By William Germano. On August 26, 1664, the urban ancestor of the town in which I live changed its name. The English arrived, only four years after the restoration of their own monarchy, and threw out the Dutch. New York was born, sort of. That was 350 years ago. More...
By Geoffrey Pullum. I’d like to add one more point on the topic of my post “Computer Says B-Plus.” My modest suggestion was this: If a computer program trained on essays graded by humans could learn enough about the superficial form of academic prose to reliably assign suitable grades to newly presented essays (where “suitable” means “close to what a qualified human grader would have assigned”), that could put a useful tool in the hands of a diligent student who wanted to get anonymous, private, and patient assessments of essay drafts before handing in the final product. More...
By Ben Yagoda. Certain books are so brilliant in idea and execution that they are deservedly and repeatedly revised, eventually coming to be referred to by the author’s last name long after his or her death. So we now have new versions of the 1743 A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist: Containing the Laws of the Game and Also Some Rules; the 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language; and the 1926 Modern English Usage. We call them Hoyle, Webster’s, and Fowler. More...
By Nick DeSantis. Affirmative-action policies can help motivate underrepresented minority students before they apply to college and, as a result, can help narrow achievement gaps across demographic groups, concludes a report released on Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. More...
By Nick DeSantis. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on Tuesday raided two campuses of Anamarc College as well as the home of the shuttered for-profit institution’s owners, the El Paso Times reported. More...
By Andy Thomason. The University of New England, in Australia, has discontinued its MOOC program, which let students take online classes free but charged them to take examinations and receive online tutoring. “While MOOCs will continue to be offered I am sure by some of the very big providers around the world, it’s not something that a university like UNE would go at alone,” Annabelle Duncan, the university’s vice chancellor, told The Australian Financial Review. More...
By Andy Thomason. The Department of Education on Monday made it easier for members of the armed forces to pay lower interest rates on their federal student loans. Service members who qualify for a cap on their interest rates under the Higher Education Opportunity Act have had to request that the benefit be applied to their loans. But the department’s new guidance directs student-loan servicers to consult a government database and automatically apply the cap for qualifying borrowers. More...
By Andy Thomason. The Department of Education on Monday made it easier for members of the armed forces to pay lower interest rates on their federal student loans. Service members who qualify for a cap on their interest rates under the Higher Education Opportunity Act have had to request that the benefit be applied to their loans. But the department’s new guidance directs student-loan servicers to consult a government database and automatically apply the cap for qualifying borrowers. More...
By Andy Thomason. The U.S. Department of Education on Friday announced it had renegotiated its contracts with federal student-loan servicers, giving them more incentives to keep borrowers from defaulting on their loans. President Obama announced plans to renegotiate the contracts in June, but Friday’s announcement provides more detail. For example, customer-satisfaction surveys will now play a larger role in how the servicers are evaluated, according to a statement from the department. More...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “The Role of State Policy in Promoting College Affordability”
Author: Jennifer A. Delaney, assistant professor of education policy, organization, and leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Publication: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Summary: The federal stimulus law of 2009 had a maintenance-of-effort provision that required states to hold steady the amount they appropriated for public colleges. While that measure worked generally to protect money for the institutions, state lawmakers cut student financial aid by about 12 cents for every dollar they received from the stimulus, according to the report. More...
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