Huffington Post Analyzes Executive Pay at For Profit Colleges

See the article for the full graphic, including graduation rates.

In an article titled "For-Profit College Executives Make Much More Than Their Higher Education Counterparts," The Huffington Post offers their analysis of executive pay at for-profit colleges compared to the graduation rates at these schools.  No surprise for anyone who watched College, Inc.:  those in charge of for-profit schools are making a killing while their students are failing to complete their degrees.  And who will be left on the hook for the subprime educations that these schools are selling?  These execs are getting rich, ultimately, at tax payer expense.

Kevin Carey's "Radical Solution" and DIYU

Kevin Carey's "A Radical Solution for America's Worsening College Tuition Bubble" (The New Republic, January 10, 2012) does a great job of laying out the problem of rising college debt in all its numerical dimensions, which anyone interested in the topic will find useful to reference.  His "radical solution" of encouraging more "do it yourself" college education and getting the government involved in sanctioning it is very interesting even if only suggestively presented.  For a more complete presentation of the idea, you might read Anya Kanenetz's DIYU (featured in the video above from late last year).

Restructuring Rutgers?

Probably not many students would be attracted to a report titled Rutgers and Medical Education in New Jersey, but I urge all students to read this report because it has tremendous implications for the future of Rutgers and the value of your future degrees.  After all, Rutgers New Brunswick with a Medical School and, potentially, with no direct association with Camden and Newark, could have a much elevated standing.  We can readily see that this restructuring is designed to strengthen these schools as we enter a new era of national and international competition among higher education institutions.  Let's see how this develops before we analyze it any further.  But I think this is an exciting prospect.

Student Debt vs. Freedom

On the first day of class I talked about the contrast between today's students, who are so over-burdened with debt and work that they have no framework or time to think of freedom, and the student protesters at Berkeley in 1964, whose main concern was not money (since college was so inexpensive and well supported by the State back then) but freedom and civil rights.  It is very easy for students today to envy the students at Berkeley in the 60s, or to deride them as hippies of a bygone era who had nothing better to do than to protest.  But it is a stark lesson in contrasts that should wake us up to the ways that growing student debt is not just a problem for the individuals affected but also a very serious problem for our democracy.  

The evening after our first class I went home to find the latest issue of the AAUP's Academe with an article by Jeffrey Williams titled "Academic Freedom and Indentured Students," which makes an extended comparison between indebted students today and the indentured servants who helped settle this country. It brings home the opposition of debt and freedom in ways I hadn't anticipated.  Anyone interested in the question of debt should read this article, and anyone interested in pursuing this topic should definitely track down other articles by Professor Williams, who has written extensively on the subject.  


After reading that article, pause to listen to Mario Savio's speech on the Sproul Hall steps in 1964.  And ask yourself whether or not students today will rise up to reclaim their freedom in the same way -- or if they just have too much to lose today by doing so.

The Expos Five on "Wake Up Rutgers"

The Expos Five from Expos the Movie on Vimeo.

On Monday, I will appear on "Wake Up Rutgers" on RUtv from 9:00-9:30 am to discuss my film The Expos Five, which is a "required reading" for our class this term.  If you are up that early in the day, you might check it out, if only to tell me how it went.  The Expos Five has been getting some attention of late, and I just noticed that they are re-running an item from last semester on the main Rutgers website titled "Course Taken, Lessons Learned."  RUtv also ran a program last term which you can view on YouTube.






I am glad to promote the film because I made it to reach students, and reaching them requires publicity.  The film has only had 3,200 views, which means I am certainly not reaching all of the 6,000 or so students who take the class each year.  The whole idea of the film is to connect with students "where they live" and show them how the choices they make can have a big impact on their success in the course.  I often tell people that the film is sort of like "Goofus and Gallant Take Freshman Writing," because it shows how attitude and action are everything.  If you want an "A," act like an "A-student," not like the students who struggled.


At the same time that the film has a moral lesson, I think it also serves as an interesting window on the life of freshmen at Rutgers, and in that way is a good companion to our readings by Michael Moffatt and Rebekah Nathan.  I look forward to the discussion.

Back to "College!"

Back to "College!" after a two-year hiatus!  Actually, it has been two years teaching other courses for the Rutgers Writing Program and working on other projects.  I haven't exactly been on sabbatical.  But I am glad to be back to teaching a course about issues affecting higher education, which are the issues that matter to me most and the issues which I find every college student can connect with in some way.  After all, we are all at college (exclam!)   


I am especially looking forward to teaching the course as a "hybrid," meeting only one day each week supplemented by online work.  It will give me a lot of opportunities to try out different technologies, especially Google Docs, Blogger, and Prezi, which will make this a very productive and successful class.  In my Spring 2010 class, students had good experiences with their blogs, and I was pleased to discover that all of those blogs are still standing, ready to offer ideas and models to this year's group of students.