Bloom's Sixth

American higher education has taken a beating over the last 40-plus years. Many of those blows came from the outside. Many others were self-inflicted. I won’t rehash those here, other than to say that higher education has done a poor job of fighting back. Much of the time, it has seen itself as above the fray. Its arrogance not only blinded it to its own shortcomings but let critics paint an unflattering portrait that has lingered in the minds of millions of Americans. A board at the AAC&U meeting asked participants to share their thoughts about higher education. The theme of the…

By Doug Ward If you’ve noticed that your students still don’t have required course materials, you have lots of company. That’s because more students are delaying purchase of course materials, if they buy them at all, and paying more attention to price when making decisions, according to a report by the National Association of College Stores. That’s not surprising, as students have said for several…

By Doug Ward Rajiv Jhangiani makes a case for free and open course materials in very personal terms. As a student at the University of British Columbia, he and his cash-strapped roommates fashioned “pretend furniture” from sheet-covered cardboard boxes. When his roommates wanted to add a second phone line for dedicated dial-up Internet access, Jhangiani couldn’t afford the extra $8 a month. His grandfather, who had taken in Jhangiani in Bombay after his father died and his family lost their home, was paying for his schooling. There was no room for frivolous expenses. Rajiv Jhangiani…

The Kansas Legislature and governor often treat colleges and universities like deadbeat relatives they wish would just go away rather than partners in navigating the future. That wasn’t always the case, but budget decisions over the past 15 years show waning support for higher education. Inflation-adjusted state dollars spent by the six Kansas Regents universities have fallen 22.2 percent since the 2002 fiscal year. State money for universities peaked that year at an inflation-adjusted amount…

Financing public higher education has grown increasingly challenging, with state funding for research universities declining by an average of 28 percent since 2003. What were once state-supported institutions have in many cases become quasi-private institutions to which states provide some money but still want full control. To shore up their budgets, state colleges and universities have increased the proportion of out-of-state and international…

No one disputes that college tuition has risen substantially over the past 20 years. Ask why, though, and you’ll get vastly different answers. Writing in The New York Times, Paul Campos, a professor at the University of Colorado, dismisses the idea that declining state subsidies have led to rising tuition. Instead, he writes, “the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education.” Vox…