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January 29, 2024

The Value of a Bachelor’s Degree

Key Points As public confidence in higher education has declined, Americans have become less sanguine about the bachelor’s degree and skeptical of its potential return on investment. Nonetheless, four-year degrees continue to be associated with significant economic and noneconomic benefits for individuals and communities. For those who want to attend college, have adequate financing options, and can finish their degrees, the benefits of…

January 29, 2024

How Should Students Think About College?

In recent years, there has been a marked decline in public confidence in higher education, sparking debate on the value of a bachelor’s degree. In a new report published by AEI’s Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility, we seek to add some much-needed nuance to an increasingly go/no-go debate. Despite public perception, the bachelor’s degree continues to have great…

January 24, 2024

It’s National School Choice Week. Democrats: What Do You Think?

This week is National School Choice Week, which makes it a good time to ponder the state of the school choice coalition. During the Clinton–Bush school reform era, broad swaths of the public—both Republicans and Democrats—supported charter schools and different forms of public school choice. However, private school choice has long been a primarily Republican…

January 19, 2024

The Case for Curriculum

Since A Nation at Risk, Education Reform Efforts Have Mostly Stopped at the Classroom Door Executive Summary Decades of education reform have left policymakers, educators, and students alike fatigued and unimpressed. From standardized testing to accountability measures and smaller classroom sizes, almost every idea under the sun has been tried and tried again, except for one:…

January 19, 2024

Ninety Percent Student Attendance Won’t Solve Chronic Absenteeism

One day after Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona presented the Biden administration’s “Improving Student Achievement Agenda,” which appropriately focused on the unprecedented chronic absenteeism rates in US public schools, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released data under the headline, “Public School Leaders Report 90 Percent Average Daily Student Attendance Rate in November 2023.”…

December 12, 2023

Underserved: A Conversation with Ja’Ron Smith and Chris Pilkerton

Event Summary On December 12, AEI’s Scott Winship and former Trump administration officials Ja’Ron Smith and Chris Pilkerton discussed how policymakers can improve the lives of people in underserved communities across the country. Mr. Smith and Mr. Pilkerton began with a presentation connecting President Abraham Lincoln’s opportunity agenda with traditional conservative economic philosophy. They explained…

December 8, 2023

Biden’s Even Worse Version of “Free College”

The Biden administration has abolished the federal student-loan program, at least if a “student-loan program” is one in which students borrow money and then eventually repay it. What’s being erected in its stead is a scheme that’s rife with moral hazard, seemingly designed to inflate college costs, and best described as a “student-fraud program”—in which…

November 17, 2023

Male Malaise Is Not Just About ‘the Culture’

You are familiar with the litany of ills blighting our society: declining rates of work and marriage; rising rates of obesity and loneliness; soaring deaths of despair. All of these trends reflect the falling fortunesof the American male, a malaise magnified when we look at boys and men in poor and working-class communities. When the male malaise…

November 8, 2023

Perspective: The 4-Year Dividing Line

New survey shows the compounding benefits of college degrees. Here’s how to help those without degrees to catch up When it comes to jobs and work, the past three years have been among the most tumultuous in decades. From mass layoffs in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic to surging reemployment and wages as the country…