By Matt Reed. The “policy wonk” level on this post is turned up to 11. You’ve been warned.
If you haven’t seen Amy Laitinen’s excellent piece on the Education Department’s failure to engage with its own sanctioned experiments with competency-based education, check it out. More...

By Matt Reed. I’ve worked at several different colleges now, and at every single one, I’ve heard the same discussion. It goes like this:
“Why don’t students use their college-provided email?”
“Maybe if we forced them to, like by making important things available only that way…”
“But that could impact enrollment and retention.”
“Can’t they set their emails to forward to whatever address they actually use?”
“Yes, but they don’t.”
“Maybe if we texted them…”
For a while, many students didn’t have internet access outside of class. More...

By Matt Reed. Anyone remember HillaryCare? 
Back in the 90’s, Hillary Clinton was put in charge of developing a proposal for a national health care system. She and her group came up with a hideously complicated proposal that went exactly nowhere, and that delayed progress by twenty years. More...

By Matt Reed. Greetings from New Jersey! Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog...
Is a college degree a public good or a private good? I’m starting to think the terms of the question are wrong. More...