research
October 12, 2012
Overall Higher Ed Enrollments Drop, But Four-Year Public School Enrollments Continue to Rise
For the first time in 15 years, fewer students are enrolling in higher education overall. Enrollments at public four-year and private non-profit institutes actually increased, but falling for-profit and two-year enrollments pulled down the average. According to preliminary data released this week by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, colleges and…
October 2, 2012
UW’s Impressively-Low Student Loan Default Rates Contrast with National Averages
Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Education released its annual update on federal student loan cohort default rates (CDRs) and, although national CDRs are gloomily high, UW’s rates are impressively low. As the Department is in the process of switching to a more accurate three-year CDR measure, this year’s report includes both the FY 2010…
September 21, 2012
Is It All About the Money?
As a recent post discussed, if you attend college, you are more likely to earn more money. But, as you might imagine, the financial value of higher education depends on what program you choose and where. Information on the annual earnings of students from different programs and institutions is exactly what Sen. Ron Wyden, a…
June 25, 2012
Federal Report Makes Economic Case for Higher Ed
The US Departments of Treasury and Education teamed up to analyze higher education and economic data, and released a short report that highlights the following familiar points: Education is correlated with higher earnings: median weekly earnings for a worker with a BA degree are now 64% higher than for a worker with only a high…
June 18, 2012
Research Universities and the Future of America: New NRC Report
In 2009, the National Research Council received a request from Congress for a “report that examines the health and competitiveness of America’s research universities vis-à-vis their counterparts elsewhere in the world”. Responding to the request, the NRC assembled a 22-member panel of university and business leaders and mandated them to identify the “top ten actions…
April 9, 2012
Pace of College Enrollment Slows
At the beginning of the economic downturn in late 2008, a higher than expected number of Americans turned to higher education, leading to a 7.1 percent increase in college enrollment for 2009. This phenomenon is typical of recessions as many need to refresh their qualifications and/or increase their skill sets when faced with a volatile…
January 23, 2012
More Science and Engineering Degrees Awarded in WA
A new report put out by the National Science Foundation examines math and science education at the elementary, secondary and post-secondary level. In general, the news is sobering: elementary and secondary proficiency in science and math is languishing below 40 percent nationwide. Chapter 8 of the report focuses on state indicators, featuring state-by-state breakdowns of…
January 17, 2012
New OPB Brief
This week, UPenn’s Institute for Research on Higher Education (IRHE) released a report assessing the state of higher education policy in Washington State. While satisfactorily describing the key facts and long-term trends and potential future problems for higher education in Washington State, the report is somewhat unrealistic in its recommendations. It seems to assume that,…
November 16, 2011
Higher Education Increasingly Key to Entering the Middle Class
A new report by the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce finds that higher education is becoming increasingly integral to earning a middle class wage. The Center predicts that, in 2018, while there will still be jobs for high school dropouts and workers with only a high school degree, good jobs for these candidates…
October 31, 2011
Does America Have a STEM Supply Problem?
Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce released a report that investigates the importance of American science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) positions in the US economy and the perceived shortage of qualified STEM workers to fill them. The report finds that, contrary to popular belief, America already has enough students studying STEM related…
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