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By Glenn Harlan Reynolds. UNC controversies show that college isn't always worth the price tag.
Everyone should go to college, we're frequently told. But what if we had a college, and nobody came? And still got credit anyway.
The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill might not have gotten quite to that point, but it has come close: More than 50 classes offered by the African Studies department, and very popular with athletes, appear not to have actually existed. Some of these courses listed instructors who had not "supervised the course and graded the work," and others "were taught irregularly," a university review said. More...

In overhauling the accreditation process, the questions that should matter most are the basic ones.
The commission that accredits California's community colleges is under fire from above and below. The federal government has given it a year to improve its performance, noting, among other criticisms, that it has too few educators on its panels. That might help explain the groundswell of discontent among the colleges, which need the commission's approval to keep their classroom doors open; many of them contend that it is harshly punitive and insufficiently focused on the quality of education. More...

A plan to pay community college tuition for recent Mississippi high school graduates who are not covered by other financial aid is advancing.
Representatives passed House Bill 424 Tuesday by a vote of 115-4. It now goes to the Senate for more debate.
The bill would set up a two-year pilot program at all of Mississippi's 15 community colleges. Read more...

By R.A. THIS week's Free exchange column looks at the economics of online higher education:
Two big forces underpin a university’s costs. The first is the need for physical proximity. Adding students is expensive—they require more buildings and instructors—and so a university’s marginal cost of production is high. That means that even in a competitive market, where price converges towards marginal cost, modern education is dear.
It is also hard to raise productivity. University lecturers can teach at most a few hundred students each semester—the maximum that can be squeezed into lecture halls and exam-marking rosters. Because it is so labour intensive higher education relies on large numbers of instructors paid relatively modest salaries. More...

By Josh Freedman. As the number of students attending colleges and universities has steadily increased and the cost for most students has climbed even faster, student debt figures (both total and per person) have continued to get bigger. Arguments about the likelihood of a “higher education bubble” abound. Struggles with loan payments are so commonplace that hipsters in Brooklyn were struggling with loan payments way before you. The student debt issue can be overstated, and often is. Yet the concern stems from the right place: the way we currently fund a big share of our higher education system, through mortgage-style loans, is one of the worst possible ways to pay for college. More...

ACE’s Annual Meeting is the country’s premier higher education event, bringing together nearly 2,000 higher education leaders to network with one another and hear from thought leaders and newsmakers discussing the most pressing issues of the day.
Join your colleagues as we highlight work going on across the country, explore innovative solutions, and discuss how to “seize opportunities” in the midst of challenging times. More...

By Rebecca Klein. The Advanced Placement Computer Science exam clearly has a problem when it comes to minority and female high school students.
The College Board -- the association responsible for creating and overseeing AP testing -- on Tuesday released its annual report on AP exam participation and performance, noting that a vast majority of AP Computer Science test-takers in 2013 were white males. Of the more than 20,000 students to take the exam last year, 81 percent were male and 54 percent were white. Only 9 percent of the test-takers were Latino and 3 percent were African-American. More...