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February 28, 2013

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7:45 PM | Los Angeles 2013: The Most Expensive School Board Election in History

Given the abysmally low success rate of certain minority groups in Los Angeles public schools, the race for school board might be very important. But $3.2 million important? The Los Angeles Times reports that the Los Angeles School Board election is now the most expensive school board election in American history. As the paper explains: A coalition of local organizations, wealthy donors and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have decided that the election is all about keeping [school […]

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6:21 PM | For-profit Colleges Announce New Plan to Cease Screwing Veterans

America’s for-profit colleges have long been accused of exploiting veterans and troops by enthusiastically enrolling them in low-quality programs to take advantage of the education and training money they have to spend. Some 40 percent of the federal tuition money for active-duty military personnel pays for for-profit online colleges. And about 600,000 veterans spent around $9 billion in federal money last year for education, though no one knows their completion rate. Iowa Senator […]

February 27, 2013

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7:42 PM | College Students and The Sequester

The terms of the sequester, the budget cuts that go into effect on March 1 if Congress fails to reach a budget deal, may not be severe enough to force actual compromise in Washington, but the cuts will be noticeable, particularly for colleges. Tyler Kingkade reports that colleges in every state in America will be hurt: Several critical revenue streams for universities are at risk: The National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Humanities are […]

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7:26 PM | Women in the Red

Student loan debt is a huge problem for college students. The total debt, now more than $1 trillion (surpassing credit card debt) impacts Americans’ ability to take certain jobs, buy houses, get married, and have children. But it turns out that women have more debt than men. According to a piece at U.S. News & World Report: Researchers gathered information about student loans and graduation rates, and then organized the results by gender. In doing so, they found that women were more […]

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6:50 PM | Why So Few Black Students Graduate From College

High school graduation may be up, but we still have a long way to go it appears. That’s according to a new report released by the Education Trust. As the Los Angeles Times explained: African American public school students in Los Angeles County demonstrate significant learning gaps by second grade; those gaps widen with age and lead to the highest school dropout rate among all races, according to a report released Monday. Black students are far less likely to take the rigorous college […]

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5:31 PM | Does the UK need to spend more on basic research? | Kieron Flanagan

Recent interventions by high-profile scientists have reignited the debate about whether we spend enough on fundamental research in the UK. Such debates frequently generate more heat than light and may be obscuring the bigger pictureMy University of Manchester colleague (and Nobel laureate) Andre Geim argues (most recently in this piece) that our societies are on the brink of a crisis in the delivery system for new knowledge which, if not averted, will lead to a major technological slowdown. In […]

February 26, 2013

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7:58 PM | Chicago State University President Steps Down

Wayne Watson (right), president of the troubled Chicago State University, will leave his position. Chicago State has long been plagued by low graduation rates, financial mismanagement, and fights between faculty and administration. Chicago State hired Watson, the former president of the City Colleges of Chicago, in 2009 because, as the school’s board chairman explained, Watson "has at least the credentials and a record of honesty and integrity and professionalism. We have come to an […]

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7:15 PM | Private Student Loans Are A Tiny Part of the Debt Problem

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the newly-created agency in charge of protecting the interest of consumers and promoting fair business practices, announced last week that it will begin to investigate private students loans, which represent $150 billion worth of student debt. It’s probably about time to start thinking about refinancing options for private loans, but this effort is unlikely to have much impact on the real student debt problem. According to the CFPB: Today, the […]

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6:41 PM | All Taxpayer-funded Research Will Now Be Freely Available

In what appears to be sort of acknowledgement of the life of Aaron Swartz (right), the American computer programmer and Internet activist who committed suicide last month while facing legal charges related his downloading of academic journal articles from JSTOR, the White House announced yesterday from now on all taxpayer-funded research will be available to the public within one year of publication. According to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy: Director John […]

February 25, 2013

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4:37 PM | United States on Track to Graduate 90 Percent of High School Students By 2020

According to a report released today by America's Promise Alliance, an advocacy group founded by Colin and Alma Powell, there’s a least one education trend that’s positive. The high school graduation is on the rise. The paper indicates that, For the first time the U.S. is on track to meet the national Grad Nation goal of a 90 percent high school graduation rate by the class of 2020. The national high school graduation rate increased 6.5 percentage points since 2001 with an average […]

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4:04 PM | Big Data and Field Experiments: The Case of NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress

The NY Times has published a neat article about NYU’s new urban “Big Data” center. The gist of the article is that urban quality of life can be improved by the quants crunching the data on things such as the spatial and temporal distribution of 311 Noise calls in NYC. The initiative at N.Y.U. is part of a broader trend: the global drive to apply modern sensor, computing and data-sifting technologies to urban environments, in what has become known as “smart city” […]

February 22, 2013

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7:34 PM | The Real War on Higher Education

I’ve written before about rhetoric of some conservative politicians with regard to college. Rick Santorum has said that he believes “the left” uses universities to indoctrinate young people for the purpose of “holding and maintaining power.” North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory has railed about the uselessness of the humanities and threatened to eliminate liberal arts courses from public universities. But what if education innovation can also be a means to destroy […]

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5:42 PM | Ted Cruz Has a List of “Communists”

Ted Cruz, the junior United States Senator from Texas, is very concerned about the state of American academia. His concern is a little odd, though. Jane Mayer at the New Yorker writes, in reference to Cruz’s insinuation that Sen. Chuck Hagel may have collected speaking fees from North Korea, that Cruz also has some problems with Harvard Law School: Two and a half years ago, Cruz gave a stem-winder of a speech at a Fourth of July weekend political rally in Austin, Texas, in which he […]

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3:59 PM | Politics Everywhere: Drinking in State College, PA, on St. Patrick’s Day

Nearly three dozen downtown bars, restaurants and beer shops have agreed to halt alcohol sales to counter an early St. Patrick’s Day celebration created by Penn State students, the most aggressive effort yet to curb drinking for the unofficial holiday known as State Patty’s Day. In exchange, each business will receive a $5,000 subsidy to help account for lost revenue. A committee composed of university and community leaders announced the plan Tuesday and listed 34 businesses that […]

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10:00 AM | What's the point of the Breakthrough science prize? | Jack Stilgoe

It's not clear if Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner's award will add to scientific discovery or just Silicon Valley's egoSergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg have joined forces with venture capitalist Yuri Milner to announce a new "Breakthrough prize in the life sciences". What does this mean for the science community?Well, science is already pretty well served for prizes. If not a Nobel, scientists might dream of receiving one of the less prestigious but similarly lucrative Lasker or […]

February 21, 2013

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8:18 PM | Florida College Names Stadium After Prison Company

Florida Atlantic University, like so many other collegiate institutions, agreed to name its football stadium for a company. It’s no ordinary company specializing in financial services or snack foods or something, however. The new corporate sponsor is the GEO Group, which runs private prisons. According to a piece in the New York Times: The GEO Group, which is based in Boca Raton, secured the naming rights with a $6 million gift, paid out over 12 years through its charitable arm, the […]

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6:13 PM | Heisman Trophy Takes All Online Courses

Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o may have had a fake girlfriend, but at least he was a real college student. The winner of the 2012 Heisman Trophy, however, Texas A & M’s Johnny Manziel (right), is taking no courses on campus this semester. The Star-Telegram reports that: “Regardless of how long I’m at A&M … I’m going to enjoy the time that I do have and go out and try to win every game,” Manziel said during a Monday news conference at the Fort Worth […]

February 20, 2013

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12:40 PM | Of geology and shelf-stacking | Nic Bilham

Iain Duncan Smith thinks he knows who keeps our supermarkets running – but does he know what scientists really do?Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, was interviewed on the Andrew Marr Show last Sunday about the government's back-to-work scheme. Referring to the case of Cait Reilly, a geology graduate who had challenged the government over the legality of her work placement at Poundland, Duncan Smith said: "There is a group of people out there who think they are too […]

February 19, 2013

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11:53 PM | Why Diversity Matters

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10:17 PM | No One Really Reads Academic Papers

Academics do a lot of research. The pressure to perform research in order to earn tenure generates, by some estimates, about 1.5 million new articles a year. Some scholars have critiqued the quality of this research, pointing out that only 45 percent of the articles published in top journals are cited within the first five years after publication, but scholars are supposed to build on existing knowledge and use that to develop their own thinking.

February 18, 2013

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10:21 PM | How Much Do College Dropouts Cost?

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5:30 PM | College Essays Make Kids Stupid and Selfish

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February 15, 2013

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6:54 PM | Business Professor: Don’t Study Business

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5:31 PM | The Curve

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February 14, 2013

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4:57 PM | Obama’s Underwhelming Ideas for College Reform

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4:53 PM | Doctors in the House

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3:53 PM | Fear of flying and the hazards of communicating risk | Andy Stirling

When it comes to fear of flying, it's the idea that risk should be treated purely as a number which is irrationalVery few risk experts display the same combination of peerless authority and engaging clarity achieved by Professor David Spiegelhalter, Winston Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University. A particular virtue is Spiegelhalter's unusual openness about the limits to risk assessment. This kind of humility is sometimes difficult for experts who have invested so […]

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7:00 AM | Ed Davey is strong on science, not so strong on the causes of science

Climate change is 'our moonshot' but we need to do better than divisive Cold War rhetoricEd Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, gave a speech at the Royal Society on Tuesday. You can read the full transcript here. With lines like "it is the science that drives policy" and a call to hear "loud and clear from experts", there's a lot in this to please the science lobby. As Carbon Brief quipped, "Ed Davey hasn't actually said anything yet, but the PR is headlined: IRREFUTABLE […]

February 13, 2013

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7:51 PM | Could Universal Preschool Work?

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3:03 PM | More College Grads Equals Faster Economic Growth

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