At a time of major fiscal crisis and growing student and faculty unrest, ACTA’s report points the finger at California’s college and university trustees as both the problem-—and the solution-—to greater access and quality in the Golden State. Praising the California Master Plan for establishing an accessible statewide system of higher education, the report finds that UC and Cal State trustees have too often delegated their stewardship authority and sanctioned growing problems of waste, bloat and excess. Noting that the United States spends more on education per student than almost any country on earth, the report argues that many of California’s higher education problems stem from misdirection of resources and calls on the trustees to get their own house in order before demanding higher tuitions and more taxpayer dollars.
ACTA’s 12th state higher education report examines questions of great urgency for the state of Mississippi: How should individual public universities choose their leadership? Are the public universities careful stewards of taxpayer dollars? Is free speech protected on Mississippi’s college campuses? The report assesses institutions on measures of academic strength, intellectual diversity, cost effectiveness, and […]
ACTA’s 11th state report finds higher education in Florida has both sunny spots and storms to avoid, yet overall has strong potential to set an example for other states to follow. The report, Florida Rising: An Assessment of Public Universities in the Sunshine State, examines issues of cost, speech codes, administrative vs. academic spending, core […]
This report focuses on three key aspects of public higher education in the state of South Carolina: cost and effectiveness, general education requirements, and governance structures. First, we gauge cost and effectiveness by asking how much families are paying to attend schools, how the schools are using that money, and what are students getting in […]
It sounds like an obesity epidemic in higher education: program bloat. But rather than some sort of elephantine curriculum, the phrase refers to the hundreds of degree programs at California’s public universities with fewer than 10 graduates in a given year—at a time when many students are turned away from more popular programs because of […]
Sonoma State University has a strong set of core classes and stands out because it is spending less on administration and more on education, but it also comes close to impinging on free speech. Those are the conclusions of a report about the California State University and University of California systems released today by a […]
“I look to the diffusion of light and education,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1822, “as the resource to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and advancing the happiness of man.” Thus the 79-year-old Founding Father–principal author of the Declaration of Independence, first secretary of state, third president of the United States, […]
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