Even “socialist” Europe doesn’t have the functional equivalent of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): An American student goes abroad in a wheelchair. And he’s making a movie about it:

The name of the film is Wheelchair Diaries: One Step Up. "One step up" means that everybody with a disability has that one step up they have to take. It's not a flight of stairs, it's not a $5-million dollar remodeling. It's a piece of plywood that allows them to get up. We all deal with it in different ways. But my message is that we need to realize where that one step is, and put that ramp up. That will make the world of difference for physical accessibility and social inclusion.

So, law school tuition just goes up and up. Why? View a Chronicle report by Eric Kelderman (the quote below is from the Chronicle) and the full GAO report here (PDF).

Critics have sometimes blamed the accreditation standards of the American Bar Association for driving up the cost of law school and making it more difficult for students of color to be admitted to those programs.

But a report released on Monday by the Government Accountability Office says that most law schools surveyed instead blamed competition for better rankings and a more hands-on approach to educating students for the increased price of a law degree. In addition, the federal watchdog agency reported that, over all, minorities are making up a larger share of law-school enrollments than in the past, although the percentage of African-American students in those programs is shrinking. The GAO attributed that decrease to lower undergraduate grade-point averages and scores on law-school admissions tests.

If you want to know how much needs to be spent by "someone" to get a degree, $40,000 may be the answer. A recent Delta Study report says that answer also depends on how you perceive the role of colleges.

This link is to an Inside Higher Ed report by Doug Lederman:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/19/degree

"The paper shows that it is distinctly possible to come up with such a figure, but the wide variation in the numbers -- based on institution type, program, degree level, and other factors -- suggests that the answer will depend in large part on how the question is framed. And that decision is a surprisingly value-laden one, says Johnson. "You frame the question one way if you are only interested in students who graduate, and another way if you want to know the cost for people who go to college and don't complete," he says. "The point is, this is not just a data question. It's a question of what it is that we want from our colleges and universities."

This link is to the Delta Study report on degree costs (PDF):
http://www.deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/johnson3-09_WP.pdf

By Sara Hebel and Jefrey J. Selingo in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Before President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, the White House compared the purpose of the event to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats during the Great Depression. But for higher education, Mr. Obama was more like John F. Kennedy when he issued the challenge in 1961 to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

This president’s goal was equally daunting: for the nation to have the world’s highest proportion of college graduates by 2020. “That is a goal we can meet,” he said to applause in the chamber.

But is it?

College and university leaders were clearly delighted that Mr. Obama dedicated so much time in his speech to higher-education issues, which had for years taken a back seat to elementary and secondary education in presidential addresses. But, by Wednesday, the enormity of the task that has long been on college administrators' wish list became evident again.

“It’s absolutely achievable, but it’s ambitious,” Hilary Pennington, director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s postsecondary program, said in an interview. “It’s a stretch goal.”

In November, the Gates foundation announced that it would spend several hundred million dollars over the next five years to double the number of low-income young people who complete a college degree or certificate program by age 26 (The Chronicle, November 21). Recognizing the difficulty of the task, the Gates foundation set a slightly longer time frame for its goal than the president did for his—2025 instead of 2020.

Ms. Pennington said President Obama’s speech might have helped in one of the biggest hurdles to achieving the foundation's goal of doubling college-completion rates: first, recognizing that a problem exists.

“The American public thinks that if you go to college, you finish,” she said. “The president has the unique ability to make sure we break through the noise and make people realize that many more countries are taking this more seriously than we are.”

As the semester goes on, we wonder how many students are looking at the next semester and wondering what the heck they're going to do. Generally, "back to school" is one of the options for people who lose their jobs, but in this climate, how viable is that option? This article suggests that more than half of high school students are looking at less prestigious schools than before, due to financial considerations:

For high school seniors like KC Martin of Englewood, Colo., even a four-year public university feels out of reach. She says she'll probably go to a community college, a decision she reached with her parents. "It's a tough one, because I want to go to a four-year school, but it's expensive," she says.

Community colleges typically swell during economic downturns, but with the financial crisis and the loss of state revenues, it will be daunting for some to accommodate what could be unprecedented demand, says Norma Kent, spokeswoman for the American Association of Community Colleges in Washington. Without funding to hire more faculty or build labs, "there's a de facto cap," she says, despite their mission to be accessible to everyone.