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By Jason Delisle. A New America analysis of recently available Department of Education data reveals that much of America’s student debt problem may be a result of expensive graduate and professional degrees—not unaffordable undergraduate educations. In fact, around 40 percent of recent federal loan disbursements are for graduate student debt, suggesting that a large chunk of the ubiquitous “$1 trillion in outstanding federal student debt” number is, in fact, graduate debt.
New America’s report, The Graduate Student Debt Review, suggests that debt for graduate students in a range of master’s and professional degree programs accounts for some of the most dramatic increases in student borrowing between 2004 and 2012. More...

GaucheBy Cathie Gandel. From full master's degrees to professional certificates, online classes offer a wide variety of styles and subjects. While distance learning is hardly new, technology has now made it possible – and attractive – for hundreds of highly regarded U.S. institutions to offer their postgraduate degrees to students around the world. While some doctoral programs are being offered online – usually in professional fields like health sciences – the real growth in online graduate education has been in master’s degrees, says Debra Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the improvement and advancement of graduate education. More...

By Paul Stoller. In recent months waves of ignorant criticism have flooded the airwaves with a great deal of blather about the nature of higher education at public universities and colleges. Consider the case of Ohio State Representative Andrew Brenner (R) who recently suggested that public education is socialism. Other such critics have said that our colleges are much like indoctrination campus that steer our young people away from "family" values and "free market" ideology. Taking their cue from the more neoliberal wing of conservative thought, a growing group of state legislators have used the rationale of "living within our means" to cut funding for public universities and colleges. Feeling the squeeze, public universities and colleges have trimmed "unproductive" programs like philosophy, music and foreign languages, and have replaced expensive retiring professors with inexpensive temporary instructors. In some cases administrators have been compelled to retrench tenured faculty and eliminate academic departments. This sad litany of events has provoked much lamentation from a whole range of scholars including Noam Chomsky who believes that the privatization of our public universities will soon undermine the foundation of public education. More...

By Walt Hickey. Payscale, a company that tracks salaries in the U.S., is out with its annual report on collegiate return on investment. (Payscale was kind enough to send us an early copy of the data, available here.)
The schools that did the best weren’t a huge surprise. Topping the list is Harvey Mudd College, a leading engineering school. The remaining institutions in the top 10 are elite colleges with expansive alumni networks (Harvard, Princeton) and top-notch technical schools (MIT, Caltech). More...