I don't know that this is a grammatical problem, so much as a style problem. What confuses me about a lot of headlines is the use of words that function as multiple parts of speech. In this case, the word "lower". My first read-through, I was thinking, "parents say lower class sizes WHERE-IS-THE-VERB?", I had to back up, and realize that, in this headline, "lower" is the verb, not an adjective.

I find this really bizarre, and unusual. I wonder if this was a temporary situation while curriculum and/or AP testing was in flux at that school. What was the academic background of the students that took AP Spanish early, and what class did they finish when they took the test? Typical american curricula have at most one year equivalent of foreign language in middle school, and if a college bound student is going to take four years of Spanish in high school, I can't imagine why they wouldn't take that after as much coursework as possible.

I feel both for the family of the victim and for whoever prepared the food. I'm sure that whoever it was knows it was them by now: if 20+ people got sick at a potluck for 60 people total, that probably narrows down what the source was. Generally, when I bring food for a potluck, I'm not bringing 20+ servings of anything, unless it is something like chips and salsa.

This is completely not my experience. I can't believe that any neurotypical middle school student, who hasn't taken a class designed for the AP syllabus, has any hope of passing an AP exam. Do you really think that an 8th grader, who isn't a native FL speaker, with the typical US public school curriculum, has any hope of passing any AP foreign language test? AP Calc? AP Physics? AP Bio? You are seriously asserting that it is a good idea for a student who has taken no Calculus (and presumably, not studied independently) to take the AP Calc exam? What is the score distribution for such students?

Um, the library?

If you are checking out 40 items a week, that's 2,000 items a year, which seems not only expensive to buy, but even if they were free, where would you put them, and how would you organize them? Is the problem that you can't find the books, or that they are all on separate library cards? If possible, I might try to check out everything on one card. I assume that there's an online system where you can see what the library thinks you have checked out on a card. I make it a point to check this before I go to the library, so that I can round up as many books as possible. Checking one card is a lot easier than checking three or four.

And, a hundred years in the future, Christians will take credit for having worked to secure LGBT rights, because of that one Episcopalian bishop.

Do you have any idea how rigorous the High school Latin classes were? Did they take the NLE? Does she know her paradigms cold? What text did they use, and how far did they get? My feeling is that unless the HS Latin was pretty rigorous, 101 is a good place to be, especially if this is a rigorous private LAC. College classes move fast, and there's a lot less hand holding. While the professor may move students up, does this school offer Latin 101 and 102 in the fall semester? If not, her only other option may be 3rd semester Latin, which may be too much. As an aside: DE into a private LAC? I didn't even know that was possible.

Those of us of a certain age remember having to walk all over campus, going to each department, in turn, to sign up for classes. While this seems amazingly inefficient today, there were some benefits. When we signed up for each class, we talked to an actual human being, usually a graduate student in that department, who personally knew most of the faculty, and, if asked, would give advice on what classes, sections, or professors to sign up for. "if you aren't majoring in this, and this is the only class you will take in this department, Prof X's class is a better overview than Prof Y". It was like ratemyprofessors, without all the bozos. And, on topic, if the school doesn't have a schedule builder, I'd just use google calendar, and do it "by hand".

I think it is better to design the test so that the student has enough time to derive the formulae they need, rather than make the test a frantic dash of computation.

Generally speaking, these kinds of assistantships are not available now, nor ever were in the professional schools: Law, Medicine, Vet, Architecture, Business, and I'm sure I'm missing a few. They still exist for the "research" graduate students, STEM or otherwise.

Which is exactly why all pools around here have the guard buy their own red guard suit from the brand and style of their choice.

But there's a huge difference between ill-fitting polyester slacks and tops and an ill-fitting bathing suit. Even hyper-fit, competitive swimmers come in all different shapes, and not every brand or style fits them well.

I find this highly unlikely. Wouldn't they need to get the sizes for each of the guards first?

I'm not saying volunteer work is useless, I'm saying it doesn't make sense to integrate it into the university setting. Did a PhD level professor select your volunteer assignments for you? Did you write up research papers after each assignment? One can volunteer at any time of their life. I believe that being in college is like a full time job, where we pay good money for access to professors, lab equipment, peers, and other things that are only available at the University. Students do need real world experience, but the best way to do that is via a real internship, or maybe working a real job in a gap year.

Every pool I've heard of, the rule for guards is "you must wear a red guard suit". But they never care if it is one piece, two pieces, or from any particular vendor.

I am pretty confident that most study abroad trips are not as advertised. Sure, they are fun, and students may learn a bit about foreign culture, but most that I've seen have really just been long-form vacations. I'm sure there's some value it in, but I'm not paying $10k a year extra for the experience. As far as volunteer hours, you don't need expensive university oversight to work at Habitat, your local soup kitchen, or any one of a number of worthy places. Moreover, I question the value here also wrt the college experience -- I want my kids in college to focus on their studies, and I really question the educational value of racking up hundreds of thousands of hours of volunteer service. Their "full time job" is their studies. I do think that, for many areas of study, a semester or year-long paid internship is incredibly valuable. However, the university doesn't need to organize much for these to work well, and shouldn't be trying to replicate the experience.

Maybe it is bad form to follow up one's one post, but I found the numbers very interesting in the post about tiny Sweet Briar College, a tiny LAC who is forced to close. Their fees are listed at $45k/year, but the average discount for all incoming freshman rose to almost 60% over the last few years. Obviously, 60% off from $45k is still a ton of money, but it shows that college sticker prices may be even less reliable than car sticker prices. Oh, and here is more data: The average discount rate for private schools is 46%.

But, I think there's a qualitative difference between a research experience, like the MTU boat, and what is, essentially, a secularized mission trip. The first seems key to the University's mission (and difficult to reproduce outside the university setting). The latter, however, seems easy to reproduce at home, or outside the university setting.

It is easy and fun to get worked up and say stuff like the bolded, but is it really true? My alma mater (and most, I suspect) don't seem to have any interest in getting more consumers/students: their enrollment numbers have been roughly the same for the last 30 years. If they had, say, doubled enrollment, all other things being equal, cost per student would probably go down.

Are you saying that the IT guys at a college count as "administrators"?

The most interesting thing about the article is it claims the rise is cost is mostly due to the increased number of administrators. It claims that CSU went from about 1 administrator per 3 full-faculty members to about 1 to 1!, from 1975 to 2008. I'm curious what the ratios would be if instead of comparing to full-time faculty, to compare to "everyone who teaches". We know there's been a huge increase in adjuncts and other part-time instructional staff -- I just googled, and currently, 50% of the instructors at CSU are part time. Is there really that much of a rise in administrators? Who are they, and what do they do?

This article throws out a lot of numbers, but seems to have difficulty making a point: "For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher." 1960 seems like an odd baseline for this comparison, and comparing total college spending to military spending seems odd. We need one military to defend our country, no matter how many citizens there are. If the number of citizens magically doubled or halved, our military needs would be the roughly same. But, it is reasonable to assume that college spending is going to depend on number of kids going to college, which is going to depend on the population, among other things. What we all care about is the per-capita cost of college, not the total cost. Also, the article talks about total "appropriation" for higher education, which apparently, include federal grant and loan programs, which seems disingenuous to me. Sure, federal spending for these programs have gone up, but that's because prices have gone up, and if the support programs hadn't at least tried to keep up, the entire middle class would march on Washington with torches and pitchforks. Some say the correlation goes the other way -- that generous loans encourage colleges to raise prices, but I'm not sure that's a causation. Moreover, all of these articles always measure the "sticker price" for college, which has gone up dramatically, but may or may not be the actual price paid by any given student at any institution. Not that college is cheap after scholarships, but how many people are really paying full freight for the $50k/year LACs?

Conventional wisdom for advanced research degrees is that you should only go to a graduate school that accepts you with funding. This is not for financial reasons, but if you are accepted without funding, it means that the school doesn't really think you have what it takes to succeed there, but is happy to take your money. I wonder if there is a corollary for undergraduates and aid.

60% of all those who happen to vote, or 60% of all houses? Usually, it is the latter, which makes it very hard to change anything. The total turnout for the last US presidential election wasn't 60%.