In this article, "Education Next" talks with Matthew Ladner and Nelson Smith on the topic of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). ESAs apply the logic of school choice to the ever-expanding realm of education offerings. Rather than simply empowering families to select the school of their choice, ESAs provide families with most or all of…

America's moral compass guiding student aid policy is being co-opted by short-sighted, budget-cutting and deficit-reduction policies. This moral compass was threatened, but had "not altogether disappeared" by 1996, according to an article written that year by Thomas A. Flint, then-vice president for financial services at Robert Morris…

Amy Kenworthy and George A. Hrivnak share their thoughts in this commentary, writing that they were both stimulated by and written in response to Riebe and Jackson's article "Assurance of Graduate Employability Skill Outcomes Through the Use of Rubrics." Having read two iterations of that article, they highlight three key messages…

Major demographic changes around the world. Disproportionate sovereign debt. A shift from North America, Western Europe, and Japan to emerging economies as centers of growth. Unprecedented levels of market risk and volatility. The structure of the global economy is undergoing significant changes. Michael Oyster, managing principal of Fund…

Tamar Manuelyan Atinc, vice president of The World Bank, introduces a World Bank report, "Investing in Young Children: An Early Childhood Development Guide for Policy Dialogue and Project Preparation". This report, which is a must for inclusion in every advocate's make the case for investing in early childhood services. It defines three arguments…

From one state to another, boards of trustees, legislatures, and governors are implementing policies designed to increase output and efficiency in public colleges and universities. Many such policies reflect the agenda of the National Governors Association's Complete to Compete initiative, which seeks to increase completion rates without…

Over the last decade, and in the context of the fiscal crisis in the nation in general and in higher education in particular, a debate has raged over the value of humanities research. Various commentators have argued that unlike nonhumanities disciplines, fields such as English studies and other humanistic disciplines bring very little into their…

School reformers have made forward strides in the last ten years, and public debate has acquired a bipartisan cast. But just how successful have reform efforts been? The editors of "Education Next" assess the movement's victories and challenges. Two essays are presented in this issue's "Forum": (1) "A Battle Begun, Not Won" (Paul E. Peterson,…

From 1980 to 2000, child labor rates across the world fell by more than a quarter. Much of the explanation for this decrease resides in development processes broadly associated with the demographic transition. Net of these internal dynamics, however, globalization may also have played a role. Previous studies have examined the effect of trade and…

A new study of endowments by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) and the Commonfund Institute has brought good news to college and universities: While endowment returns dropped precipitously in fiscal year 2009 as a result of the financial crisis and accompanying slide in equity markets, they climbed to an…

The story of Bernard Madoff rivals outrageous fiction. It was astonishing that this seemingly kindly, respectable financier, a pioneer in electronic trading, a founding partner in the Nasdaq exchange, turned out to have been running a $65-billion Ponzi scheme that victimized country-club elites, middle-class retirees, foundations, universities,…

TIAA-CREF, the financial services company that manages retirement portfolios for professionals in academia and other select fields, avoided the heavy losses other financial firms incurred during last fall's financial meltdown. Thus far, the indicators reflect TIAA-CREF's prudent, disciplined investment strategies. From Sept. 30 to Dec. 31, 2008,…

This paper presents the keynote speech by Professor Steve Smith, President of Universities UK, delivered at Universities UK Annual Conference last September 2010. In this speech, Professor Smith focused on two sets of issues: firstly, the future of the UK economy and, secondly, the potential pitfalls of the decisions that are shortly to be made by…

This eighth installment in the series on accounting theory pertains to stockholders' equity and its related conceptual, measurement and ethical issues. Coverage includes the associated theoretical, empirical, and popular literature. (Contains 5 footnotes.)

This article considers the methodological challenge of quantifying the social value generated through social enterprise activity. It argues that in the context of increasing enthusiasm for social enterprise as a mechanism for delivering social services and for tackling social exclusion, it is increasingly necessary to be able to value social…