Data Prediction, Asking if College Should Ever Be Free

Predictive Analysis (1:03)  Guest: Eric Siegel, PhD, Founder of Predictive Analytics World, Author of “Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die”  The power to predict just about everything lies in the vast amounts of data floating around about virtually every aspect of our lives.  It’s being used to personalize the ads in your Facebook feed and that little gem Netflix recommended to you. It’s being used to win elections, too. President Obama’s 2012 victory is attributed, in large part, to his campaign’s sophisticated use of voter information.  A campaign data breach in December got some Bernie Sanders staffers fired and his campaign locked out of the Democratic National Committee’s database for a weekend. Who cares if the Sanders campaign saw a few mailing lists from Clinton’s camp? As it turns out, data is just about the most valuable possession of any campaign, company or government in 2016.  Free College Education (51:33) Guests: Deborah Santiago, Co-founder of the Research and Advocacy Group Excelencia in Education; Andrew Kelly, PhD, Director of the Center on Higher Education Reform at the American Enterprise Institute; Davis Jenkins, PhD, Senior Research Associate the Community College Research Center at Columbia University Teachers College   Have you noticed that nobody’s talking about kindergarten through 12th grade on the Presidential campaign trail? That’s pretty amazing when you consider that educating our kids was a major campaign message for the last three presidents who took office – Bush, Clinton and Obama.  The educational focus this time around is college – thanks in large part to the campaign of Democrat Bernie Sanders.  His free college promise resonates with lots of Americans. This segment discusses the practicality of that promise and at whether or not it would make the US better educated and more competitive on the international stage.