Education

The child care and pre-kindergarten policies under consideration in Congress would not only benefit children, families, early educators, and the child care sector. They will also stimulate billions of dollars in economic activity in every state. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on college enrollments this fall.

Dean Baker
Truthout, January 6, 2020

This May, millions of new graduates found themselves torn between triumph and trepidation, as looming obligations to begin repaying student loans tempered celebrations nationwide. Still others had no cause to celebrate, having accrued debt without obtaini

From 2001 to 2013, college enrollment in the US increased rapidly. Young people delayed the full-time work portion of their lives, ostensibly to seek skills for an evolving set of jobs. Trends since 2014, however, suggest that the increase in education is not an entirely structural change. Over the past few years, a tighter labor market has been leading more young people to full-time work, suggesting that a weak labor market, rather than simply concern over a changing set of jobs, was pushing some young people to enroll from 2001 to 2013.

I’m a big fan of The Atlantic’s Alana Semuels, but wanted to provide some additional context for her piece on the gender gap in college education (Poor Girls are Leaving Their Brothers Behind). There’s no question that women are graduating from high schoo

With the costs of college tuition skyrocketing, the affordability of higher education is becoming a major issue in the 2016 presidential campaign. Some commentators have argued that the proper solution to rising costs is putting more money in the pockets of students. Specifically, they argue that colleges should expand their work-study programs so that students can get jobs and pay their tuition.

If students want to work full- or part-time jobs to pay for their textbooks, housing, tuition, etc., it would be unfair to deny them that opportunity. However, it should be noted that asking students to work their way through college is unlikely to have a large effect on college affordability, for one simple reason: most college students are already employed.

Women—and black women in particular—have seen significant improvements in high school completion rates since the turn of the century, almost cutting in half the black-white gap for women during that time, as I shared last month. But has that meant an incr

Dean Baker
Al Jazeera America, August 17, 2015

This post was originally published at Girl w/ Pen. Often, when we see improvements by all (be it in educational attainment, income, health, etc.), we overlook the fact that gender or racial gaps still persist or have even gotten worse. There has been much