New England's long winter and seemingly interminable wait for spring has this author thinking about what colleges could do with their campuses during the summer. The options are almost infinite, although the cost-benefit analysis clearly varies. For some students, being on campus in the summer is preferable to going home, where the…

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has had concerns about student debt for decades. Her recent solution seeks to redistribute tax revenue from the richest Americans to enable students to refinance their postgraduation indebtedness; this would allow students to benefit from the low interest rates in today's financial markets. The Massachusetts…

Higher education has been a favorite news topic for months. President Obama and the first lady have entered the national conversation, particularly around issues of cost and graduation rates for low-income students--addressing education in the State of the Union, at White House events, and in speeches across the nation. In the midst of these…

In the context of the recent efforts to arrive at a federal budget, articles abound in the popular media and trade publications debating both the value of Pell Grants and their rising cost to the U.S. government. Both pros and cons of the debate hold value. Pell Grants are what enable many low-income families to send their children to college and,…

Many faculty and staff working in higher education lament the increasing involvement of the parents of their college-aged students. They denigrate such individuals as "helicopter" parents, and when the contact occurs in person as opposed to through the phone or email, they call them "lawn mower" parents. The whole issue of parental involvement is…

The Vermont Community Foundation's (VCF) 2009 report on postsecondary education asserts that college graduates live longer, healthier, more lucrative lives than their peers who did not graduate college. But the report is harsh in its assessment of the readiness of Vermont high school students for college. Vermont's expenditures for high school…

The academic literature is clear: students with a college degree earn more and lead healthier, more productive lives than their non-degree counterparts. Moreover, the early weeks on campus profoundly affect the likelihood of students persisting through to graduation. With its significant enrollment of first-generation and underrepresented…

In his best-selling book, "Deep Economy," Bill McKibben comments on the benefits of "small" education. Smaller institutions, he argues, resemble farmers' markets--one gets wonderful and quality seasonal food from people he knows and trusts. But, one cannot get everything there that he may want precisely when he wants it. Given personal preferences…