ACTA today released a report that finds the country’s leading public institutions fail students and the American people in several key areas. Getting What You Pay For? examines 52 top-rated institutions to separate reputation from results. The report finds that too many leading, publicly-funded institutions don’t provide students with high academic quality at a reasonable price. Bloated administrative costs, shaky curricula, outsized athletic spending, and misplaced priorities have created a campus environment where too many students graduate ill-prepared, with record debt, and years later than they should—if they graduate at all.
ACTA today released a report that examines the country’s most prestigious liberal arts colleges. Despite endowments soaring as high as $1.8 billion, nearly all institutions increased tuition during the Great Recession to finance bloated administrative spending, with many college presidents enjoying salaries higher than Barack Obama’s. Education or Reputation? peels back reputation to find out […]
Whether it’s restoring a core curriculum, demanding affordability, or insisting on informed stewardship, ACTA is shaping the future of higher education by re-focusing the American academy on things that matter. This report outlines our accomplishments in 2012, and demonstrates that trustees, the media, and policymakers turn to ACTA due to our long-standing record of leadership.
The Founders admonished that informed, engaged citizens would be the indispensable guardian of our liberty. ACTA’s surveys, however, administered over the past two decades, reveal that our schools—and especially our colleges and universities—have done a poor job of ensuring the civic literacy on which our nation depends. Too many institutions fail to require courses that […]
The first job of any trustee is to be a fiduciary, to look after the academic and fiscal health of the institution. When that health is compromised, it’s a trustee’s duty to administer effective treatment. The University of Colorado recently had a check-up in the form of a report by the American Council of Trustees […]
WASHINGTON, D.C. – We know that college costs are increasing, but what’s harder to find out is where the money is going. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni on Wednesday launched a site that makes it easy to track how your hard-earned tuition dollars are spent: HowCollegesSpendMoney.com. It’s geared toward college trustees, lawmakers and policy wonks, […]
Earlier this year, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) found that alumni giving fell 7.9 percent from 2018 to 2019. Ann Kaplan, senior director of the study, said the drop “doesn’t necessarily mean anything in the long term.” Then the coronavirus turned the world of higher education upside-down. Campuses are empty, classes have […]
Launched in 1995, we are the only organization that works with alumni, donors, trustees, and education leaders across the United States to support liberal arts education, uphold high academic standards, safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, and ensure that the next generation receives an intellectually rich, high-quality college education at an affordable price.
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