is why the graduation rates at seemingly similar colleges vary so much. For instance, the main campuses of Penn State and the University of Minnesota have comparable price tags, student SAT scores, and percentage of students from poor backgrounds. Yet Penn State graduates more than 80 percent of its students, and Minnesota barely half.

(It's always nice to see my alma mater compared favorably to other schools in something other than athletic achievement.) Now that a college degree is becoming almost necessary for a middle-class life, we need to make sure that it's accessible to as many people as possible.

In other academic news, the Associated Press reported this week that 7 college presidents make more than a million dollars a year. On the one hand, this seems like good news, since it shows people are valuing education. Why should college presidents make less than other leaders of large, complex organizations? On the other hand, earning CEO-like pay is just one more way that higher education is becoming bussinessified. More and more university presidents are coming from outside academia; a 2001 study found that 30% of college presidents had never held a faculty position. While it's wonderful to have someone who enjoys fundraising and promoting their institution, I hope that these leaders value the unique nature of universities. I hate it when people apply the business model to education, as if education is a "product" that students "consume." It's so sadly reductive.

Photo by chocobo on flickr.com.