283. Summer College News

Here are some links to today's stories
about college access and success.
by
Joe Rottenborn
Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. How the Recession Re-Sorted Freshmen, by Allie Grasgreen - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/r7dzVj - "A new study largely confirms what anecdotal reports had anticipated about national college enrollment patterns during the economic downturn: that enrollments of high school students swelled, that larger numbers of students chose community colleges, but that private colleges did not suffer the losses that many had predicted."

2. Easy A, by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/nU5PaK - "Two critics of grade inflation have published a new analysis finding that the most common grade at four-year colleges and universities is the A (43 percent of all grades) -- and that Ds and Fs are few and far between."

3. How Freshman Picked Their Colleges, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/5rhgwOQ via @cbsmoneywatch - "Nearly one third of freshmen say they aren’t heading to their No. 1 choice of colleges in the fall because they couldn’t afford these schools. More than half of the teenagers (56%) received financial aid, but 82% said they didn’t receive as much as they had hoped.To keep costs down, 22% of teenagers ultimately selected schools nearby so they could commute from home."

4. Recession Reshaped College Enrollment Patterns, but the Sky Didn't Fall, by Eric Hoover - http://chronicle.com/article/Recession-Reshaped-College/128223/ - "A major story line of the past five years has been the increase in traditional-age students who enrolled in community colleges. In 2006, 41.7 percent of traditional-age students enrolled at two-year colleges; in 2009, 44.5 percent did so. Between 2008 and 2009, enrollments of traditional-age, first-time students at two-year colleges increased by 8.3 percent.The report suggests that this trend was driven by two groups of students: those who, in a better economy, might have chosen to attend other (and costlier) types of institutions, and those who otherwise would have joined the work force after graduating from high school."

5. Admission dean pulls back curtain on merit aid, by Daniel de Vise - College, Inc. - http://t.co/ksAzir3 via @washingtonpost - "So, I was surprised to see the admission dean at University of Rochester pen an unusually candid list of 12 “steps that mattered” in merit awards at his school this year, and the approximate dollar value of each factor in shaping the merit award. Jonathan Burdick, dean of admission and financial aid at Rochester, analyzed merit award data at his school to discern “some rules of thumb about how the mythical ‘average’ student succeeded in earning a scholarship this year,” he writes in the June 11 post, titled “What kind of scholarship can I get?”Here are some of the dozen variables:"

6. “What kind of scholarship can I get?” by Jonathan Burdick, U. of Rochester Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid - http://enrollment.rochester.edu/eblog/?p=2356 - "12 steps that mattered for earning merit scholarships in the UR Class of 2015."