Ordinary Scandalous Student Debt

Ordinary Scandalous Student Debt

A Personal Finance column in today's Los Angeles Times has one of the clearer sagas I've read of how a college student can get caught in a debt trap. The key line: " some students who think they are getting a federal loan find out later that they hold a private loan." They end up paying credit-card style interest on what they had assumed would be federal loans.President-elect...

Different Version of the Same Duncan Story

Different Version of the Same Duncan Story

Also from the Chronicle, but a very different tonehttp://chronicle.com/daily/2008/12/8770n.htmWednesday, December 17, 2008Obama Praises His Education-Secretary Choice for Relying on Data to Improve SchoolsBy PAUL BASKENWashingtonPresident-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday he values his choice for education secretary, Arne Duncan, for his dogged determination to use data to drive...

New Secretary of Education

New Secretary of Education

The Chronicle of Higher Ed reported President-Elect Obama's pick for Education as neutral at best for higher ed. Critics cited in the piece I post below call the nominee, Arne Duncan, a kind of corporate choice. It is true that higher ed's managers are pretty much out of ideas, and cling to myths I've described elsewhere. Here's the not-so-encouraging report, pasted below.Optimism...

Good News Bad News

Good News Bad News

The bad news in higher ed is always the same: some person with great power showing they understand nothing about higher education funding.At a conference sponsored by the Higher Education Government Relations Conference called "Making the Case," the chancellor of Ohio's Board of Regents said that colleges can do more with less today because the Wright Brothers "created their flying...

National Disaster

National Disaster

The best summary of the very serious results of the report, Measuring Up 2008 is in Inside Higher Ed. More on this report soon:The states performed best on preparation and completion, worst on affordability (49 F’s) and learning (all incompletes). Highlights are below:Preparation: 6 A’s (Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont), 18 B’s, 21 C’s, 5 D’s,...

Burn the Funding Model

Burn the Funding Model

Harvard's endowment losses joined other endowment losses in the New York Times today. The endowment lost 22% of its value in the last 4 months, or $8 billion. It could be quite a bit more than that, the article suggests. The breakdown of holdings is incomplete, and it would be amazing if only 11 percent of the endowment has been in private equity, as the article states. Their...