Friday, September 30, 2016

Can you believe it will be ten years on October 2nd...

... since the shootings in the Amish school house occurred?  Do you even remember them.  Here's what I wrote at the time:

When Will All These Classroom Killings Stop?



When Will These Classroom Killings Stop?
By
Jim Castagnera
On Monday a crazy gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech residence hall and a little later in a classroom across campus, killing some 30 people in what is being labeled “the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history.” The gunman subsequently was killed, bringing the death toll to 31. As I wrote this column, no one knew the murder’s motive.
Virginia Tech’s president was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, “Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions. The university is shocked and indeed horrified."
In 21st century America we have almost come to accept these horrible mass murders as natural disasters. This community has been hit by a hurricane. That one has been torn up by a tornado. Oh, and that one over there has been blasted by a madman with a gun. The Tech student body no doubt will be afforded free access to “grief counselors.”
We used to say, "Everybody talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it." Should we now say, "Everybody talks about gun violence, but no one does anything about it?" Living here in suburban Philadelphia, I watched as the City of Brotherly Love averaged one homicide per day in 2006. Philly passed the 100-homicide mark during the first quarter of ’07, suggesting it well may be on its way to breaking last year’s record. Here, too, students are, often as not, counted among the innocent victims of gun violence gone out of control.
Yeh, I know… guns don't kill people, people kill people. But these killers are better armed than ever before. When I was a Franklin and Marshall College student a lifetime ago, I witnessed plenty of fights, often of the town v. gown variety. A group of fraternity punks, such as myself, might get a bit rowdy in a local tavern. The blue-collar crowd at the opposite end of the bar might take umbrage. The upshot might then be a quick exchange of fisticuffs. On a rare occasion a knife or a broken bottle could come into play.
My point is: almost nobody carried a gun.
By contrast today, if you are confronted by a belligerent bar fly, run for your car.
Odds are better than even the guy is packing.
No need to look for trouble in a local bar, however. Virginia Tech is not the only school where guns have gotten into classrooms. Just last year a local high school student entered one of our county’s Catholic high schools, discharged his father’s AK-47, then shot himself. We could only be grateful that the troubled youth didn’t first kill his classmates, making Delaware County the scene of a new Columbine massacre.
The Canadian college professor, Marshall McLuhan - best known during my college days for saying "The medium is the message" - asserted that Americans live in "Bonanzaland," i.e., the Wild West of the 1880s. Well, folks, that time is long past. Our K-12 schools have rightly adopted zero-tolerance policies toward weapons in their halls and classrooms. Colleges, too, have clamped down on violence --- even the fisticuffs of my era.
Obviously, this isn’t enough.
Neither are grief counselors enough.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution may give us all the right to bear arms… though some judges and scholars have questioned the Supreme Court’s reading of that bit of the Bill of Rights. Regardless of what rights we want to read into the Second Amendment, I say our daughters and sons have a higher right: to enjoy and benefit from their educations without looking over their shoulders and wondering whether today is the day their classroom is riddled with bullets.
I don’t have the answer, folks. I just know in my guts that, until we dispense with the grief counselors and the platitudes, and get mad as hell about travesties like this latest massacre at Virginia Tech, the killing is just going to continue.


Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Two new books argue that student debt is a more nuanced issue than we are often led to believe.

Two books by two economists, who are colleagues at the Urban Institute, point out that the people carrying the highest level of debt also tend to be the folks with the most advanced degrees... that is, the people with the greatest ability to repay the loans.

On the other hand, the authors seem to agree, the most heavily burdened, and most likely to default, are the college drop outs.

This analysis seems to comport with the US Department of Education's stance against the for-profit sector of higher education, if I understand what is happening to outfits like ITT and Corinthian Colleges, which went out of business because their access to the federal loan stream was cut off.

I have repeatedly argued in this space that the business model of many a for-profit entity has been (1) entice marginal applicants to apply and borrow from Uncle Sam to attend; (2) sign them into some courses and collect their tuition money; (3) let them flunk out.  The loan dollars become profits at the bottom line of the company.  The ex-students default.  We the taxpayers pick up the tab.

I'm not saying all for-profit higher-ed entities have done this.  But I have no doubt some have done it to their own enrichment.

My view is supported by this excerpt from a story published two years ago by Inside Higher Ed:

"What led so many companies astray is a story of strategic choices made at the height of the 2000s boom. Faced with the means to achieve infinite scalability by tapping into a federal entitlement program, the opportunity to use online learning to cut costs, and motivated by Wall Street cash and its accompanying investor pressures, several companies pursued hypergrowth at all costs. They moved away from traditional missions, pursuing any and all students they could through sophisticated recruitment machines designed to feed the neverending demand for hitting enrollment and earnings targets.
"U.S. Department of Education data on students who left school in 2008 and 2009 at the peak of the for-profit college boom show just how bad the strategic emphasis on growth over quality has been. In total, 40 percent of programs offered by publicly traded companies, representing 48 percent of for-profit students in the data, fail one or both of the tests of debt-to-earnings and student loan default that the Education Department is proposing to use to judge the success of career training programs. This includes 44 percent of students enrolled in colleges owned by the Apollo Group, which runs the University of Phoenix. It also includes 90 percent of students at ITT Technical Institutes."

Thus, as the two new books argue, the so-called student-loan "crisis" is not a calamity across all of higher education, but rather a more focused tragedy for those who borrowed perhaps far less than their successful counterparts, but also are far less capable of making good on their debts.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Laureate University: The Stealthy Giant in the World of For-Profit Education

The for-profit sector of higher education has been under attack from the U.S. Department of Education.  Major casualties during the past couple of years are Corinthian Colleges and ITT, both put out of business by the cessation of their access to federal money.

Meanwhile, according to today's Chronicle of Higher Education,  a quiet giant has been extending its reach into no fewer than 25 nations.  Total student enrollment for Laureate University affiliates is more than a million students.

The US flagship for the Baltimore-based mega-versity is Walden University.  The DOE actually gives it comparatively high marks... perhaps that means only the best of bad lot.  But Walden graduates do earn higher than average salaries.  That is, those who actually pay the tuition --- $27K on average v. $16K national average tuition --- and get a degree.  The first to second year retention rate is reportedly only 33% as compared to a national frosh to soph rate of around 68%.  And loan repayment rates are about what you see in the for-profit arena in general... i.e., crappy.

During this national campaign season we've heard a lot about Candidate Trump's sham Trump University.  And we've heard a lot about the Clintons' foundation.  Today, the Chronicle story reveals that Bubba has been paid some $17 million to shill for Laureate U. worldwide.  What's that all about?




Wednesday, September 14, 2016

New data indicate that the Democratic Party is the party of youth, secularism and diversity...

... while the GOP represents the older generation, especially the blue collar oldies.  Read about it here.

In a nutshell:

"Barack Obama’s presidency appears to have profoundly shifted the voter coalitions behind the two major parties, with older and blue-collar whites moving to the Republicans as college graduates and secular voters have accelerated their shift to the Democrats."

Find the whole Pew Foundation study here.

"The fundamental demographic changes taking place in the country – an aging population, growing racial and ethnic diversity and rising levels of education – have reshaped both party coalitions. But these changes, coupled with patterns of partisan affiliation among demographic groups, have influenced the composition of the two parties in different ways. The Democratic Party is becoming less white, less religious and better-educated at a faster rate than the country as a whole, while aging at a slower rate. Within the GOP the pattern is the reverse: Republican voters are becoming more diverse, better-educated and less religious at a slower rate than the country generally, while the age profile of the GOP is growing older more quickly than that of the country."


Monday, September 12, 2016

The start of a trend in private higher education?

Thomas Jefferson University, known for its healthcare programs, and Philadelphia University, famed for its fashion programs, have announced they will merge in 2017.  That will make the new entity the fifth largest higher ed institution in a Philly market chocked full of colleges.

The name of the new mega-versity has yet to be finalized.  Phila-Jeff?  We'll have to wait and see.


The presidents of the two institutions claim they will be (1) behaving like a start-up and (2) revolutionizing higher education.  Again, we'll have to wait and see.

Regardless of what the new name turns out to be, and whether or not the new entity is revolutionary, this is a smart move.  As I --- and many others --- have been predicting, a shake out in private higher ed is now well underway.  The for-profit sector is being gutted by the US Department of Education.  Last year Corinthian Colleges bit the dust.  Last week ITT closed all its many campuses.  The not-for-profit sector, below the top layer of elites, is in little better shape.  Finding a dance partner while there is still room on the floor is may be a savvy solution for many schools far smaller than Jeff and Philly U.