Join us at AEI for a conversation that will consider what the 2012 elections hold for education against the backdrop of the new book "Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit: Lessons from a Half-Century of Federal Efforts to Improve America's Schools," edited by AEI's Frederick M. Hess and Andrew P. Kelly.

An ever-increasing number of individuals are turning to community college for their higher education. Online delivery of classes and competency-based models of higher learning should be employed and innovations from for-profit schools should be borrowed to increase the number of Americans completing their associate’s degrees.

What do we learn if the Thiel fellows go on to be wildly successful? That taking the most academically gifted students in the country and putting them in an awesome program flush with resources is a good idea. It doesn't tell us much of anything about whether higher education is a good investment more generally.

Many more factors figure into the cost of a bachelor's degree than just tuition. Taxpayers may contribute a substantial tax subsidy or, in rare cases, receive a moderate net "profit" per bachelor’s degree--fueling an intense discussion about the true costs of higher education and who pays for them.

Properly targeted incentives can improve not only remediation programs for underprepared college students but also can reduce the number of underprepared college students enrolled in American colleges and universities.

The ideal of an "American way of life" is fading as the working class falls further away from institutions like marriage and religion and the upper class becomes more isolated.

J. M. Barrie's famous 1904 play, Peter Pan or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, reflected the difficulty of the young entering the adult world in Victorian times. The story, still enormously popular, made the refusal to grow up sound charming. Far less charming is the thwarted transition to adulthood...

The tax break that universities recieve allow them to increase their endowment; however, they are not using this money to help the less privileged students.