Consumer ratings are always controversial. You can always ask the wrong question or ask the right question the wrong way. In an attempt to shed transparency on our nation’s healthcare system, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) instituted the star ratings system. CMS’ star-rating system is meant to…
My first car was a Chevy Vega. For those old enough to remember, it was a tin can with wheels. It was the kind of car that when you arrived at the gas station, you said to the attendant (in the days of full-serve stations), “Fill it with oil and…
Women’s basketball revenues are closing in on the $1 billion mark according to the latest data from the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act. Women’s basketball revenues for the 2014-15 year were $806 million dollars. This represents 43% of the men’s basketball revenues from the same year of $1.87 billion. However,…
Everyone has caught March Madness fever. The first two rounds of this landmark tournament sparked more double digit seed upsets than any other year. Yet as we sit here for the sweet 16, all of the number one seeds advanced. It is no surprise to anyone either that NCAA basketball…
One of my favorite movie lines of all time is from “The Outlaw Josey Wales” when Clint Eastwood says to the bounty hunter who is trying to hunt him down “Dying ain’t much of a living, boy”. For a trip down memory lane, you can see the clip by clicking…
The Carnegie Classification™ has been the major institutional framework for describing higher education institutions since 1970. This classification system comes out approximately every five years with the latest rendition released on February 1, 2016. This release represents the initial data provided by the Indiana University Bloomington Center for Postsecondary Research…
I live in Cleveland, Ohio (home of Lebron James and the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame). I would love to believe that our city is having explosive job growth but the real winner according to the latest Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey is not Cleveland, Ohio, but Cleveland, Tennessee….
Research and development expenditures continued their flat growth since 2011 according to the most recent data from the National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development Survey (HERD). Research expenditures increased 1.66% for all reporting institutions from 2013 to 2014 and have increased cumulatively only 4.76% since 2011. The primary…
According to the Institute for College Access and Success, seven in 10 seniors (69%) who graduated from public and nonprofit colleges in 2014 had student loan debt, with an average of $28,950 per borrower. Over the last decade—from 2004 to 2014—the share of graduates with debt rose modestly (from 65%…
In one of my favorite videos of my kid’s era, Grover from Sesame Street taught us the difference between near and far. I don’t think Grover had in mind today’s high tech tools and social media interaction when he taught us this principle. Distance Education continues to be a hot…
A slug of new data has recently been released covering campus statistics on violence against women. This data was mandated by the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 (VAWA) and is added to numerous other statistics required under the Campus Crime Statistics Act, or Clery Act. College institutions must…
The character Bluto in the movie Animal House was famous for saying “Seven years of college down the drain”. This was on the heels of Dean Wormer’s pronouncement of his stellar grade point of 0.0. Given this performance, Bluto would not have graduated anyway. Thus, he would not have fallen…