Includes a section called Program and plans which describes the Center's activities for the current fiscal year and the projected activities for the succeeding fiscal year.

The Toolbox Revisited is a data essay that follows a nationally representative cohort of students from high school into postsecondary education, and asks what aspects of their formal schooling contribute to completing a bachelor's degree by their mid-20s. The universe of students is confined to those who attended a four-year college at any time, thus including students who started out in other types of institutions, particularly community colleges.

What is actually happening on college campuses in the years between admission and graduation? Not enough to keep America competitive, and not enough to provide our citizens with fulfilling lives. When A Nation at Risk called attention to the problems of our public schools in 1983, that landmark report provided a convenient "cover" for higher education, inadvertently implying that all was well on America's campuses. Declining by Degrees blows higher education's cover. It asks tough--and long overdue--questions about our colleges and universities. In candid, coherent, and ultimately provocative ways, Declining by Degrees reveals: - how students are being short-changed by lowered academic expectations and standards; -why many universities focus on research instead of teaching and spend more on recruiting and athletics than on salaries for professors; -why students are disillusioned; -how administrations are obsessed with rankings in news magazines rather than the quality of learning; -why the media ignore the often catastrophic results; and -how many professors and students have an unspoken "non-aggression pact" when it comes to academic effort. Declining by Degrees argues persuasively that the multi-billion dollar enterprise of higher education has gone astray. At the same time, these essays offer specific prescriptions for change, warning that our nation is in fact at greater risk if we do nothing.

For-profit schools -- also known as proprietary schools -- received over $16 billion in federal loans, grants, and campus-based aid under Title IV of the Higher Education Act in 2007/08. This report determined: (1) how the student loan default profile of proprietary schools compares with that of other types of schools; and (2) the extent to which the U.S. Dept. of Education's policies and procedures for monitoring student eligibility requirements for federal aid at proprietary schools protect students and the investment of Title IV funds. To address these objectives, the author conducted site visits and undercover investigations at proprietary schools, and interviewed officials from Education, higher education assoc., and state oversight agencies. Illus.