My post about how colleges are diverging into winners and losers drew a ton of excellent comments you should read. phelmon64 led off by saying: It’s becoming clear that the distance between the various higher education tiers is getting wider. Ivies at the top, Ivy-equivalent private schools next, followed by public elites, small private liberal arts schools, big public/land grant schools — and then the rest. At some point states can (and must) do their share to help the public elites and land grant types, but I’m concerned about the future for … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2018
US Colleges Diverging Into Winners and Losers, Shakeout Coming
The Wall Street Journal has been doing great work digging into the pending crisis hitting may colleges, particularly small non-selective liberal arts schools. In today's paper they have a piece on colleges sorting into winners and losers: The diverging fortunes help explain how U.S. higher education is shifting. For generations, a swelling population of college-age students, rising enrollment rates and generous student loans helped all schools, even mediocre ones, to flourish. Those days are ending. According to an analysis of 20 years of … [Read more...]
Inclusionary Zoning Flops in Portland
As the price of housing continues to rise in many cities, one popular progressive policy idea to address it is inclusionary zoning. Inclusionary zoning requires that a certain percentage of units in a building be priced at below market, targeted at people who earn some fraction of the area median income. Often this set aside is required in exchange for density bonuses or other things the developer might want. Portland passed one of these, and according to a report in the Portland Mercury, construction fell off a cliff: A year ago, Portland … [Read more...]
We Need to Be Honest About the Negatives of Transit
Elon Musk created a stir, when he pooh-poohed the rider experience of transit. As quoted in the Guardian: The billionaire entrepreneur had expressed disdain for the inconvenience and cramped confines of mass transit – along with the potential proximity to “serial killers” – in response to an audience member’s question about public transport and urban sprawl at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference in Long Beach, California, last week. “I think public transport is painful. It sucks,” he said. “Why do you want to get on … [Read more...]
A Strategic Look at the Indianapolis “Newfields” Controversy
The Indianapolis Museum of Art recently undertook a rebranding where it look the elements of its campus and rebranded them as "Newfields", which is now the primary brand of the institution. The name IMA has been retained for the museum itself but has been downgraded. The new name is apparently a riff on "Oldfields", a historic home and 26 acre estate formerly owned by one of the Lilly family, but now part of the museum complex. The Newfields move in effect repositions the museum as a theme park instead of a cultural institution. I believe … [Read more...]
The Strange Case of Civic Identity in Northeast Ohio
I was recently in Akron presenting a forthcoming paper of mine. One of the interesting things about the Northeast Ohio constellation of cities is that there's a very weak sense of regional identity. In almost any other context, Cleveland and Akron would be considered some type of twin city ecosystem. Consider: Dallas and Ft. Worth are 32 miles apart. Seattle and Tacoma are 34 miles about. Cleveland and Akron are 39 miles apart. Cleveland's Cuyahoga County and Akron's Summit County are also physically contiguous. Yet, Cleveland … [Read more...]