President Obama announced in August that the Department of Education would be creating the Postsecondary Institution Rating System (PIRS), a new rating system for colleges. The Department of Education issued a request for ideas on how to design and implement the PIRS. This series of blogs posts is adapted from ...
The Obama administration took a step toward the President’s planned college ratings system on December 19, releasing a 24-page “Framework” for college ratings. In this blog post, Tom Weko asks, "Are the Department of Education's college ratings likely to become an enduring feature of the nation’s higher education landscape?" ...
Do median wages paid to bachelor’s graduates demonstrate gender differences after “controlling” for choice across high and low paying programs of study? Data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that merges student level data with Unemployment Insurance wage data can provide an initial answer to this question. In this ...
This spotlight takes a look at the history of Title I, how the program has changed over time, and how it affects children, schools, families and education policy. Experts weigh in on the program's past and future in interviews, briefs, and blogs.
The Supreme Court recently held that UT Austin’s race-conscious admissions plan is lawful under the Equal Protection Clause. In this blog post, Ben Backes discusses what this does (and does not) mean.
In his final State of the Union address, President Obama said, “We live in a time of extraordinary change… and whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.” In this blog post, AIR’s Peter Cookson says the key to dealing with this change is ...
In this blog post, Matthew Soldner argues that, as Congress works on reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, the need for far better research and access to federal student aid data should be high on its agenda.
As prospective college students and their parents pore over the Department of Education’s College Navigator and College Scorecard, Andrew Gillen suggests in this blog that they pay close attention to the financial implications of their choice. Ensuring that college is affordable should be high on the list of policy priorities, ...
America’s universities rank high on almost any list of the world’s best universities, but this high esteem rests on a highly unequal distribution of wealth. With less than 4% of the 1,600 or so not-for-profit private universities reporting endowments of more than $1 billion each, why are they tax-exempt? As ...
In this blog post, Mark Schneider explores the issues currently up for discussion before the Senate Health Education and Pensions (HELP) Committee and the impact on higher education.