By Kevin Carey. Four years ago, the sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa dropped a bomb on American higher education. Their groundbreaking book, “Academically Adrift,” found that many students experience “limited or no learning” in college. Today, they released a follow-up study, tracking the same students for two years after graduation, into the workplace, adult relationships and civic life. The results suggest that recent college graduates who are struggling to start careers are being hamstrung by their lack of learning. More...

By Alexandra Bosanac. Students often fail to account for post-secondary costs beyond tuition — researcher. Post-secondary students grossly underestimate the cost of school, not to mention how much support they’ll need from their parents, a new survey shows.
The online poll, conducted in July for CIBC, found that 67 per cent of parents were willing to pay for two-thirds of their children’s post-secondary education while, on average, their kids believed their parents were footing only a third of the bill. More...

The cost of a college education in Virginia is going up … again.
According to the State Council of Higher Education, undergraduates at the state’s public four-year universities will pay 5.2 percent more in tuition and mandatory fees in 2015 than they did a year ago. This year’s increase is up from 4.3 percent last year and 4.1 in the 2012-2013 academic year. Between 2008 and 2012, state tuition increases averaged 8.4 percent, with a high-water mark of 10.6 percent in 2011. More...

HEFCE welcomes the new streamlined guidance for the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) published by the TRAC Development Group (TDG). This will apply for reporting from the academic year 2014-15 onwards.
See the new TRAC Guidance. More...

By Christopher Flavelle. To judge by this summer's banner policy proposals, the most important question for higher-education reform right now is giving students easier access to loans. But evidence from Canada suggests those changes won't address the greater need: Getting more kids from poor families into college, the key to moving up in an increasingly unequal society. In research published last year, a team of American and Canadian economists compared the connection between family income and college or university attendance in the two countries. More...