21st Century Scholar

Make believe that we don’t have a higher education system in this country, but that we have just decided that we should create one.  Do you think we’d create the crazy patchwork quilt that we’ve got today?  I hope not.  Here are some topics I’d like us to consider. Mastery of knowledge Let’s eliminate ‘terms’ [...]

by Bill Tierney In the seemingly interminable debate about health care, much ado is made about “the public option.”  Liberals believe that such an option will help drive costs down, and that it will enable individuals who otherwise might be denied health care to get it from the government.  Conservatives believe that such an option [...]

There is a bill working its way through the California legislature that will regulate for-profit colleges and universities.  The topic of regulation always gets people angry.  Conservatives look at government control as putting a strangle-hold on free enterprise.  The other side looks at deregulation as a consumer’s nightmare – everyone is at risk.  Who can [...]

We live in a non-stop news cycle and colleges do not get to opt out.  Every scandal at a college or university may not make national news, but it will be reported by someone, somewhere.  The president of Balmoral State who is arrested for DUI may not find himself on the Today Show, but I’ll [...]

Tuition Blues Persuaded by neoconservative rhetoric to the effect that the major benefits (and profits) of a college education accrue to the graduates themselves, and struggling under diminishing federal support for social services and falling revenues, many state legislatures uncapped tuition rates, or at least let them rise more swiftly than they had in five [...]

Mapping demand and price in higher education – what’s missing from this picture?  Joseph Cronin and Howard Horton recently joined the chorus of the concerned about the high prices charged at some of today’s more selective institutions and raise the metaphor of a potentially bursting tuition bubble.  Indeed, the full retail prices of some of [...]