The most experience I had in the criminology field is playing a thug as an actor. That was my first paid job. The police academy at the college was paying people to reenact the calls that potential cops would get. So I got to play thugs and people who were unruly.

Actually music gave me the support when I needed it. I would never have gone to college unless I'd gotten a piano scholarship. And now I'm so glad I got to learn to play the cello which is a different experience you're flexing a different muscle but it's beautiful because it is music.

Well my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.

State governments generate less revenue in a recession. As state leaders struggle to make up for lost revenue legislatures tend to cut funding for higher education. Colleges in turn answer these funding cuts with tuition hikes.

In my family there was one cardinal priority - education. College was not an option it was mandatory. So even though we didn't have a lot of money we made it work. I signed up for financial aid Pell Grants work study anything I could.

In more than 20 years I've spent studying the issue I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics.

I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice theory humanities. And nowadays music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.

The best math lesson we can teach college students this year is to subtract a tuition increase and benefit from the dividends of higher education.

The College Access and Opportunity Act addresses the important need to make higher education more affordable and easier to access for low and middle-income students.

Community colleges are one of America's great social inventions a gateway to the future for first time students looking for an affordable college education and for mid-career students looking to get ahead in the workplace.