Via Instapundit:  Student loan debt is reaching record highs.

Eric Weddle of the (Lafayette) Journal and Courier has a report in the News and Tribune that focuses on the impact of this burden on local scholars:

The average amount of debt for 2011 graduates at Indiana’s public, four-year colleges rose to $27,500. The new national average for students earning bachelor’s degrees is $26,600. This comes on the heels of the first study of three-year default rates on student loans. It found Indiana students just a bit below the 13.4 percent national average.

“It is pretty hard to look at the those numbers and not be concerned,” said Teresa S. Lubbers, state commissioner for higher education. “It is having a chilling impact on how people are making decisions on higher education.”

A report by the nonprofit advocacy group The Project on Student Debt ranked Indiana 11th highest in the nation for student debt and with 63 percent of the state’s 2011 graduating class in debt. Nationwide, two-thirds of that class took out loans. Private student loans made up about one-fifth of what they owed.

Lauren Asher, president of The Institute for College Access & Success that oversees the report, said even as unemployment rates for college graduates fell slightly from 9.1 percent in 2010 to 8.8 percent in 2011, anxiety continues for those figuring out how to pay for and pay back a college degree.

“In these tough times, a college degree is still your best bet for getting a job and decent pay,” Asher said. “But, as debt levels rise, fear of loans can prevent students from getting the education they need to succeed. Students and parents need to know that, even at similar looking schools, debt levels can be wildly different.”

The report also calls for federal collection of student debt. According to report author Matthew Reed, 12 percent of the colleges that reported debt data last year did not report for the 2011 report. And very few for-profit colleges reported.

The Indiana college with the highest loan payback was Indiana University’s Northwest campus at $31,686. Students with the least debt graduated at the University of Southern Indiana, owing an average of $18,046. Purdue University student debt was at $27,268 and Indiana University was at $28,434 — both above the national average.

Ted Malone, Purdue director of the division of financial aid, said on the West Lafayette campus there are ongoing efforts to teach students financial literacy and help...

President Obama touts his education programs that increase “college access”.

However, according Inside Higher Ed, college enrollment numbers have been downgraded under his administration:

It’s official: Higher education is shrinking, for the first time in at least 15 years.

Total enrollment at American colleges and universities eligible for federal financial aid fell slightly in the fall of 2011 from the year before, according to preliminary data released Tuesday by the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics.

The data from the department’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System show that 21,554,004 students were enrolled in fall 2011, down from 21,588,124 in fall 2010. While that drop is smaller than two-tenths of one percent, it is the first such dip since at least 1996, according to officials at NCES.

In many ways the result is not surprising; college enrollments boomed in the late 2000s, as they often do during recessions, as workers lost jobs and sought to retool or opted to continue their educations because they didn’t like their prospects for employment.

Who Is Going, and Where Are They Going?

The most recent data offer some early clues about which students are enrolling (and choosing not to), and which institutions are likely to benefit (and not). Over all, the statistics favor part-time and minority students over full-time and white students, and four-year and private nonprofit over two-year and public and for-profit colleges and universities.

… the biggest swings in institutional enrollments were for private nonprofit colleges (up nearly 2 percent) and for-profit institutions (down 3 percent). Declines in two-year enrollments drove most of the decrease for the for-profit sector and kept public college enrollments from growing, more than offsetting an increase of more than 120,000 in enrollment at four-year public colleges. California’s community colleges have restricted their enrollment because of budget cuts in the last two to three years, which could account for much of the two-year-college decline nationally (and could suggest that community colleges elsewhere have fared all right).

In addition to the demographic and economic changes that might have driven the enrollment patterns, the federal government’s crackdown on for-profit colleges — and changes that individual colleges have made in response — may have driven at least some of the enrollment losses for the institutions.

Students enrolled part time edged upward, while the number of students enrolled full time dipped. Reasonable speculation is that more students shifted from full-time...

Online course enrollment in the United States is hitting record levels with more than 6.1 million students. Millions of would-be scholars, concerned about the “higher education bubble”, are looking for alternatives to traditional forms of study.

Therefore, many Minnesota residents were perplexed when free online offerings triggered some concern from their state’s officials. The Washington Post higher education writer Nick Anderson reviews the Minnesota Office of Higher Education findings and its decision, which was based on First Amendment principles.

Minnesotans, rest assured: Your state government believes you are entitled to free online higher education.

This had been a point of controversy until, well, a few minutes ago. In an earlier post this afternoon, I noted that the free online education provider Coursera had added a proviso to its terms of service that Minnesotans should not take any of its free university courses, or at least that they should do the majority of the work in said courses in another state.

Why was this state suddenly taking a stand against the online education tide?

Apparently someone in the Minnesota Office of Higher Education deemed it necessary for universities that offer courses via Coursera to register with the state, according to an old state law that aims to protect consumers from education scams. Apparently some had not done so.

After this became public, and people raised a few questions about the First Amendment and other matters — namely, how exactly can a free course be a scam? — the office issued a clarification via email.

“Obviously, our office encourages lifelong learning and wants Minnesotans to take advantage of educational materials available on the Internet, particularly if they’re free,” said Larry Pogemiller, director of the office. “No Minnesotan should hesitate to take advantage of free, online offerings from Coursera.”

Pogemiller, according to the e-mail, said a 20-year-old statute requiring institutional registration clearly did not envision free online, not-for-credit offerings.

“When the legislature convenes in January, my intent is to work with the Governor and Legislature to appropriately update the statute to meet modern-day circumstances,” said Pogemiller. “Until that time, I see no reason for our office to require registration of free, not-for-credit offerings.”

Case closed? Not quite. I bet questions about regulation of universities in the online realm are only going to multiply in the future, maybe as fast as massive open online courses themselves. This is why MOOCs are, as they say, “disruptive.”

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Cheating scandals have recently captured nationwide attention.

One developing investigation may impact a keystone of college applications, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). New York Times writer Jenny Anderson reports in an investigation centered on an SAT testing scam.

When Samuel Eshaghoff, a 19-year-old sophomore at Emory University, was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly accepting money to take the SAT for six Long Island high school students, testing officials said it was an isolated event. But school officials and prosecutors disagree, and a continuing investigation is focusing on other schools and students.

“I do believe it’s more systemic than just Great Neck North,” said Kathleen M. Rice, the district attorney for Nassau County.

Ms. Rice brought criminal charges against Mr. Eshaghoff and misdemeanor charges against six current and former Great Neck North students who said Mr. Eshaghoff took the test for them. Five of the six said they paid him a fee of up to $2,500. Mr. Eshaghoff has pleaded not guilty. She said she was investigating two other schools and various other test takers. She said the cheating problem was widespread, a sentiment echoed by school administrators and superintendents.

“As tests have become higher-stakes tests, as the competition between kids for scholarships and college entrance has increased, the likelihood of kids looking for ways to beat the system — to cheat — has increased,” said Henry Grishman, superintendent of Jericho Public Schools on Long Island, which has 3,200 students.

School officials say the testing system has many flaws, most notably the fact that there are no consequences for cheaters. When the Educational Testing Service, the company that administers the test, detects irregularities, it simply notifies the affected students that their scores are being withdrawn.

Neither colleges nor high schools are ever alerted that cheating was suspected. Tom Ewing, an Educational Testing Service spokesman, said that confidentiality laws meant to protect minors prevented his company from disclosing that information. Of 2.25 million SATs taken every year, about 1,000 scores are withdrawn for misbehavior, 99 percent of which are for copying, he said.

Four of the students who said Mr....

As 2012 ended, students nationwide were increasingly asking that politics be kept out of the classroom.

A Ohio State University German teacher apparently didn’t get the message, as student Patrick Seaworth notes in a recent piece in The College Fix.

When I enrolled in German II at Ohio State University in the fall, I expected to learn the intermediate measures of the German language. As it turns out, that was hoping for too much.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The class delved into instruction now and again, but it quickly became apparent I was the lone conservative in a classroom in which learning German took a backseat to discussions on the prowess of Barack Obama, American narcissism, the virtues of socialism, the sad plight of Chicago’s teachers, and why the U.S. military is the reason the American education system is broken, just to name a few tangents I endured over the fall semester.

Seaworth reviewed a  few of the course topics:

For a bit of extra fun, we were asked to compare the intelligence of George W. Bush with Angela Merkel’s. To our professor’s credit, we were asked to do so in German.

Tax rates were another hot topic of discussion. Not so much that the German citizen faces incredibly high tax rates, but rather that Germany’s high tax rate allows for an orderly state, the kind of order that places young children into differing schools based on perceived capability. Taxation that gives free healthcare, welcomed by a collective refrain along the lines of: “If only we had a freer President to give us free healthcare.” Germany, a country that “actually does something with their tax dollars” in the words of one classmate.

Obama’s sound bite during the third presidential debate about horses and bayonets allowed for yet more American criticism in German II. The German state, that peaceful nation, was applauded for being a country in which the flying of its national flag is still taboo. Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden’s laughing fits during his debate made him my professor’s new favorite politician, as she informed us the next day.

The instructor also managed to touch on German culture and history:

As such, Germans were praised not just for their high taxes, their highly structured state, and their oh-so-rich history (Nazism was largely avoided), but also for their advanced civil culture, which includes a hatred of what we in America would refer to as patriotism, which they see as...

If you read College Insurrection, you already know this is true, but it’s nice to hear a professor admit it.

The College Fix reports.

Professor Admits the Truth: Social Science/Humanities Classes Inherently Biased

University of Texas journalism Professor Robert Jensen was brutally honest about the nature of social science and humanities courses his peers...

Which is why it has earned FIRE’s Speech Code of the month.

Samantha Harris reports.

Speech Code of the Month: Auburn University at Montgomery

Another year, a dozen more ridiculous speech codes. To kick off the new year, FIRE announces its Speech Code of the Month for January 2013: Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM).

AUM’s ...

College Insurrection has posted many pieces about the cost of higher education and student debt.

In a new article at Forbes, William Baldwin offers students 12 “tricks” to help pay for their college education.

12 Insider Tricks To Pay For College

The fanciest colleges cost $55,000 a year. Suppose you have three youngsters who...

Do you need more proof that the left is more emboldened than ever? See the story below.

Aslinn Scott of the College Fix reports.

Illegal Immigrant Pushes For Immigration Reform in Campus Speech

America is becoming “browner, more Asian, and gayer,” and now more than ever is the time to lobby hard for massive...

The dust is currently settling after the House of Representatives passed the “Fiscal Cliff” deal.

There is much to dislike about the hastily passed holiday legislation, especially the mere $1 in spending cuts to every $41 dollars in tax increases.  Christian Lopac of Wabash College explains his thoughts on why this is...

One of the easiest predictions at the start of 2013 is that the number of online courses will be dramatically increasing.

The Daily Caller’s Eric Owens reports that even Ivy League law schools are becoming part of the trend.

The higher education system in the United States may be about to transform radically,...

Boston University has received an OK from the federal government to open an infectious-disease labratory in Boston’s South End, one of the city’s most thickly settled neighborhoods. Am I the only person who thinks this has disaster-waiting-to-happen written all over it?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to build a facility like this...

We previously noted An Argument Against Hook-Up Culture at Princeton at the Princeton Tory.

In a new op-ed at the Daily Princetonian, writers Audrey Pollnow and Ben Koons offer their critical take on the hook-up culture at their own school.

Sexual standards

Princeton should have sexual standards that allow people to live the good life....

Ayn Rand’s body of work is so influential that John Allison, former chairman of bank holding company BB&T Corp. (BBT)  gives schools grants of as much as $2 million if they agree to create a course on capitalism and make “Atlas Shrugged,” required reading.

To make such courses relevant to today’s generation, Northwestern...

Perhaps this explains why so many California grads are working in restaurants and retail.

Iqbal Pittalwala of UCR Today reports.

California’s Graduate Students in Environmental Sciences Lag Behind in Technology, Computation

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have conducted a study showing that many skills and practices that could help...