higher-learning

Community Colleges Are Getting Screwed Financially

Hamilton Nolan · 05/23/13 11:12AM

As higher education in America grows both more expensive and more necessary (as an entry fee to a middle class life), community colleges— the last affordable path into college— grow more important. But they're not getting any more well-funded. Quite the opposite!

What Should Colleges Invest In?

Hamilton Nolan · 05/17/13 11:58AM

The precocious and progressive young students of Swarthmore College are currently urging their school to completely rid itself of any investments in fossil fuels. The school pointed out that this move could potentially raise each student's tuition costs by $13,000 per year. Is there any way to make divestment work?

Hamilton Nolan · 05/13/13 03:02PM

"While the college is not commenting on why Ferguson was dismissed, he said it was 'absolutely' related to the student's unorthodox use of a chicken in art."

Universities Exist Primarily to Enrich Football Coaches

Hamilton Nolan · 05/08/13 08:04AM

Our nation's great institutions of higher learning exist for a very clear and noble purpose: to enrich themselves, and, by extension, their football coaches. Data shows that they are pursuing this mission with selfless zeal.

Hamilton Nolan · 03/29/13 11:43AM

Theological seminaries are struggling as their popularity declines. Ehh... can't bring ourselves to cry.

Epicenter of Evil (Harvard University) in Quiz Team Cheating Scandal

Hamilton Nolan · 03/22/13 09:05AM

Last night, the Harvard University men's basketball team—considered scrappy underdogs in this, but no other, field—upset New Mexico in the NCAA tournament, to the exclusive delight of Harvard alumni. Yet today, in a bit of reassuring proof of the existence of karmic justice, comes news of a Harvard cheating scandal. HIDE YOUR SHAME, HARVARD DEVIANTS: your quiz bowl team was dirty.

Going to College Reduces Your Chances of Being a Drunk

Hamilton Nolan · 03/19/13 11:24AM

People who are uneducated boors generally assume that college is little more than a four year-long fraternity party during which the main activity is drinking vast quantities of intoxicating liquor. That's not true at all; it takes many frat boys six years to finish college. Haha, but seriously folks, I'm not very drunk at all right now—thanks to college.

Hamilton Nolan · 03/13/13 09:18AM

If you want a university job, get a math doctorate. Ugh. Do you want a university job that bad?

Hamilton Nolan · 03/06/13 02:00PM

Average tuition at public colleges rose 8.3% last year—about the same amount that states cut their funding.

Student Debt Is Perfectly Following the Financial Meltdown Script

Hamilton Nolan · 03/04/13 09:56AM

Just when the stock market recovers and public optimism returns and you start to lose faith in the power of American capitalism to constantly repeat its past mistakes in the form of foreseeable boom-and-bust cycles that always end in massive losses, the system steps up to reinforce your belief in humanity's fundamental unwillingness to learn from past mistakes, ever. Hello, looming student loan meltdown!

Student Debt Is a Runaway Train to Hell, as Always

Hamilton Nolan · 03/01/13 02:48PM

Your grandparents, enterprising and hardscrabble dirt farmers that they were, could probably work their way through college with nothing more than a job as a soda jerk at the Moderne Tyme Coca-Cola Soda and Sweetes Fountainne and Heroin Dispensary. Now, though, you would have to actually be a heroin trafficker in order to pay your own way through college. The latest figures on the humongous US student debt load are out. They are not improving.

Hamilton Nolan · 02/27/13 09:05AM

Only 54% of first time college students graduate (from any school) within six years.

If You Go to Vet School, You Will Be Broke

Hamilton Nolan · 02/25/13 09:40AM

Ever since you were a little kid, you loved animals. Cats, dogs, other animals: you just loved them. Petted them and everything, real nice. You always dreamed, since you were a little kid, of growing up and working with animals every single day. You love the pretty animals, and you want to help them. Even when you were five years old, you knew that one day, you would grow up and become a veterinarian.

Economic Analysis Unfortunately Confirms Stereotypes About Art School

Hamilton Nolan · 02/19/13 09:58AM

Making fun of going to art school as a futile and self-indulgent formula for regret is like... even more cliched than making fun of law school. Unfortunately, the latest economic data confirms that everyone must continue with this trite (and, frankly, unfunny) form of mockery until the situation on the ground changes.

If You Go to College to Learn to Blog You Are a God Damn Sucker

Hamilton Nolan · 02/18/13 05:50PM

So then, it's a new academic program straight outta Duke University: "Write(H)ers," which will, according to the Duke Chronicle, "create a community of feminist-oriented writers," by, you know, teaching women how to blog. Specifically—direct quote—"The 23 members of the program will participate in personal blogging." This new program is officially sponsored by the Women's Center at Duke University, a school with a tuition of $43,623 per year.

Business Professor: Don't Major in Business

Hamilton Nolan · 02/14/13 02:47PM

The cold hard truth is that kids who major in business are generally considered to be kind of dumb. Not by us, mind you, but by, you know, people in the world of business. "A business major is a big fucking waste of time," is the consensus opinion of those people that business majors will soon be asking for jobs. Now, the penchant for "telling it like it is" when it comes to majoring in business has come to an unlikely place: business school.

Publisher Sues College Librarian for Saying Publisher Sucks

Hamilton Nolan · 02/08/13 11:15AM

A well-known principle of academic debate is, "If someone challenges your intellectual credentials, the best way to prove them wrong is to try to sue them into oblivion." So it goes for the poor college librarian who's being sued for millions of dollars over a blog post disparaging an academic publisher. (Ironically, no college librarian's blog post disparaging an academic publisher has ever been read by a human being.)

Hamilton Nolan · 02/06/13 04:51PM

To highlight labor inequities, adjunct professors ask students not to call them "Professor." Okay, Not Real Professor.