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Roughly 9 percent of the $511 billion spent in 2011 in the United States on higher education went to financing interest payments or to corporate profits, according to a new analysis from the Center for Culture, Organizations and Politics at the University of California at Berkeley. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) commissioned the report, which found that $45 billion in higher education spending that year was for interest on individual student loan debt or on colleges' borrowing, or went to profits made by for-profit college companies. Read more...

By Clifford Adelman. Forty years ago, I was assigned to teach “Open Enrollment English” at the City College of the City University of New York.  The course was classified as remedial, and credits were non-additive. Walking sprightly and empty-headed into the class, I found one-third of them were off the boat from Hong Kong, one-third off the boat from San Juan, and most of the other third off boats from Palermo, Porto and Gdansk (remember: this was 1970). The first writing assignment produced three different versions of English, and I had no idea where they came from -- or how. Read more...

By Jorge Klor de Alva. The debate on the Department of Education’s proposed “Gainful Employment” rule has fixed attention on the failure by both sides to resolve one of the nation’s most important problems: How to effectively serve the education needs of America’s new traditional students. Read more...

By Gloria Cordes Larson. There has been extensive hand-wringing about what can be done to help young graduates succeed in today’s tough labor market – especially in the spring, as high school seniors decide on their college offers, and college seniors prepare to graduate and face the world. Unemployment and underemployment rates among recent college graduates in the United States – largely a result of the recession’s lingering damage – are too high. Read more...

By Josephine Potuto. The collegiate athletic model is under attack. A Greek chorus chants the refrain: college athletics are professional athletics; college athletics are divorced from campus life; college athletes are students in name only.  Second verse same as the first. Read more...

By Patricia McGuire. This year should be the one when higher education at last comes to our collective senses about celebrity commencement speakers. The bread-and-circuses spectacle that commencement has become on too many campuses demeans the true purpose of the ceremony. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Princeton University Press hopes to molt from a publisher of print into an organization with a wide variety of ebooks and apps. One such offering, due out this summer is BirdGenie -- Shazam for birds. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. To the many professors who say that student course evaluation data play too big a role in promotion and tenure decisions, a new study might come as both good news and bad. On the one hand, faculty evaluations seem to be getting more holistic, with deans gathering data from an increasing number of sources to assess professor performance. On the other hand, student evaluation results are playing a role in promotion and tenure decisions at more and more colleges. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. The Obama administration is now free to move ahead with plans to more tightly regulate campus debit cards and require more aggressive state oversight of online education programs after a federal panel on Tuesday failed to reach agreement on those issues. Read more...

By Doug Lederman. Let's stipulate up front that Bob Shireman is anything but an objective observer of for-profit higher education. For much of President Obama's first term, he made life a living hell for colleges in the sector through his aggressive pursuit of new regulations designed to ensure they were preparing their graduates for "gainful employment." Read more...