By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Consumer Information Report”
Author: National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators’ Consumer Information Task Force
Summary: A nine-member panel was convened by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators to study federal requirements for consumer-information disclosure. The panel recommended 15 improvements in federal disclosure rules to “streamline both the content and delivery of those requirements.” More...
By Robert Wagner - EvoLLLution. In a competitive marketplace, the real winners are the consumers. Innovations in pricing models are meant to demonstrate value to the consumer while also differentiating competitive deals. Strategies such as “bundling” or “half-off” or even “first one free” are retail promotion tools to attract potential customers by considering how they can “save” by purchasing certain products. More...
By David Hofmeister - EvoLLLution. What’s your brand in the adult education market? Is it branded as part of the overall institution? Is it segmented within the institution? Does it stand alone? What does the branding convey? Does it offer flexible scheduling, accelerated classes, online and on-ground classes and other adult-friendly attributes? More...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Perils in the Provision of Trust Goods: Consumer Protection and the Public Interest in Higher Education”
Author: Robert M. Shireman, executive director of California Competes
Organization: Center for American Progress
Summary: Frequent investor pressures prompt for-profit colleges to compromise student and public needs in order to maximize profits. And while all colleges seek revenue, nonprofit institutions are overseen by boards without an ownership interest. More...
By Nate Kreuter. When I was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, the university built a posh outdoor swimming pool next to the campus’s main recreational facility. But it wasn’t a lap pool or an Olympic-style pool. It wasn’t built primarily for exercise. It was a lounging pool, with serpentine borders, tons of deck chairs, shady palms, and a snack bar. It looked in every way like something that you might see at a fancy resort, minus the booze. That pool, built purely for the purposes of coeducational sunning and fraternizing, represents an investment that UT-Austin made into the social experiences of students, arguably a distant remove from the university’s academic mission. Read more...
By . Sometimes I feel as though I’ve been swindled. Not by anyone in particular but by an institution that is relentlessly trying to prop itself up despite its progressive decline. That institution is the academy – once a public good devoted to the free production of critical knowledge, it has become in the last few decades a corporatized factory for the production of capitalist consumers and wage slaves. More than that, it has become itself a product for consumption where what’s for sale is the facsimile of intellectual freedom and integrity. Like so many extravagant island resorts, universities offer manicured landscapes, leisure activities, freedom from the wage clock – all for a price and all safely sectioned off from the harsh realities outside. But the price is going up, and students – the consumers of this image world that they are being sold – are taking on increasing amounts of debt to pay it. What’s more, they’re told this is “good debt” – like buying a house, right? Remember when owning a home was the “American Dream” – a symbol of financial security? Now that bubble has burst – the academic bubble, I believe, is not far behind it. More...
By Rebecca Ratcliffe. Last week it was reported that Cambridge University had spent almost £3m on wine in one year. Is it a wise use of funds?
Last week it was reported that Cambridge University had spent almost £3m on wine in one year. Is it a wise use of funds?
Prof Peter Strike, vice-chancellor, University of Cumbria
Oxford and Cambridge live in a slightly different part of the higher education world. More...
By Carl Straumsheim. The education software giant Blackboard delivered an endorsement of the "consumerization" of higher education on Wednesday, acquiring MyEdu, an Austin, Texas-based company that combines data, e-portfolios and recruitment tools to guide students through college and into the work force. The acquisition is small in scale but significant in scope, as it signals the direction in which president and CEO Jay Bhatt, who joined the Blackboard in 2013, intends to steer the billion-dollar company. Read more...
By Sonia Sodha. The OFT need to look at how to promote more competition in the market and protect students from poor standards, says Sonia Sodha.
With university fees now almost triple what they were two years ago, and the cap on student numbers to be lifted next year, it’s more important than ever that universities are providing undergraduates with a quality academic experience. More...
By Marian Wang. Colleges offer high sticker prices but plentiful grants and scholarships to give customers the feeling of a discount. You know all those seemingly great sales during the holidays? It turns out, they are often a "carefully engineered illusion." A recent piece in the Wall Street Journal defines what it calls "retail theater," noting that often the discounts being offered to bargain-conscious consumers are carefully planned out by retailers from the start. More...
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