Saving a Struggling College Starts with the Board
Before the COVID-19 pandemic walloped our colleges and universities, higher education had been facing threats to existing business models for years. A great deal has been written the past few…
America Needs a GED Equivalent for a College Degree
As higher education undergoes dramatic changes thanks to the coronavirus, reformers should aim higher than expanding online education. Now is a propitious time to end the dominance of accreditation agencies…
College Reform: Build Lifeboats to Escape the Sinking Ship
In their recent Martin Center policy brief, Joy Pullmann and Sumantra Maitra get much right about the activist professor problem in academia. These professors are dominating the profession in a…
If We Jettison Standardized Testing, What’s Its Replacement?
The COVID-19 pandemic probably won’t kill the SAT, but will no doubt leave it in a badly weakened condition. Both the SAT (and its close competitor, the ACT) have had…
Why Do American Universities Lead the World in Scientific Research?
Miguel Urquiola is professor and chair of the department of economics at Columbia University. His special field is education and his book Markets, Minds, and Money: Why America Leads the…
The Right College: Students Using Data to Find Their Best Match
Which college a student chooses to attend is a major decision that can affect the rest of their life. What students want to study, what they can afford to pay,…
Did You Know? For Shape of Post-Virus Higher Ed, Watch Public Colleges
Doomsday predictions for higher education are a dime a dozen. The grandest claims expect “a handful of elite cyborg universities” to reshape a college education. Less-dire guesses see an end…
As Budgets Tighten, Colleges Still Vulnerable to Ransomware
Colleges and universities around the country are proving to be easy prey to hackers with ransom demands. In Massachusetts, Cape Cod Community College was defrauded of $800,000 last year, while…
Look Beyond Citation Counts to Kickstart Scientific Innovation
In scientific research, new ideas have become harder to find. Innovation has fallen compared to 50 years ago. Rather than a fear of “too much change,” many researchers worry about…
University Researchers Search for Solutions to Coronavirus Pandemic
Here at the Martin Center, we often criticize university research. Rightly so. We have noted that academic journals are too expensive. We’ve argued that the publishing process itself is incoherent…