It’s worth giving credit where credit is due, and the US Department of Education (ED) has fixed a problem that Russ Poulin and I pointed out where they had previously left ~700 colleges out of the College Scorecard. When the College Scorecard was announced, Russ noticed a handful of missing schools. When I did the […]
Research
"Research" examines academic studies of technology-enabled education initiatives, including the quality of the research and of its coverage in the press.
Empowering Students in Open Research
Phil and I will be writing a twice-monthly column for the Chronicle’s new Re:Learning section. In my inaugural column, “Muy Loco Parentis,” I write about how schools make data privacy decisions on behalf of the students that the students wouldn’t make for themselves, and that may even be net harmful for the students. In contrast […]
Data To Back Up Concerns Of Textbook Expenditures By First-Generation Students
David Wiley has added to the conversation over use of data on college textbook pricing and student spending patterns with “The Practical Cost of Textbooks”. The key argument is to go beyond prices and spending and look at the most direct measure of asking students themselves how textbooks costs have impacted them.
Asking What Students Spend On Textbooks Is Very Important, But Insufficient
It is important to look at both types of data – textbook list prices and student expenditures – to see some of the important market dynamics at play. All in all, students are exercising their market power to keep their expenditures down – buying used, renting, borrowing, obtaining illegally, delaying purchase, or just not using at all.
Bad Data Can Lead To Bad Policy: College students don’t spend $1,200+ on textbooks
The average US college student does not spend or budget more than $1,200 for textbooks, with that number rising each year, as commonly reported in the national media. The best data available continues to show that students spend roughly half of that amount, and that number is going down over time, not up. Last spring […]
Cracks In The Foundation Of Disruptive Innovation
The overuse of Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory has rightly been criticized in education circles for years. I say rightly in that judging a non-commodity public good with the same theory as disk drives is a silly notion without some extensive analysis to back up that extrapolation. As Audrey Watters wrote in 2013: Rather, my assigning […]
Forbes Fantasies: Why Hillsdale College is not in the College Scorecard (hint, boring reasons)
Richard Vedder wrote a particularly uninformed article in Forbes on Friday about the Education Department (ED) not including Hillsdale College in the new College Scorecard. Freed from the burden of facts or research, Vedder let loose the dogs of conspiracy [emphasis in original]. The Obama Administration, with much hype, released its College Scorecard recently, designed to […]