286. 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. Column: Combat pay for teachers will help students, DeWayne Wickham - http://usat.ly/oYQfub via @USATODAY - "Those good teachers who take on the job of educating young people in neighborhoods where the body count of underachieving students rivals that of Afghanistan's killing fields deserve combat pay."

2. Frustration with the Feds, by Libby A. Nelson - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/o8eId5 - "Most notable, of course, was the shift from a mix of bank-based and government lending to 100 percent government lending last summer, which changed the way the majority of student loans were issued. But the past year has also brought the end of the summer Pell Grant, the controversial rules on program integrity and the fight over the “gainful employment” regulation. Many new regulations will take effect in the coming months, including new measures of default rates and the hefty disclosure requirements for institutions that sponsor vocational programs subject to the gainful employment regulations."

3. Online and Incomplete, by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/pDffVx - "But a new study urges caution to those who believe that online education is a panacea for educating more community college students. The study finds that students who enrolled in online courses -- controlling for various factors that tend to predict success -- were more likely to fail or drop out of the courses than were those who took the same courses in person. Notably, there was not a gap in completion between those enrolled in hybrid and in-person courses."

4. Bowdoin Says No Need for SAT While Buying College Board Scores, by Janet Lorin - http://t.co/aHSc3Kk via @BloombergNews - "Colleges from Bowdoin in Maine to Pitzer in California dropped the SAT entrance exam as a requirement, saying it favors the affluent, penalizes minorities and doesn’t predict academic success. What they don’t advertise is they find future students by buying names of kids who do well on the test . . . . The company and its competitor, Iowa City, Iowa-based ACT Inc., both nonprofit, sell names for 33 cents apiece."

5. 10 Most Expensive State Universities for Outsiders, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/1MRTusS via @cbsmoneywatch - "Beware of extremely expensive out-of-state public universities. When you include tuition, fees and room/ board, the most expensive state universities for nonresidents are costing more than $50,000 a year . . . . The University of Michigan happens to be the most expensive public university in the nation for nonresidents, according to US News & World Report. Here are the top 10:"

6. Half of Texas' Students Have Been Suspended, Study Finds, by Nirvi Shah - http://t.co/d94aVpy via @educationweek - "Also, the study raises concerns about how nearly half the students disciplined 11 or more times also were in contact with the Texas juvenile justice system, raising the specter of the so-called “school-to-prison” pipeline . . . . Some groups of students were more vulnerable to suspension or expulsion than others, the study found. For example, 75 percent of African-American students were expelled or suspended, compared to 50 percent of white students.Also, 75 percent of students with disabilities were suspended or expelled, compared with 55 percent of students without a disability."

7. School Discipline Study Raises Fresh Questions, by Alan Schwarz - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/education/19discipline.html?_r=1&hp - "The study linked these disciplinary actions to lower rates of graduation and higher rates of later criminal activity and found that minority students were more likely than whites to face the more severe punishments."

8. A Sociologist Returns to the Mean Streets of His Youth, by Peter Monaghan - http://bit.ly/q4UNeZ - "In the boys' world, he says, "instead of feeling that you can graduate high school and go to college as a coming-of-age ritual, now you might grow up thinking that in order to show your manhood, you have to get locked up."

9. MinnPost - Admission Possible: Closing a disturbing divide in Minnesota's educational landscape, by Sharon Schmickle : http://bit.ly/pQ8t0v - "A disturbing divide cuts through Minnesota’s educational landscape. On one side, middle- and upper-income kids thrive academically in keeping with the state’s longstanding emphasis on quality education. On the other side, low-income minority kids can’t seem to get a toehold on success.Not only is this a breach of social justice. It also is a serious economic problem."