The Swail Letter Podcast: Recent Episodes
Dr. Watson Scott Swail
I am an educational researcher, policy analyst, and somewhat provocateur on education and politics. I am the President & CEO of the US-based Educational Policy Institute and am an expert on public policy, program evaluation, and more specifically, college access and success.
When a student exhibits some factor that could lead to academic failure or withdrawal, then that represents a lever that is pressed by the student and should start an institutional process to act in accordance with the situation. This Swail Letter talks about "The Lever Principle."
Everybody’s talking about those celebrities and rich people taking advantage of the system by fraudulently getting their kids into the best schools in the world. We’re talking Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, USC, Wake Forest, and UT Austin. Leading the pack is Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives and Sports Night fame and Lori Loughlin from Full House. But there were dozens of other affluent people who paid to have their children admitted to these selective institutions. They did it through bribes, test fraud, and athletic fraud. And they knew they were doing it. The man behind this scheme reportedly collected over $25 million from his three dozen clients and, in the end, wore a wiretap to tape his clients. People are going to jail on these felonies.
This Swail Letter takes issue with an expert from the accounting firm of Grant Thornton who pushed an agenda on MSNBC on February 4, 2019 about education issues related to the workforce. Dr. Swail takes issues with her assumptions and clarifies here.
Today, due primarily to the high cost of college, but also in the reduced amount in family savings, more students than ever are choosing to pay for their college later than now. For most students, this is not a choice. Student loans are a necessary evil for over two thirds of the college-going population. And while access to loans is a good thing, too much loan debt can be detrimental, especially for people who fail to complete their studies. Today’s Swail Letter looks at the issue of student debt and the retirement population.
This week, it was announced that the 11th richest person in the world, former New York City Mayor, and potential Democratic 2020 Candidate Michael Bloomberg gave his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, a record-breaking $1.8 billion gift for student aid to ensure that their admissions processes would be “forever need-blind.” To put this gift in perspective, it is almost double the previous largest gift to a university—in the world. It is massive.
This is an interview from the Tri-State Consortium for Opportunity Programs in New York in 2015 about educational opportunity writ large and how educational opportunity programs figure in this issue.
This week, Burning Glass Technologies, in partnership with Strada Education Network, released a report on the underemployment of college graduates, and it provides some fodder to the “not for all” discussion. The findings are illuminating.
Is higher education overregulated? I mean, from a student or parent’s point of view? Do we expect too much for students, and parents? Or have we the right Goldilocks level? Today’s Swail Letter: Double Lighting.
Fear seems to be ruling the world right now, especially within the United States. The population has bought into fear-mongering, 85 years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt uttered this phrase:
“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Many people today assume Roosevelt was talking about Hitler and the ramping up of World War II, but this quote came seven years before Pearl Harbor. Instead, the President was talking about the devastation left by the 1929 Stock Market Crash which ushered in the Great Depression. The newly-coined President was asserting to people that they shouldn’t be afraid of doing the right thing and should be mindful, if not careful, of doing the wrong thing, which in this case was taking money out of the banks. People were running scared, aided in large part by the newspapers and radio broadcasts. Roosevelt new he had to put a stop to it to save the economy and the nation. Interesting enough, though Roosevelt was talking about domestic politics in his address, it was the 1929 stock market crash that helped bring Hitler and his party to power a few years later. Perhaps the President should have been talking about Hitler after all, since America helped create him. Funny, we seem to have a history of creating world leaders of the worst kind.
Improving student persistence on campus is a primary objective for college and universities. What we clearly understand is that some students have more challenges than others with regard to degree completion, therefore, require more services and attention by faculty and staff.
When I was a teenager growing up in Winnipeg, I played football and team handball. Those were my two “go to” sports. I was good at both, better at the latter and decent at the former. I wasn’t a big guy, which hurt me a bit in football. I made up with it because I was a smart football player, I must say. I understood the game, if that makes sense. I still do, in fact, until the point where I’m completely and utterly wrong about everything football.
There is much talk about increasing college access and success for students in the United States, especially for those populations who are historically underrepresented in higher education, such as low-income, first generation, and minority students. While access rates have increased over the years, we clearly understand that equity has not been achieved and that large gaps remain between the haves—White and Asian populations—and Black, Hispanic, and other minority groups. We have done much to move the equity issue forward, but let’s be clear: we have far, far to go to achieve this dream. Today’s Swail Letter? Improving College Access and Success
The Democrats and Republicans are working on reauthorization the Higher Education Act, and only four years late. In today’s podcast, we’ll talk briefly about how the two sides are going about it.
THREE WEEKS AGO I wrote a Swail Letter called College Admissions, Selectivity, and Grit. The article focused on how many of our colleges and universities were selective enough to make the admissions process majorly complex. My conclusion was that there were a lot more moderately selective institutions than I thought. Thus, the admissions game is complex and difficult for hundreds, and arguably thousands, of institutions in the US. Less than a week later after posting that article, the University of Chicago, an uber-selective institution, announced that it would not use the SAT in their admissions process. Typically, this comes with some misguided fanfare by those who fight for equity in the college-going arena.
Which gender are you? Seems like a simple question, but not so much anymore. With the coming US Census as well as other annual surveys by the federal government in the US and in other countries around the world, there are more considerations about how we get to the issue of gender identity and sexual preferences. Listen to today's Swail Letter Podcast to learn more, and visit www.theswailletter.com for the blog version and to comment.