For decades, the Educational Policy Institute and SwailLandis has worked with schools, colleges, and universities to help these organizations increase student persistence and graduation rates. We’d like to say that we have been very successful in helping these places, but it is difficult to state because the actual change tends to happen long after our consulting and evaluation contracts have expired… Continue reading Things Aren’t Always as They Seem
By Watson Scott Swail, President & Senior Scholar, Educational Policy Institute This is an opinion piece I wrote for the Chronicle Review and published on January 23, 2004. I stumbled upon it the other day and thought it was worth a repost on The Swail Letter. Let me know if you agree, disagree, and whether the same holds true 13 years later. As Congress tackles the reauthorization … Continue reading Legislation to Improve Graduation Rates Could Have the Opposite Effect
My point in this Swail Letter is that I don’t generally buy what business is selling. Business says they want these attributes in their young workers, but their hiring practices illustrate a very different practice. Continue reading Blame Business
By Watson Scott Swail, Ed.D. A new publication Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report illustrates that the most popular undergraduate programs remain in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and journalism. However, they are also the least employed of college graduates. The best employed are the STEM graduates: those in engineering, manufacturing, and construction. They are employed at a rate of 88 percent compared … Continue reading Pushing Tin
by Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute According to a new study to be released in January of next year, the proportion of high school seniors earning an A average in school is increasing even as their SAT score is decreasing. One may suspect that teachers are passing on higher grades to students due to a variety of issues, not the least … Continue reading The Challenges of Grade Inflation
The Swail Letter on Higher Education 