The Center for College Affordability and Productivity

04/11/2017

America’s universities are certainly in the news a lot these days. Three stories present a tale of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

04/06/2017

Dr. Vedder is taking part in an Intelligence Squared debate tonight!

Tune in at 6:45 Eastern tonight, and cast your vote!

"Walmart has long been a target for critics of corporate expansion, but does the company really deserve the scrutiny? Some say that the big-box retailer devastates small communities by pushing out locally-owned businesses, mistreats its workers through low pay and restrictive work hours, and forces American companies to use cheap foreign labor to produce goods at low cost. Others point to the fact that Walmart provides countless jobs to low-skilled American workers, sells affordable goods, has increasingly become a leader in sustainability, and attracts new consumers and businesses to its neighborhoods. Has Walmart been good for America?"

03/15/2017

"Kentucky State University has named a new president. In reading comments in Inside Higher Ed about this, I was struck by one reader asserting that “If this school was a business, it would have been closed 10 years ago,” and another about the need to lead Kentucky State “out of its mire.” What were they talking about?"

"The University of Kentucky, it has had extraordinary athletic success in recent years (as this year’s March Madness in basketball will no doubt demonstrate). It pays its basketball coach nearly as much per week as the Governor of Kentucky earns in a year."

Kentucky, with just 1.3 percent of the American population, rarely has higher education developments worthy of national attention, but two things this week struck me as border-line outrageous, if not “scandalous.”

02/02/2017

"If you cannot withstand the reality that humans have different perspectives on life, then perhaps you should go to another place to study.” Those who want to restrict speech and expression and try to enforce in a semi-authoritarian fashion an “acceptable” position, or want to impose speech codes, prohibit campus speakers, and so forth, should be denied public support."

Those who want to restrict speech and expression and try to enforce in a semi-authoritarian fashion an “acceptable” position, or want to impose speech codes, prohibit campus speakers, and so forth, should be denied public support.

11/21/2016

"Tensions ran high during an event in Washington, DC, on Wednesday where a panel of experts debated whether for-profit institutions have been unfairly treated and perceived in recent years. While some panelists said that the sector has been widely attacked by the Obama administration, others said that for-profits deserve greater scrutiny and regulatory oversight due to the dangers inherent in its business model."

Tensions ran high during an event in Washington, DC, on Wednesday where a panel of experts debated whether for-profit institutions have been unfairly treated and perceived in recent years. While some panelists said that the sector has been widely attacked by the Obama administration, others said tha...

11/21/2016

"On the cusp of a new administration that could shake up the U.S. Department of Education, higher education experts debated whether President-elect Donald Trump should be kinder to for-profit colleges than his predecessor."

For-profit college industry, long under fire from the feds, has a chance for a fresh start.

11/21/2016

“But I do think Trump’s a smart guy who will ultimately realize there are three huge problems with higher education: It’s too costly, too little learning is going on and too many students are not getting good jobs these days."-Richard Vedder

As speculation continued over how a Trump administration might treat for-profit colleges, supporters and critics of the institutions sparred Thursday over whether the institutions got a bum rap under the Obama administration.

09/07/2016

The announcement yesterday that ITT Technical Institute, with some 130 campuses and 40,000 students, was abruptly closing made page one in leading newspapers across the country, and is a major milestone in the Obama Administration’s war on for-profit colleges and universities. The ITT closure joins…

07/07/2016

The Clinton proposals have reminded me anew of how terribly bad an election year this is. Let us hope America can survive the next four years and regain our collective senses.

07/07/2016

07/06/2016

CCAP research associate Max Pristic looks at the recent Forbes/CCAP Top Colleges rankings via regional groupings.

On average, colleges and universities in the Northeast and Western parts of the country are better than schools located anywhere else. Obviously, students will only graduate from one school, so it is more important to consider what individual school they should attend, rather than a certain region a...

07/06/2016

CCAP research assistant Matthew LeBar examines the debate between liberal arts and STEM majors in college.

Most importantly, tell people schools and majors don’t decide success, individuals do. So you can have a spectacularly lucrative career from a liberal arts major, or a mediocre one from an engineering degree. Pretending that any kind of degree is either panacea or poison for post-college life or ear...