By Kelly Field. The college-ratings plan that the Education Department is releasing on Friday can best be described as incremental.
The plan, the product of more than a year of discussion and debate, is less a proposal than a progress report—an update on metrics the department is considering using in its system. More...

By Katherine Mangan. Quick fixes aren’t enough to boost lagging completion rates, says a new report.
More than a decade of efforts to propel low-income and underserved students through community college have fallen short because states and colleges haven’t made systemwide commitments to strategies like streamlining degree requirements, accelerating remediation, and financially rewarding colleges for raising graduation and persistence rates, according to a report being released on Thursday by Jobs for the Future. More...

Quick fixes aren’t enough to boost lagging completion rates, says a new report

By Katherine Mangan

More than a decade of efforts to propel low-income and underserved students through community college have fallen short because states and colleges haven’t made systemwide commitments to strategies like streamlining degree requirements, accelerating remediation, and financially rewarding colleges for raising graduation and persistence rates, according to a report being released on Thursday by Jobs for the Future.

By David John Marotta and Megan Russell. In 2013, President Obama declared, "We've got a crisis in terms of college affordability and student debt." He recommended his three-part Plan for Making College Affordable, “a better bargain for the middle class."
His three proposals are: pay colleges for students' performances; promote innovation in colleges; and help students manage and make loan payments. More...

By Tyler Silvy. A late injection of $15 million made a Colorado Commission on Higher Education funding formula announcement more palatable to the University of Northern Colorado, which otherwise would have joined a handful of Colorado schools that wouldn’t secure a full 10 percent state funding increase under the new formula’s guidelines. More...

By Matthew T. Lambert. The popular discourse today about higher education is largely negative—college costs too much, students learn too little, jobs are too scarce for the graduates who rack up debt to earn back their investment, and universities change at a pace that can only be measured by geologists...glacial.  On the other hand, technology has enabled more non-traditional students to access a higher education than ever before and more students are graduating with certificates and degrees than at any point in human history.  As Dickens once remarked, it is the best of times and the worst of times. More...