Download or read book The Case against Education written by Bryan Caplan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why we need to stop wasting public funds on education Despite being immensely popular—and immensely lucrative—education is grossly overrated. Now with a new afterword by Bryan Caplan, this explosive book argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skills but to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As only to forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for average workers, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy. Romantic notions about education being "good for the soul" must yield to careful research and common sense—The Case against Education points the way.

Download or read book Will College Pay Off written by Peter Cappelli and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The decision of whether to go to college, or where, is hampered by poor information and inadequate understanding of the financial risk involved. Adding to the confusion, the same degree can cost dramatically different amounts for different people. A barrage of advertising offers new degrees designed to lead to specific jobs, but we see no information on whether graduates ever get those jobs. Mix in a frenzied applications process, and pressure from politicians for "relevant" programs, and there is an urgent need to separate myth from reality. Peter Cappelli, an acclaimed expert in employment trends, the workforce, and education, provides hard evidence that counters conventional wisdom and helps us make cost-effective choices. Among the issues Cappelli analyzes are: What is the real link between a college degree and a job that enables you to pay off the cost of college, especially in a market that is in constant change? Why it may be a mistake to pursue degrees that will land you the hottest jobs because what is hot today is unlikely to be so by the time you graduate. Why the most expensive colleges may actually be the cheapest because of their ability to graduate students on time. How parents and students can find out what different colleges actually deliver to students and whether it is something that employers really want. College is the biggest expense for many families, larger even than the cost of the family home, and one that can bankrupt students and their parents if it works out poorly. Peter Cappelli offers vital insight for parents and students to make decisions that both make sense financially and provide the foundation that will help students make their way in the world.

Download or read book College Success written by Amy Baldwin and published by . This book was released on 2020-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Aspiring Adults Adrift written by Richard Arum and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few books have ever made their presence felt on college campuses—and newspaper opinion pages—as quickly and thoroughly as Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s 2011 landmark study of undergraduates’ learning, socialization, and study habits, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. From the moment it was published, one thing was clear: no university could afford to ignore its well-documented and disturbing findings about the failings of undergraduate education. Now Arum and Roksa are back, and their new book follows the same cohort of undergraduates through the rest of their college careers and out into the working world. Built on interviews and detailed surveys of almost a thousand recent college graduates from a diverse range of colleges and universities, Aspiring Adults Adrift reveals a generation facing a difficult transition to adulthood. Recent graduates report trouble finding decent jobs and developing stable romantic relationships, as well as assuming civic and financial responsibility—yet at the same time, they remain surprisingly hopeful and upbeat about their prospects. Analyzing these findings in light of students’ performance on standardized tests of general collegiate skills, selectivity of institutions attended, and choice of major, Arum and Roksa not only map out the current state of a generation too often adrift, but enable us to examine the relationship between college experiences and tentative transitions to adulthood. Sure to be widely discussed, Aspiring Adults Adrift will compel us once again to re-examine the aims, approaches, and achievements of higher education.

Download or read book How Valuable is a College Degree written by Noël Merino and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2016-02-03 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores issues related to the value of a college degree. It covers topics such as a college degree as an investment. It examines college degrees and if having one prepares people for today's jobs. It looks at college degrees and the U.S. economy, college education as a right, and alternatives to a college degree.

Download or read book The Race between Education and Technology written by Claudia Goldin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the nineteenth century. The book argues that technological change, education, and inequality have been involved in a kind of race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This had the effect of boosting income for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. This educational slowdown was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it.

Download or read book There Is Life After College written by Jeffrey J. Selingo and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of College Unbound comes a hopeful, inspiring blueprint to help alleviate parents’ anxiety and prepare their college-educated child to successfully land a good job after graduation. Saddled with thousands of dollars of debt, today’s college students are graduating into an uncertain job market that is leaving them financially dependent on their parents for years to come—a reality that has left moms and dads wondering: What did I pay all that money for? There Is Life After College offers students, parents, and even recent graduates the practical advice and insight they need to jumpstart their careers. Education expert Jeffrey Selingo answers key questions—Why is the transition to post-college life so difficult for many recent graduates? How can graduates market themselves to employers that are reluctant to provide on-the-job training? What can institutions and individuals do to end the current educational and economic stalemate?—and offers a practical step-by-step plan every young professional can follow. From the end of high school through college graduation, he lays out exactly what students need to do to acquire the skills companies want. Full of tips, advice, and insight, this wise, practical guide will help every student, no matter their major or degree, find real employment—and give their parents some peace of mind.

Download or read book MOOC U written by Jeffrey Selingo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributing editor to The Chronicle of Higher Education and author of College (Un)Bound, Jeffrey J. Selingo follows in real time the stories of all the stake-holders in University of Virginia business professor Ed Hess's popular Grow to Greatness MOOC to distill for MOOC students (seven million and counting) what works, what doesn't, and what to expect next of the phenomenon that is massive open online courses. When professors at top universities first began offering free online classes to the masses in 2012, the promise was that one day their experiment would revolutionize higher education forever by opening the doors to a first-class education for everyone. Since then, more than seven million students have signed up to take a massive open online course, or MOOC. But so far, MOOCs have failed to live up to the initial promises of their founders, with a vast majority of students failing to complete their courses. Lost in the rising chorus of emboldened MOOC critics are the expectations and experiences of the students who, in ever rising numbers, continue to sign up. What does a great MOOC look like, and why? Which MOOC students benefit the most? How do I get the greatest value out of taking a MOOC? To get answers, Jeffrey J. Selingo, contributing editor to The Chronicle of Higher Education and author of College (Un)Bound, embedded himself in University of Virginia business professor Ed Hess's Grow to Greatness MOOC. The result, MOOC U, is the real-time stories of the major players: students, professor, university, and MOOC provider. Written to answer the most pressing questions that MOOC students are asking, MOOC U chronicles how free online courses are changing how students learn, how professors teach, and how universities are rethinking what constitutes face-to-face education in the 21st Century.

Download or read book Investment in Learning written by Howard Bowen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The value of higher education has been under attack as seldom before in American history. We are told of the overeducated American, of the case against college, and of the failure of education to contribute significantly to the reduction of inequality. In this environment, republication of an exceptionally comprehensive and judicious analysis of all that has been learned and not learned about the consequences of American higher education comes at a most appropriate time. Investment in Learning more fully covers the various aspects of this subject than any yet to appear. Howard Bowen is optimistic about higher education, but his viewpoint is based on profound knowledge of both the economic and social aspects of education. Unlike some economists who insist on a strict cost-benefit analysis of expenditures on higher education in relation to outcomes, Bowen argues that the non-monetary benefits are far greater, to the point that individual and social decisions should be made primarily on those broader indicators. Cameron Fincher, in his new opening for the book, notes that "Publication of Howard Bowen's Investment in Learning was like a break in a long summer drought. . . . It was a comprehensive rebuttal to return-on-investment studies with negativistic findings." And in the foreword to the book, Clark Kerr simply says, "Howard Bowen is better prepared to survey the overall consequences of higher education in the United States than anyone else."

Download or read book Not Your Mother s Morals written by Jonathan D. Fitzgerald and published by RosettaBooks. This book was released on 2017-03-08 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Fitzgerald] explains how the new sincerity movement in contemporary pop culture is making way for moral storytelling in unlikely places.” —Jonathan Merritt, author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch In Not Your Mothers Morals, Jonathan D. Fitzgerald argues that today’s popular music, movies, TV shows, and books are making the world a better place. For all the hand-wringing about the decline of morals and the cheapening of culture in our time, contemporary media brims with examples of fascinating and innovative art that promote positive and uplifting moral messages—without coming across as preachy. The catch? Today’s moral messages can be quite different than the ones your mother taught you. Fitzgerald compares the pop culture of yesterday with that of today and finds that while both are committed to major ideals—especially God, Family, and Country—the nature of those commitments has shifted. In his witty, expressive style, Fitzgerald explains how we’ve arrived at the era of New Sincerity and why its good news for our future. “A great, quick read . . . jam-packed with explorations of art, politics, media and pop culture that show how we’ve moved from being June Cleaver’s society to being one that begs you to just tell it to us like it is—flaws and questions and all . . . Jonathan’s book puts all of the proverbial pieces together into one witty journey that will light up any culture lover’s brain.” —The Good Men Project “Jonathan Fitzgerald is an astute observer of Christianity in Western culture. By turning ‘conventional wisdom’ on its head, he shows us some truth we would not otherwise have seen.” —Tony Jones, author of The New Christians

Download or read book College Disrupted written by Ryan Craig and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a revolution happening in higher education—and this is how it's unfolding

Download or read book Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education written by Nathan D. Grawe and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The economics of American higher education are driven by one key factor--the availability of students willing to pay tuition--and many related factors that determine what schools they attend. By digging into the data, economist Nathan Grawe has created probability models for predicting college attendance. What he sees are alarming events on the horizon that every college and university needs to understand. Overall, he spots demographic patterns that are tilting the US population toward the Hispanic southwest. Moreover, since 2007, fertility rates have fallen by 12 percent. Higher education analysts recognize the destabilizing potential of these trends. However, existing work fails to adjust headcounts for college attendance probabilities and makes no systematic attempt to distinguish demand by institution type. This book analyzes demand forecasts by institution type and rank, disaggregating by demographic groups. Its findings often contradict the dominant narrative: while many schools face painful contractions, demand for elite schools is expected to grow by 15+ percent. Geographic and racial profiles will shift only slightly--and attendance by Asians, not Hispanics, will grow most. Grawe also use the model to consider possible changes in institutional recruitment strategies and government policies. These "what if" analyses show that even aggressive innovation is unlikely to overcome trends toward larger gaps across racial, family income, and parent education groups. Aimed at administrators and trustees with responsibility for decisions ranging from admissions to student support to tenure practices to facilities construction, this book offers data to inform decision-making--decisions that will determine institutional success in meeting demographic challenges"--

Download or read book Productivity in Higher Education written by Caroline M. Hoxby and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-11-22 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do the benefits of higher education compare with its costs, and how does this comparison vary across individuals and institutions? These questions are fundamental to quantifying the productivity of the education sector. The studies in Productivity in Higher Education use rich and novel administrative data, modern econometric methods, and careful institutional analysis to explore productivity issues. The authors examine the returns to undergraduate education, differences in costs by major, the productivity of for-profit schools, the productivity of various types of faculty and of outcomes, the effects of online education on the higher education market, and the ways in which the productivity of different institutions responds to market forces. The analyses recognize five key challenges to assessing productivity in higher education: the potential for multiple student outcomes in terms of skills, earnings, invention, and employment; the fact that colleges and universities are “multiproduct” firms that conduct varied activities across many domains; the fact that students select which school to attend based in part on their aptitude; the difficulty of attributing outcomes to individual institutions when students attend more than one; and the possibility that some of the benefits of higher education may arise from the system as a whole rather than from a single institution. The findings and the approaches illustrated can facilitate decision-making processes in higher education.

Download or read book The Real World of College written by Wendy Fischman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why higher education in the United States has lost its way, and how universities and colleges can focus sharply on their core mission. For The Real World of College, Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner analyzed in-depth interviews with more than 2,000 students, alumni, faculty, administrators, parents, trustees, and others, which were conducted at ten institutions ranging from highly selective liberal arts colleges to less-selective state schools. What they found challenged characterizations in the media: students are not preoccupied by political correctness, free speech, or even the cost of college. They are most concerned about their GPA and their resumes; they see jobs and earning potential as more important than learning. Many say they face mental health challenges, fear that they don’t belong, and feel a deep sense of alienation. Given this daily reality for students, has higher education lost its way? Fischman and Gardner contend that US universities and colleges must focus sharply on their core educational mission. Fischman and Gardner, both recognized authorities on education and learning, argue that higher education in the United States has lost sight of its principal reason for existing: not vocational training, not the provision of campus amenities, but to increase what Fischman and Gardner call “higher education capital”—to help students think well and broadly, express themselves clearly, explore new areas, and be open to possible transformations. Fischman and Gardner offer cogent recommendations for how every college can become a community of learners who are open to change as thinkers, citizens, and human beings.

Download or read book Academically Adrift written by Richard Arum and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In spite of soaring tuition costs, more and more students go to college every year. A bachelor’s degree is now required for entry into a growing number of professions. And some parents begin planning for the expense of sending their kids to college when they’re born. Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s answer to that question is a definitive no. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college. As troubling as their findings are, Arum and Roksa argue that for many faculty and administrators they will come as no surprise—instead, they are the expected result of a student body distracted by socializing or working and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list. Academically Adrift holds sobering lessons for students, faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents—all of whom are implicated in promoting or at least ignoring contemporary campus culture. Higher education faces crises on a number of fronts, but Arum and Roksa’s report that colleges are failing at their most basic mission will demand the attention of us all.

Download or read book The Price You Pay for College written by Ron Lieber and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of the best books of 2021 by NPR New York Times Bestseller and a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice pick “Masterly . . .represents an extraordinary achievement: It is comprehensive and detailed without being tedious, practical without being banal, impeccably well judged and unusually rigorous.”—Daniel Markovits, New York Times Book Review “Ron Lieber is a gift.”—Scott Galloway The hugely popular New York Times Your Money columnist and author of the bestselling The Opposite of Spoiled offers a deeply reported and emotionally honest approach to the biggest financial decision families will ever make: what to pay for college—a decision made even more confusing because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sending a teenager to a flagship state university for four years of on-campus living costs more than $100,000 in many parts of the United States. Meanwhile, many families of freshmen attending selective private colleges will spend triple—over $300,000. With the same passion, smarts, and humor that infuse his personal finance column, Ron Lieber offers a much-needed roadmap to help families navigate this difficult and often confusing journey. Lieber begins by explaining who pays what and why and how the financial aid system got so complicated. He also pulls the curtain back on merit aid, an entirely new form of discounting that most colleges now use to compete with peers. While price is essential, value is paramount. So what is worth paying extra for, and how do you know when it exists in abundance at any particular school? Is a small college better than a big one? Who actually does the teaching? Given that every college claims to have reinvented its career center, who should we actually believe? He asks the tough questions of college presidents and financial aid gatekeepers that parents don’t know (or are afraid) to ask and summarizes the research about what matters and what doesn’t. Finally, Lieber calmly walks families through the process of setting financial goals, explaining the system to their children and figuring out the right ways to save, borrow, and bargain for a better deal. The Price You Pay for College gives parents the clarity they need to make informed choices and helps restore the joy and wonder the college experience is supposed to represent.

Download or read book Is College Worth It written by William John Bennett and published by Thomas Nelson Inc. This book was released on 2013 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A former United States Secretary of Education and a liberal arts graduate expose the broken promise of higher education.