By Rodolfo F. Acuna. For-profit colleges are not the answer to the rising cost of higher education. This increase is having a disastrous impact on many poor and middle income Americans, and it's disastrous for Mexican-American and other Latino communities. Over time, this trend will destroy all hope for millions of young people. Low-income students made up half of all the students in for-profit colleges, with minorities making up 37 percent of that population. Read more...

By Ed Finkel. Pearson Education President Dave Daniels bristles when he hears the word “outsourcing” used to describe contracts colleges and universities sign with outside vendors to develop online curriculum.
“The word ‘outsource’ to me is real pejorative,” Daniels says. “It sounds like the school is saying, ‘Here, take it and bring it back to us.’ When it really is a collaboration. People think there’s this big, bad for-profit giant coming and taking over.”
Pearson has helped to develop everything from a single professor’s course to entire online programs at 60 or 70 universities, Daniels says. Read more...

By Paul Campos. If you want a glimpse into what has gone wrong with higher education in America, look no further than the brilliant career of E. Gordon Gee, who as of July 1st will be the ex-president of the Ohio State University (and of Brown and Vanderbilt, as well as the flagship public universities of Colorado and West Virginia). If he had been born at another time, Gee might have sold patent medicines or swampy real estate or a new political party. Instead, he spent the last three decades selling the ever-bigger business of American higher ed. Read more...

By Lauren Villagran. Mexicans aspiring to middle-class status increasingly see university education as a must. Yet an over-saturated public university system accepts just a fraction of applicants, and many aspirants lack the means to pay for private college. That’s where FINAE, an institution specializing in financing higher education, comes in.
In a credit market for higher education still in its infancy, FINAE is serving a population that traditional banks have mostly ignored: students who are the first in their family to attend college, whose families fall into a bracket with middle-class aspirations, if not income. Parents think about education like an inheritance, says Celia Guerra, director of financial aid at Mexico’s private Universidad Panamericana, which facilitates FINAE credits. She says parents tell her: “Since I don’t have money, all I can leave my children is an education so that they can get ahead on their own.”
Francisco Vizcaya, a former executive of Spain’s Santander bank in Mexico, saw opportunity in this underserved niche and founded FINAE in 2008. The institution has financed the education of more than 4,000 students since then and spawned competitors, as well. Read more...

In 2012 the Brazilian economy grew to become the sixth largest in the world, overtaking Great Britain. With a rising middle class, flourishing commodities sector, and huge offshore oil deposits, the country seems poised to continue its upward trajectory. The state of higher education, however, may be holding it back.
Brazil lags behind in higher education, with only 17% of Brazilians aged 18-24 enrolled in a university degree program or having obtained a diploma. Brazilians, on average, receive only 7.3 years of schooling, according to government statistics, and less than half of workers have finished high school. In 2009 the OECD ranked Brazil 53rd out of 65 countries in math and literacy skills.
The number of low-skilled jobs available is shrinking in Brazil’s changing economy, and the need for highly skilled professionals, especially engineers, is growing. Often there are not enough qualified candidates to fill the skilled positions, and this scarcity is already having an impact on businesses. Read more...