By Matt Reed. This weekend, two thoughtful stories about community college students got unusual play.  Both were about sympathetic students whose studies were in constant tension with the need to make money (and, in one case, with the needs of a young child).  In both cases, you couldn’t help but root for the student, and in both cases, relatively small amounts of money made a terrible difference. Read more...

By Matt Reed. Last year we started a self-paced version of developmental math, in hopes of allowing students who can move faster than the standard developmental class to progress as quickly as their talent and drive will take them. The self-paced option is proving fairly popular, though it’s far too early to render any judgment on its relative success at this point. Read more...

By Matt Reed. Sometimes, ideas come from unlikely corners. Today I saw pieces in the National Review (!) and the Detroit News that bounced off each other in productive ways. Hey, it happens. Andrew Kelly argues in the National Review that we’ll never get college costs under control as long as colleges aren’t meaningfully accountable for the unpayable debt of their graduates. Read more...

By Matt Reed. The Gates Foundation has paid for a report suggesting that colleges could save millions by collapsing “extra” sections, and increasing enrollments in the sections that remain.
What, exactly, do they think we’ve been doing?
On the ground, I can attest that managing section enrollments is a conscious task every single semester. Read more...