The United States produces relatively few college graduates, placing the United States behind other major countries, with only 37.9 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 60 holding two- or four-year degrees in 2008, according to a report released by the Lumina Foundation for Education, according to a Tuesday report by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. Although the percentage of Americans with college degrees rose by a fraction of a percent between 2007 and 2008, low-income and racial minority groups in particular remain drastically underrepresented. Many potential students are deterred by the economic crisis, which should instead be used as an opportunity to place a greater focus on higher education and to create new jobs, Lumina Foundation for Education President Jamie Merisotis told Diverse.
College employees throughout the nation donated approximately $13.5 million to politicians running for federal offices during this election cycle, according to a report released by the Center for Responsive Politics, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported Wednesday. Researchers at the Washington-based center analyzed individual contributions from college administrators, faculty and other college employees through July 31, revealing that most donations went to Democratic candidates. Employees at the University of California which topped the list of donors gave $483,981 to political campaigns, with 86 percent of total funds going to Democratic politicians. Harvard University and Stanford University were among the top 10 college contributors, along with the for-profit Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix. The top three recipients in both the Senate and House of Representatives were all Democrats, while the institution that gave the most to Republican candidates did not rank among the top 20 contributing institutions overall.
Providing teachers with large bonuses as incentives to improve students' test scores does not improve their likelihood of reaching standardized benchmarks, according to a study led by a Vanderbilt University education professor, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Over the course of three years, researchers from the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt offered bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 to an experimental group of teachers in Nashville if their students reached certain test score targets. Researchers did not find any difference between the performance of the teachers who were offered bonuses and those who were not. However, the federal program promoting performance-based pay has grown by about $300 million since 2009 after it yielded promising results, The Post reported.
