American Education

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education released a damning report yesterday on the affordability, or lack thereof, of higher education in the United States. The cost of tuition has risen 439 pecent since 1982, while the median family income has risen only 147 percent, after inflation (see the NY Times and Washington Post); meanwhile, parents, pastors and politicians in Chicago fight to reform Illinois state education policy, under which the state with the nation’s fourth-highest GDP ranks 49th in public school funding; and the senior vice president and publisher of adult trade books at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one of the nation’s largest publisher of school books, has abruptly resigned after the company announced last week they would stop acquiring manuscripts in the adult trade division.