State Rep. Leon Stavrinakis says quality and affordability are the two main goals for South Carolina’s higher-education institutions, and the company poised to buy the Charleston School of Law doesn’t appear to strive to meet either.
Grand Canyon University was bustling with activity on the second day of classes last week, with an on-campus student population now approaching 8,500, new dormitories and an athletic program ready to launch its first year in NCAA Division I as a member of the Western Athletic Conference.
For-profit schools — which include the University of Phoenix, DeVry University and Strayer University — began booming in the 1990s after changes in state and federal regulations made it possible for them to open campuses across the country and online.
A drop in tuition at nearby private universities has led to increasing enrollment patterns, whereas state-owned universities are hiking tuition prices while experiencing smaller enrollments.
Generous tuition discounts and aggressive recruitment campaigns are netting record freshman enrollments at some private universities in Western Pennsylvania while lower-cost, state-owned universities struggle.
U.S. private colleges and universities largely fall into two categories: those with diverse revenue streams supplemented by robust research, healthcare and fundraising, and those highly dependent on student-generated revenues, according to a new Fitch Ratings report.
A $250 million donation to Centre College won’t happen, and it’s a bit unclear why. College officials and the head of a Bermuda-based trust offered differing accounts Monday of the massive deal’s sudden collapse.
Students at for-profit medical schools in the Caribbean are amassing more debt than their peers at medical schools in the United States, and many of those students quit school early, thereby creating risk for taxpayers, according to an article in Bloomberg Markets magazine that examines trends at the Caribbean institutions. Some of those schools also pay hospitals in the United States to take their students for clinical training, a practice that has drawn the ire of some medical educators.
William Peace University, an 800-student liberal arts college in North Carolina, plans to spend as much as two-thirds of its endowment on a single piece of property.
Gov. Pat Quinn awarded Columbia $4.8 million July 31 to reimburse the college for previously completed construction projects, thus allowing it to move forward with new projects.
According to a study by Affordable Colleges Online, just one percent of the private colleges in the U.S. have a documented million-dollar return on investment (ROI): alumni whose lifetime earnings surpass those of non-degree holders by seven figures. The Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) is among that select group, with an estimated $1.62 million return after taking into account tuition and fees. That figure ranks as the third highest in the nation.
In an effort to boost enrollment, Sierra Nevada College offered a 50 percent tuition discount to incoming freshmen and transfer students for the current fall semester.
Last week the U.S. Census reported college enrollment declined for the first time in six years in the fall of 2012. That, in turn, threatens higher education revenue, said Moody's Investors Service in a special report on Monday.
Tuition increases are constantly in the news these days. Private colleges have become incredibly expensive (as I know personally, with a daughter currently attending one). Public colleges also have been raising tuition sharply in many cases, mostly to offset cuts in the funds they receive from state budgets. Yet, by the standards of the economic marketplace most colleges are still underpriced.
That’s the average price of tuition, room and board at Minnesota’s private colleges and universities this year, according to the Minnesota Private College Council.
Some years ago, there was a survey conducted by a couple of national nonprofit leadership organizations to ascertain the “core values of the nonprofit sector.” How do the ever-rising salaries of private university presidents—while faculty salaries stagnate and tuition costs to students skyrocket—reflect the core values of the nonprofit sector? Jaeah Lee and Maggie Severns writing for Mother Jones note that a number of private universities—and, to be fair, public universities as well—are providing pay and perks to university presidents that are kind of mind-boggling.