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
More on the College Bubble: Job Outcomes for College Graduates
By Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International In a follow-up to last week’s commentary, an article in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education reported findings from a Rutgers University study, which shows that recent college graduates are having trouble finding new jobs. The study of 517 students who graduated between 2006 and 2010 found that only 53 percent currently hold a … Continue reading More on the College Bubble: Job Outcomes for College Graduates
The College Bubble
By Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International There is a great article on the Huffington Post this week by Amanda Fairbanks called Peter Thiel’s College Bubble Theory Gains Few Believers. Thiel is one of the founders of PayPal and an investor in Facebook. He argues that higher education is on the bubble, just like housing was, and it will quickly devalue. … Continue reading The College Bubble
The Swail Letter on Higher Education 