Higher education

This (New York Times, registration required) is a proposal to equalize the battle for faculty (and students) in the institutions of higher learning.  I find it dangerously incomplete. There needs to be a requirement that the poorer schools be accredited and that they do fund-raising. Yes, there are many schools focused on improvement for students who can't afford (or don't have the academic record for) the prestigious schools. There are also many, many schools involved in making money off those that have aspirations without having any commitment to meet those aspirations or even to explain where the gaps lie between the students' previous preparation and the aspirations.

In other words, many lower "schools" take students' money and don't provide them with an education. They take unprepared students, don't do an intake test, and flunk them out. They don't steer students to remedial classes that are clearly needed. They use adjunct faculty and don't pay them (or even provide them an opportunity and tools) to advise the students. Intake (or diagnostic) testing is so important. A student will be very lucky to find a class that they can benefit from without taking a diagnostic test first.

Anyway, any efforts to improve the bottom rung of higher education in the US needs to have a mechanism to weed out schools that don't do intake testing (as a part of their business model in order to take money from the most desperate without giving them a class at their level).