Marian Wang Posts

Charter School on financial probation releases financials, but omits key salary.

For-profit schools are a morally tricky proposition, but the Kochs are pushing harder than ever in North Carolina to make them omnipresent.

Colleges are using discount pricing techniques to lure students to attend. The "high-tuition, high-aid" model is based on the same technique used at retail outlets, because everyone, it seems, loves a good sale.

From jaw-dropping pay and perks at universities to a $1-billion plan to purchase iPads, here are some of 2013’s best accountability stories in education.

Sallie Mae and other large student-loan servicers — the companies that act as a go-between for borrowers and lenders — will soon be getting some regular oversight from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency announced this week.

James Garland was president of Miami University — a public university in Ohio — for a decade, retiring in 2006 after spearheading a number of changes aimed at raising the school’s profile and pulling in more out-of-state students, who pay higher tuition and are typically wealthier. He now has second thoughts about the trends in higher education, saying public universities are in the midst of a "severe crisis."

Across the country, a small but growing number of public universities are looking to cut deals with state lawmakers that scale back direct oversight, often in return for less funding or for meeting certain performance targets. Over the past few years, schools in Texas, Virginia and Florida have all gotten more flexibility to raise tuition. Other plans have recently been broached, though with less success, in Wisconsin, California and Louisiana.

Shauniqua Epps was a high achiever, graduating from high school with a 3.8 GPA and ranking among the top students in her class. She served as president of the student government. She played varsity basketball and softball. Her high-school guidance counselor, in a letter of recommendation, wrote that Epps was “an unusual young lady” with “both drive and determination.” Her family is also poor. None of the three schools Epps was admitted to gave her a single dollar of aid.

The report, released on Tuesday, lays out more than 30 recommendations for fixing the nation’s increasingly strained system of paying for college, chief among them a more substantial and permanent investment in direct aid to students through Pell grants.

It's been four long years for Francisco Reynoso. The California gardener whose son died in a car accident in 2008 left him buried in grief — and in student debt. At last, the bereaved father is getting some resolution.