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A study of how money is spent at three different liberal arts colleges. The title link, abnove, takes you to the Inside Highezr Ed story about it. Here is a PDF of the full report. 

The three (kept anonymous in the study to encourage full release of data) are similar in their size (1,560 to 1,648 enrollments), mission, academic offerings, the breadth of student activities and athletics, and loyal alumni. Students at all three institutions say that they picked them for their personalized approach to education and close contact with faculty members. Students give all three institutions high marks. (Lapovsky consults with colleges on their financial strategies; she said only one of the three colleges is a client.)

But the three institutions are also very different: in what they charge students, in their expectations of faculty, in their support for student activities, and in their admissions competitiveness."

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Clark University recently conducted a study of 1,000 1,000 young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 “to determine their views on a variety of subjects including work and the economy; love, sex and marriage; use of social media; relations with parents; and what it means to be an adult. Respondents come from a range of social, ethnic and educational backgrounds, as well as geographic regions across the United States.”

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg, the world’s top CEOs all skipped college.  PayPal’s CEO and Co-Founder Peter Thiel is paying $100,000 to young inventors to drop out of college and get started on their inventions now.  But, despite the trend (and temptation) of focusing on the “now,” a new survey reveals that young people widely see the value of taking their time to get a college degree –whether they have attained one or not.

Regardless of the potential debt waiting for them after graduating, college costs are well-spent, they report, even though they may not find the right job immediately following graduation.  And, with all the dire news about the job market for their generation, nearly all those surveyed believe th

 ^{Go directly to the original of the resource described below.}

[A]t the very core of the quality assurance process is the necessity for colleges and universities to clearly and unambiguously demonstrate student mastery of both discipline-specific and general education competencies in a fashion that is transparent to those both inside and outside of the academy.

• “The Future of Accreditation” by Judith S. Eaton
• “Accreditation and the Public Interest: Can Accreditors Continue to Play a Central Role in Public Policy?” by Terry W. Hartle
• “What’s an Accrediting Agency Supposed to Do? Institutional Quality and Improvement vs. Regulatory Compliance” by Elizabeth H. Sibolski
• “AQIP and Accreditation: Improving Quality and Performance” by Stephen D. Spangehl
• “Show Me the Learning: Value, Accreditation, and the Quality of the Degree” by Terrel L. Rhodes

SCUP members can visit their journal and download the entire issue, or selected articles as PDFs, MOBI (Kindle), and EPUB (iPad/iPhone and many Androids). About the contents, Middaugh writes:

The implications for planners of the issues raised in these five articles are both immediate and profound. How does higher education preserve and protect the integrity

of the peer evaluation process in quality assurance and,at the same time, responsibly address calls for greater transparency and accountability from the government and other entities? How do colleges and universities best work with their regional accrediting bodies to ensure the integrity of educational services provided under Title IV financial aid without having those accrediting bodies morph into the “accreditation police”? And at the very core of the quality assurance process is the necessity for colleges and universities to clearly and unambiguously demonstrate student mastery of both discipline-specific and general education competencies in a fashion that is transparent to those both inside and outside of the academy. The editorial staff of Planning for Higher Education is deeply grateful to the five authors who have so generously contributed to this issue of the journal. Their insights are quite provocative and provide substantial material for those of us whose planning activity is immersed in improving the quality of our institutions. (emphasis added)

"Slip-Sliding Away: An Anxious Public Talks About Today's Economy And The American Dream," is a report from Public Agenda which finds that the number one financial concern of economically-stressed Americans who also have children is college affordability. Also high on Americans' priorities, stressed financially or not: Social security and retirement benefits and job training.

If this isn't an indication of high demand for higher education, we don't know what is:

When it comes to what would be "very effective" in helping people become economically secure, the public puts its faith in higher education and job training, along with preserving programs like Social Security and Medicare. These are the top three solutions among both those who are struggling and those who aren't.

"Making higher education more affordable" led the list overall (63 percent) and among those who say they're struggling (65 percent). Preserving Social Security and Medicare was next at 58 percent (62 percent among the struggling) and expanding job-training programs came in third at 54 percent (56 percent for the struggling).

Neither cutting taxes for the middle class (48 percent) nor reducing the federal deficit (40 percent) get majority support, and other options rate even lower. ...

One reason for the faith in education may be the public's perception of who's struggling the most in the current economy. Three-quarters of Americans say that people without college degrees are struggling a lot these days, compared to just half who say college graduates are struggling.

"College graduates have definitely been hurt by the current recession. Thousands find themselves out of work, and many of those newly unemployed will struggle to find a job that paid as well as their last one. Still, on a relative basis, a college education has never been more valuable."

Although the public still has positive feelings about higher education, with 51% giving four-year colleges a grade of good or excellent (as compared to only 37% who give secondary schools similar grades), there are some signs of fractures in the public’s long love affair with colleges and universities.
In focus groups conducted for this project, we heard, for the first time, a number of people saying that colleges and universities are “just like a business” —more concerned with money than with education