What kinds of jobs would you describe as enviable? Is teaching assistant on your list? Probably not. In the Mississippi Delta communities around Greenville, however, the position of teaching assistant ranks quite high. Miriam Hall, education fellow at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, explains why in this January 2016 article in Slate.  Read it here: Hall, …

Continue reading Not that Delta: Miriam Hall on education aspirations in rural Mississippi

Free tuition in Tennessee, that’s genuinely wonderful. And we don’t mean to be ungrateful or greedy, but is it enough? How do the bills get paid in the meantime? And what about academic preparation? Alana Semuels, staff writer for the Atlantic, explores these questions in her October 2015 report on the Tennessee Promise. Read it …

Continue reading A Big Promise: Alana Semuels on Tennessee’s ambitious tuition program

Student loan debt in the U.S. is at a record high. What’s more, the levels of civic engagement and civic literacy are shockingly low. In this September 2015 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Purdue University law and public policy professor Sheila Suess Kennedy proposes a new federal program that would solve both problems …

Continue reading ‘Tour of duty’: Sheila Suess Kennedy on a bold plan

Essays about the value (or lack thereof) of a college education in today’s world are easy to find. Most of them, however, are written by people whose college years are long behind them. Regardless of their opinions or approaches, these writers often miss the juicy details of day-to-day lived experience. This essay, published on Medium …

Continue reading Don’t drop out: Alex Kern on the value of college life

Is college the best option? That’s a hotly debated topic these days, and in fact, Chapter 16 of your text addresses that very question. Gillian White, senior associate editor of The Atlantic, reports on the results of a new Georgetown University study showing that college “still pays off.” Her article was published in the magazine …

Continue reading It still pays off: Gillian White on the value of a college education

You and your parents sit down at a restaurant, and the server turns out to be your professor. It could be awkward. It could be embarrassing. And it could also lead to some serious thinking and questioning about our attitudes toward different kinds of jobs. Brittany Bronson is a college instructor, waitress, and contributor to …

Continue reading Blue collar, white collar: Brittany Bronson on teaching and waitressing

While most states continue to suffer deep cuts to funding for public higher education, North Dakota and Alaska are increasing their education budgets substantially. Journalist Dan Marcus, who specializes in issues of higher education, examines the reasons for the difference in this article published by the Hechinger Report, an education-related news organization, in November 2014. …

Continue reading Investing in people: Jon Marcus on public higher education funding

College is the time for new experiences; no one would suggest otherwise. But how much importance should colleges place on providing new experiences for incoming freshmen? How valuable is it to room with a stranger? New York Times opinion writer Anna Altman explores these questions and comes to a definitive conclusion in this article from …

Continue reading Rooming with a stranger: Anna Altman on roommate matching

Plenty of data support the financial benefits of a college degree, an argument that’s unlikely to change. Does that mean that the status quo, which favors standard four-year colleges and ever-increasing rates of student debt, is acceptable? Nationally syndicated columnist and former White House policy advisor Michael Gerson argues the urgent need for new policies …

Continue reading Changing course(s): Michael Gerson on the state of U.S. higher education