President Obama's proposal to make community college free was another blow to for-profit higher education providers, according to a recent Forbes article that analyzed the for-profit sector's deep troubles, and a further decline in stock prices after the announcement. In Minnesota, the state Senate's DFL majority leadership also recently proposed free tuition for community college. There is no other way to say it; reconciling return... Read More
DALLAS -- Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is a plain-spoken former CEO who is rather brash about his city's emergence as the fourth largest metropolitan area and one of the strongest economic growth powerhouses in the nation. And yet he's rather humble about how big-thinking "Big D's" long-term health is directly threatened by the opportunity gap for students of color and from low-income families, who make up about 80 percent of... Read More
In previous blogs, I wrote about the University of Minnesota and its history of an expectation of transparency and a framework of accountability. In Minnesota, the University follows the same public access to information laws as other government entities, namely the Data Practices Act and the Open Meeting Law, and has had an expectation of accountability to the State Legislature ever since its founding in 1851. That’s 162 years to practice ... Read More
Imagine one of our state's larger high schools or smaller college campuses, with an enrollment of roughly 2,500 students. Now try to imagine every single student in that school or college as homeless, trying to function, learn and build a path toward a career, without a safe or certain place to sleep at night. The latest newsletter from Catholic Charities of Minneapolis and St. Paul cites a Wilder Foundation estimate that at any given time ... Read More