Adding Important Transparency to Higher Education

By Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International Happy Canada Day and Happy Independence Day everyone, In the late 1990s, I worked for the College Board and co-directed the Trends in Student Aid and Trends in College Pricing reports.  These reports, to this day, provide educators, researchers, and policymakers with a summary of how much college and university is and what available aid, … Continue reading Adding Important Transparency to Higher Education

The Implications of the New Gainful Employment Rule

By Dr. Peter P. Smith, Senior Vice President, Kaplan Higher Education The 6/21/11 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education contains a thoughtful essay by Frank Donahue on the new gainful employment rule. Donahue moves past the “won-lost” argument (i.e. the proprietary sector won) to the meat of the matter: what are the rule’s implications for the rest of higher education? He rightly concludes that, … Continue reading The Implications of the New Gainful Employment Rule

How Honest Should we be to College Students?

By Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International This week at EPI’s International Conference on Student Success (Retention 2011), I attended a session by Tom Mortenson, Senior Scholar at The Pell Institute and editor of Postsecondary Opportunity. Tom looked at the issue of predicted versus actual persistence and graduation rates at US four-year colleges and universities. Interesting stuff. The data launched us … Continue reading How Honest Should we be to College Students?

Understanding Student Departure

By Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International  I write today from Philadelphia, PA and the Student Financial Aid Research Network Conference, a conference I have attended for the past 15 years. This event brings together policy analysts and researchers from across the US (and Canada until the demise of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation) to talk about policy issues and data … Continue reading Understanding Student Departure

The Postsecondary Drive to For-Profit Mentality

By Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International This is the opening paragraph of this morning’s article in The Chronicle of Higher Education: Texas A&M University faculty members who are alarmed by the apparent influence that a conservative think tank is having on their university urged the system’s regents on Thursday to distance themselves from a group that they fear would move … Continue reading The Postsecondary Drive to For-Profit Mentality