Office of Planning & Budgeting

attainment


November 2, 2011

Is Higher Education the Next Bubble?

As we continue to experience a very slow recovery from a deep recession, the ideas of long-time critics of modern, inclusive American higher education who question the value of college for many have gained traction and blossomed into widespread public speculation about whether undergraduate education might be the next economic bubble to threaten the US…


October 27, 2011

As Expected, Federal Loan Borrowing Has Increased

The US Department of Education’s Stats in Brief from October 2011 entitled “Borrowing at the Maximum” investigates the percentage and demographics of students who take out federal subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans, and how this has changed over time. The report also seeks to differentiate between those who take out the program maximum loan amount…


August 9, 2011

Higher Education Pays Off, If Not Equally

Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce has published a report entitled “The College Payoff” which calculates the lifetime median earnings of workers at various levels of educational attainment. As could be expected, the more degrees a worker has, the more they will earn, on average, in their lifetime. This holds true even for…


August 4, 2011

A New Measure for College Success?

Education Sector, an education policy think tank, recently released a report entitled “Debt to Degree,” which measures the ratio of student and parent, government-backed loans taken by students to the number of credentials awarded by an institution per year.  Based on this, the report concludes that: Across all institutions and sectors, for each degree awarded…


July 14, 2011

Study Shows Slight Decrease in Student Enrollment Post-Recession

A new study, released by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center sheds light on enrollment patterns before, during, and after the Great Recession. According to the report, enrollment increased steadily from 2006 to 2009, and then decreased by 1.6 percent in 2010. The authors attribute this finding largely to a decrease in state funding for…


June 29, 2011

College Not Only ‘Worth it’, but a Key to Higher GDP and Lower Inequality

The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce has released another report projecting an increasing need for college graduates in the US workforce. Like last year’s report, the new report, “The Undereducated American”, argues that there is an existing under-supply of college educated workers, evidenced by the very high college wage premium, and projects…


June 3, 2011

Importance of Need-Based Aid for Achieving Attainment Goals

A recent Pell Institute Report proposed a new way to think about reaching President Obama’s goal of increasing the proportion of adults with a college degree to 60 percent by 2020. The Institute suggests that income inequality creates a two-tier educational system in which 25-34 year-olds in the top half of the income distribution have…


April 28, 2011

Encouraging News About Educational Attainment

The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported new, encouraging numbers about educational attainment in the United States for the 2010 Census year. According to the report, the percentage of people 25 and older who held a bachelor’s degree or higher increased to 30 percent in 2010 from 26 percent in 2000. Additionally, the percentage earning a…


April 8, 2011

A Master Plan for Higher Ed in the Midwest?

Earlier this week, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs released a new report authored by current professor and former  University of Michigan President James Duderstadt. The report, A Master Plan for Higher Education in the Midwest: A Roadmap to the Future of the Nation’s Heartland, chronicles the overall failure of the Midwest to transform itself…


February 25, 2011

Harvard Report Challenges Goal of ‘BA for All’

Earlier this month the Pathways to Prosperity Project, based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, released a final report: Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century. The report lauds the current goal to increase college participation and attainment in the US, but cautions against a ‘one size…



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