See free MVCAP e-books on college admissions and financial aid for sharing, printing, and downloading at our online resource library: http://issuu.com/mvcap1. Not the ‘Hook’ the Admissions Office Had in Mind, by Dave Marcus - http://nyti.ms/aH72IT
"Mark Hatch was reading applications for Bates College in Maine one weekend a few years ago when he became intrigued by a student’s essay about fishing. Turning the page, Mr. Hatch felt a sharp pain — and realized that the student had attached an actual hook. After a trip to the emergency room and several stitches, Mr. Hatch finished reading the essay. Now a vice president at Colorado College, Mr. Hatch has the scar to prove that he did, in fact, admit a student with a hook."
2. No Excuses, Mr. President, by Marc Bousquet - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/99V2gr
"President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan's plans for higher education are evident in their attraction to community colleges. All of the features that most educators deplore about community colleges are what the current administration likes about them: top-down control of curriculum, disposable instructors, automated courseware, a training model of education, and management highly responsive to local employers. Their ambitions for publicly-funded higher education are closely parallel to their commitments in the schools: more automation, a standardized national curriculum, and centralization of control with an intensified assessment regime. Higher education has been slow to pick up on these threats, but national polls show that most Americans already clearly understand the difference between raising test scores and actually improving education."
3. For-Profit Schools, Tested Again, by Gretchen Morgenson - http://nyti.ms/9adClc
"Apollo’s facilities offer flexible-degree programs for people (“working learners,” it calls them) who have jobs or other obligations that keep them from attending school full-time. The University of Phoenix, by far the largest of the company’s institutions, offers both online and on-campus classes. It operates in 39 states. A majority of Apollo’s revenue comes from federal student aid. The University of Phoenix, which accounted for 91 percent of Apollo’s net revenue this year, gets the bulk of its own revenue from Title IV programs. Just 1 percent of cash revenue at the University of Phoenix comes from student loans that aren’t channeled through the federal government. Top for-profit colleges like Apollo’s received $26.5 billion in government-funded student aid in 2009, the Department of Education says. Because taxpayers are on the hook if these loans go bad, it is high time that regulators increased their scrutiny of practices at Apollo and other for-profit education companies."
4. Most expensive colleges money.cnn.com/galleries/2010…
"1. Connecticut College
New London, Conn.
Tuition & fees (2010-2011): $43,990
Increase from previous year: 3.9%
Total cost including room & board: $53,110"
5. The For-Profit LMS Market - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/byaSqP
"Mining learning-management systems for data has come into fashion among nonprofit colleges relatively recently, but for-profits have been doing it for much longer, says David Harpool, provost and chief academic officer at the for-profit Westwood College. Accrediting bodies and other regulators have always scrutinized for-profits extra closely, Harpool says, so there was a high demand for tools that would log data on student attendance and the degree of activity by students and instructors in the online learning environment — and make the data easy for for-profits to organize and show to accreditors and others by way of proving their legitimacy. For-profits also have a unique interest in by-the-numbers scrutiny of both students and faculty: faculty because the institutions have greater power to fire them based on classroom performance, and students because, as Harpool puts it: “When an average school in the for-profit sector spends between $4,000 and $8,000 to attract each student, . . . ."
6. Kaplan & U.S. Vet - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-01/kaplan-quest-for-profit-at-taxpayer-expense-ensnares-disabled-u-s-veteran.html
"Melvin is among thousands of returning veterans enticed by for-profit colleges through repeated phone calls and e-mails, advertising in military-oriented publications, and alliances with veterans’ organizations eager for corporate contributions. Admissions advisers woo veterans with visions of high-paying jobs and easy access to federal grants. While some veterans succeed at these colleges, others are hindered by red tape in getting federal funding and the inability to complete degrees and find well-paying jobs after graduation. Aggressive recruiting by for-profit colleges leads to low graduation rates, said Donald Overton, executive director of Veterans of Modern Warfare, a service organization in Silver Spring, Maryland, which has 5,000 post-1990 veterans as members. “As long as the recruiters meet their quotas and bring in veterans, their job is done,” Overton said in a telephone interview. “The colleges are lacking support services, and their programs are fast-paced.”
7. For Exposure, Universities Put Courses on Web, by D.D. Guttenplan -http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/world/europe/01iht-educLede01.html?hpw
"M.I.T.’s announcement in 2001 that it was going to put its entire course catalog online gave a jump-start to what has now become a global Open Educational Resources Movement whose goal, said Susan D’Antoni of Athabasca University, in Canada, is “to try to share the world’s knowledge.” Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Michigan all now offer substantial portions of their courses online. In Britain, the Open University, which has been delivering distance learning for over 40 years, offers free online courses in every discipline on the OpenLearn Web site; the Open University also maintains a dedicated YouTube channel and has often had courses listed on the top 10 downloads at iTunes University. There, students can gain access to beginner courses in French, Spanish and German as well as courses in history, philosophy and astronomy — all free."
8. Tomorrow's College: The classroom of the future. . . , by Marc Parry http://chronicle.com/article/Tomorrows-College/125120/
"As online education goes mainstream, it's no longer just about access for distant learners who never set foot in the student union. Web courses are rewiring what it means to be a "traditional" student at places like Central Florida, one of the country's largest public universities. And UCF's story raises a question for other colleges: Will this mash-up of online and offline learning become the new normal elsewhere, too?Signs suggest yes. The University System of Maryland now requires undergraduates to take 12 credits in alternative learning modes, including online. Texas has proposed a similar rule. The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system is pushing to have 25 percent of credits earned online by 2015. And the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, pointing to UCF as a model, has made blended learning a cornerstone of its new $20-million education-technology grant program. These players pin their hopes on Web classes as a panacea that will expand access, speed up the time spent ...."
9. Mastering the Admissions Essay, by Ellen Gamerman Getting In Unigo unigo.com/articles/maste…
"The Wall Street Journal turned the tables on the presidents of 10 top colleges and universities with an unusual assignment: answer an essay question from their own school’s application."
10. The Case Against College Athletic Recruiting http://bit.ly/bTacyb
"Equally strange, you would discover that some academically elite schools that do not give athletic scholarships—because they are nominally committed to academics over athletics—give away a large portion of their highly competitive admissions slots to athletes, even in the most obscure sports, such as squash. For instance, Williams College, which admits only 17 percent of applicants, recruits 66 athletes per year. That’s 13 percent of the incoming freshman class that is dedicated to third-rate (literally, as Williams plays Division III sports) athletes over first-rate students. Take a look at the NEWSWEEK College Guide and you will find Williams, along with its small-school rivals Middlebury and Bowdoin, and Ivy League members Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Cornell, on our list of the top 25 schools that are “Stocked With Jocks.” You probably would conclude that these American institutions of higher learning have their priorities weirdly out of whack. And you would be right."
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