Category Archives: Opinion

RIT President on Deficiencies of College Rankings

Bill Destler, president of Rochester Institute of Technology, recently posted on the Huff Post College Page that college rankings are universally deficient because of their focus on “inputs” such as SAT scores and high school gpa’s.  He might well have … Continue reading

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Risk or Predictability: UT System Fixed Tuition Proposal Is No Guarantee

Despite the failure of fixed tuition plans in Georgia and Michigan, and the dubious results of similar efforts in Illinois, the University of Texas System Board of Regents is following the wishes of Gov. Rick Perry and ordering all UT … Continue reading

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Decline of the Residential College Experience: A Risk to ‘Emerging Adulthood’?

Amid rising college costs and sharply reduced state funding, many actual and would-be reformers view the dramatic expansion of online instruction as the best way to save money and improve access to higher education.  While online classes are a great … Continue reading

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Berkeley Chancellor to Lead National Effort on Behalf of Public Universities

Our thanks to Larry Gordon of the LA Times for the story reprinted below about a new national effort to preserve and strengthen the nation’s public universities, to be led by outgoing UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. By way of preface, … Continue reading

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Florida History Faculty Fights to Sustain Liberal Arts

Note: This article by our editor, John Willingham, was originally published by the History News Network on December 21. In Florida, a task force commissioned by Gov. Rick Scott has proposed lower tuition rates for STEM majors, allegedly in the … Continue reading

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Another New Twist at U.S. News: A Nod to Public University Value

Recently we wrote that the U.S. News ranking methodology and a new way of analyzing academic reputation have an overall negative impact on public universities.  Today, however, another initiative by the magazine will at least show how some public universities … Continue reading

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Is It Time for Public Universities to Say Goodbye to U.S. News?

Dont’ be surprised if you hear in the near future that UC Berkeley, the University of Virginia, Stanford, MIT, and Cornell are “underperforming” universities when it comes to living up to their academic reputations. While there are some private schools … Continue reading

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Are Florida’s Leaders Inviting Another Catastrophe–This Time in Higher Ed?

Florida, in the news once again for its election woes, is also joining Texas and Virginia in the race to see how much havoc meddling university board members can create in the name of “reform.” In Florida, the most controversial … Continue reading

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An Alternative List of 2013 U.S. News College Rankings

In an earlier post, we offered an adjusted list of the U.S. News rankings for 2012, after trying to filter out statistically some of the distortions in the rankings that result from an over-emphasis on financial factors. For the adjusted … Continue reading

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New Forbes College Rankings: A Little Kinder to Publics

The annual Forbes best college rankings have not been friendly to public colleges, but this year, probably because of changes in methodology, the rankings include five public institutions among the top 50 colleges, up from only two in last year’s … Continue reading

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