Higher Education

What do we mean when we say we want "to help children succeed"? The broad, general contours of the most important things we need to do are well understood. A healthy society is one in which all kids have the ability to achieve their intellectual and economic potential. That doesn't mean that if we get the policy right, every kid achieves her potential. Fate sometimes gets in the way. Nor does it mean that every kid makes it to the top 10 percent. Potentialities differ. But it does mean that...

Insiders know higher education is in upheaval, with free online classes proliferating, tuition surging and public universities struggling. Perhaps worst of all, too many students leave school with high debt and no degrees. Outsiders — namely, students and parents — wonder what is going on. Jeffrey J. Selingo, a veteran D.C. journalist, aims to make sense of all this in " College (Un)Bound " (Amazon Publishing/New Harvest, 238 pp.), which goes on sale Tuesday. Editor-at-large of the...

Brian Caffo teaches a public-health course at Johns Hopkins University that he calls a "mathematical biostatistics boot camp. " It typically draws a few dozen graduate students. Never more than 70. This fall, Caffo was swarmed. He had 15,000 students. They included Patrycja Jablonska in Poland, Ephraim Baron in California, Mohammad Hijazi in Lebanon and many others far from Baltimore who ordinarily would not have a chance to study at the elite Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Entrepreneurs seeking to build an elite global university based on new ways of teaching online announced Monday the creation of a $500,000 prize to be awarded each year to an educator "whose innovations have led to extraordinary student learning experiences. " The prize, described as the largest of its kind for higher education, is part of the start-up of the for-profit Minerva Project, which aims to open an institution of higher education in fall 2015. "Effectively it is a Nobel Prize for teaching," said Ben Nelson, Minerva's...

Woodbridge Campus 15200 Neabsco Mills Rd. Woodbridge 22191 703-878-5700 TDD: 703-878-5790 http://www.nvcc.edu/woodbridge Manassas Campus 6901 Sudley Rd. Manassas 20109 703-257-6600 TDD: 703-368-3748 http://www.nvcc.edu/manassas Woodbridge Campus 13385 Minnieville Rd. Woodbridge 22192 703-878-2800 Fax: 703-878-2993 woodbridge@strayer.edu http://www.strayer.edu/woodbridge ...

For many families, the cost of higher education is out of reach, while others can manage it only if they take on debt that could take decades to pay off. President Obama, meanwhile, has lofty goals for higher education. In his first joint address to Congress, in 2009, the president said that the United States should "once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. " To be first again, the Education Department says, 60 percent of young adults would have to obtain an associate or bachelor's degree by 2020.

Higher education is available throughout the metro area, including at four-year universities, community colleges and schools that offer certification in nearly every field. The District has a premier college for deaf and hearing-impaired students in Gallaudet University. Corcoran College of Art and Design, also in the District, offers bachelor's and master's degrees. The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis is the area's most heralded defense-oriented institution, but it is not alone in that field.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We might have to run her for something someday. That was terrific. Thank you, Stephanie (ph). I want to also introduce Yvonne (ph) Thomas (ph), who's Stephanie's (ph) proud mother. And we appreciate everything that you've done. And Stephanie's (ph) father, Albert, is around here as well. You know, there are few things as fundamental to the American dream or as essential for America's success as a good education. This has never been more true than it is today. At a time when our children are competing with kids in China and...

This piece is part of an On Leadership roundtable on higher education and the 21st-century leadership challenge for university presidents. Like many other sectors of the U.S. economy, higher education is suffering. State universities have been on the receiving end of significant legislative budget cuts for the past four years. And as they have increased tuition to make up for the lost revenue, they have gotten an earful from students, parents and state legislators. Even private universities are experiencing "tuition fatigue"...

Regarding Charles Lane's Jan. 1 op-ed column, "Big bloat on campus" : It's true that expenditures on the administration of higher education, including the expanding sector of "student services," have been growing more quickly than spending on teaching and learning. But are greedy higher-education administrators the main source of tuition increases? The Wall Street Journal report that Mr. Lane cited stated that administrative costs at the University of Minnesota represented 9 percent of total...

Higher education leaders are pushing to expand the online market by simplifying the rules colleges must follow to enroll students from around the country. Under a system based on oversight of brick-and-mortar campuses, colleges generally must obtain authorization from every state where they want to offer online programs. Requirements and fees vary from state to state. Education leaders say that system is too costly and cumbersome at a time of fast-growing interest in distance learning , with millions of students now...

A sea change is under way at the nation's old guard of academic institutions as more degree programs work their way online, fundamentally altering not just the way colleges teach students, but how they make money while doing so. The movement gained steam last year when private companies such as Coursera and Udacity began to offer online courses to the masses, taught by instructors at elite colleges such as Stanford, Harvard and the University of...

Gene D. Block is chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles . He serves on the board of directors of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and is a member of the executive committee of the Association of American Universities . Every fall, just before classes begin, we at UCLA send thousands of our new students out to volunteer projects at schools, parks and community centers across Los Angeles....

What do we mean when we say we want "to help children succeed"? The broad, general contours of the most important things we need to do are well understood. A healthy society is one in which all kids have the ability to achieve their intellectual and economic potential. That doesn't mean that if we get the policy right, every kid achieves her potential. Fate sometimes gets in the way. Nor does it mean that every kid makes it to the top 10 percent. Potentialities differ. But it does...

It's hard to think of a higher education leader who faces more challenges than Timothy P. White. The new chancellor of the California State University system, who started in December, oversees 23 campuses in the nation's most populous state, with 44,000 faculty and staff and 427,000 students. The range of student backgrounds and needs is staggering, and the cutbacks in recent years in state funding have been immense. Yet White was upbeat this week in a visit to Washington that coincided with a gathering of...

It's common knowledge that the University of Maryland and the University of Virginia are both prestigious institutions. It's also a given that the Charlottesville school is a bit higher than its College Park counterpart in the pecking order of state flagship universities. But outside the United States, apparently, a fair number of experts have a different view. New "world reputation rankings" from Times Higher Education, a publication based in the United Kingdom, show that U-Md.

College students and their parents should brace for sharp tuition increases as the widening economic downturn begins to hit campuses across the country, an organization of higher education officials said yesterday. The warning came in response to an annual national survey of tuition and fees that showed that college costs rose only modestly for the current academic year. But that report, released yesterday by the College Board, was based on data collected before June and did not reflect many of the economic trials embroiling the country.

Parchment , an education technology company founded by Matt Pittinsky , the co-founder of District-based Blackboard in 1997, is opening a Washington office next month. Parchment, headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz., and founded in 2011, electronically sends and receives academic transcripts. Bethesda-based Novak Biddle invested in Parchment during a venture fund round last year. Parchment's Washington office opens March 11 at 2031 Florida Ave. NW. It will initially house 10 sales and business development...

It was a simple email message — ‘Wow!' — but it said so much. I will never forget the moment in 2001 when Princeton University selected a renowned molecular biologist — a biologist who also happened to be a woman — as its 19th president. My own daughter, Abigail, was in college majoring in chemistry at the time. The announcement of Shirley Tilghman's presidency prompted not only her email to me, but created in all of us a sense of increased opportunities for women. Three years later, I would succeed...