This article was originally published at Forbes.com on March 15, 2025. Decision season is upon us once again. Over the next six weeks, millions of high school seniors will make a life-defining choice: deciding which college to attend. What makes this year different is the increasing number of students who are not trying to decide …
Continue reading “The Real College Decision: Close America’s Opportunity Gap Or Widen It”
By Matthew Scogin, originally published at Forbes.com on Feb. 10, 2025 Colleges are in the service industry. The service we provide is an education, for which we charge a fee. This financial arrangement — colleges teach, and students pay — has long been considered the only way to make higher education work. What if colleges …
Continue reading “Why Free College Can Be Capitalism’s Secret Weapon”
By Matthew Scogin, originally published at Forbes.com on Feb. 1, 2025 Why Colleges Should Not View Students As Customers “The customer is always right.” So said Harry Gordon Selfridge, the retail pioneer of the early 1900s, who is usually credited with coining that phrase. For over a century, it’s served as a practical guide for …
By Matthew Scogin, originally published at Forbes.com on Jan. 26, 2025 What If College Campuses Could Be Incubators For Hope? One of the hardest things a college president can face is having to lead a campus community through a tragedy. Two weeks ago, one of the most well-known and well-loved students on our campus was …
This editorial was first published by USA Today on October 27, 2023. My decision to leave the financial world and return to Hope College as its 14th president was motivated, in part, by a question that continues to haunt me: Will the United States persist as a land of opportunity for all, or will it turn into a land of privilege for …
Continue reading “Want to make college more affordable? Stop handing out student loans.”
cat·a·lyst ˈka-tə-ləst : an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action It has been over a month since Hope College’s Catalyst Summit with Malcolm Gladwell to explore a future where higher education is built on an entirely new funding model. With the benefit of some time to reflect on the thought-provoking content presented by …
cat·a·lyst ˈka-tə-ləst :an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action The Catalyst Summit, hosted by Hope College and Malcolm Gladwell, is a day for innovators, thought leaders and change-makers to explore the possibilities of a future where higher education is built on an entirely new funding model making college education affordable and accessible to all. …
Every student who takes Economics 101 learns the concept of supply and demand—specifically, how a decrease in the supply of a good or resource drives up its cost. We see—even today—how labor shortages and international conflict are decreasing supply and thereby increasing the price of everything from energy to food. Can supply-and-demand theory also explain the …
Continue reading “Follow the Money: How Student Loans Derailed American Higher Education”
Going to college was never in doubt for me. I grew up in a family that believed in the value of education. My mom had a master’s degree (and was a middle school science teacher by trade) and my dad had a Ph.D. in chemistry. When it came time to select a college, I knew …
Continue reading “Why the Four-Year Degree is Still the Best “Pathway Program””
The discussion around improving access to higher education —specifically due to the decades-long price increase of a four-year degree — is typically framed as whether or not college should be free. The question is more complex than political debates allow for, but let’s start with some facts: Nonetheless, free-vs-not-free is a false dichotomy. And it oversimplifies the issues …
Continue reading “Rethinking the Economic Model of Higher Education”
