300. 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: Obama should tout fight for minority education, by DeWayne Wickham - http://t.co/8rdfOkq via @USATODAY - "We have launched more investigations than ever before. Much broader, bigger investigations" into whether school officials are unfairly disciplining black kids and shoving them "into the cradle-to-prison pipeline instead of the cradle-to-career pipeline," she told me."

2. Freedom at a Price, by Kevin Kiley - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/pE8Ljj via @AddThis - "While details of the Ohio plan will not be final until Thursday's presentation, a draft of the plan released July 18 calls for immediately freeing all universities from certain regulatory restrictions, such as state health and safety codes, and eliminating enrollment caps. The draft also calls for giving the universities complete control of the management of their employees and exempting them from the purview of the state personnel board of review.
The universities would then be measured annually on a set of metrics that include student outcomes, such as graduation and retention rates; degree production in science, technology, engineering, and math fields; and the percentage of students participating in internship programs, as well as financial measures such as endowment size, affordability measured as a percentage of the consumer price index, and the unallocated cash balance as a percentage of total operating expenses."

3. Value of the Liberal Arts, by Katharine Brooks - http://t.co/iitPEnE - "In today’s Academic Minute, Katharine Brooks of the University of Texas at Austin answers “the question” faced by many college students."

4. Education Management Corporation Accused of Widespread Fraud, by Tamar Lewin: http://nyti.ms/qsJS2E - "The Department of Justice and four states on Monday filed a multibillion-dollar fraud suit against the Education Management Corporation, the nation’s second-largest for-profit college company, charging that it was not eligible for the $11 billion in state and federal financial aid it had received from July 2003 through June 2011.Education Management, which is based in Pittsburgh and is 41 percent owned by Goldman Sachs, enrolls about 150,000 students in 105 schools operating under four names: Art Institute, Argosy University, Brown Mackie College and South University. In a statement Monday, the company denied any wrongdoing."

5. Kaplan Revenue Down 29% in Second Quarter - http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/kaplan-revenue-down-29-in-second-quarter/35148 - "The decline comes at a time when federal agencies and state legislators are more strictly regulating recruitment practices at for-profit colleges, and are increasingly holding them accountable for their graduates’ ability to find employment and repay their loans. As a result of those restrictions, as well as what the company calls “generally lower demand,” new enrollments dropped 47 percent from the second quarter last year."

6. Nonprofit Group Says CA Latinos Crucial to National Degree-Attainment Goals, by Molly Redden - http://chronicle.com/article/Nonprofit-Group-Says/128558/ - "Unless California is able to increase the number of its Latinos with college degrees, the United States will fall short of having the world's highest proportion of college graduates by 2020, according to the advocacy group Excelencia in Education. . . . Excelencia found that while first-time, full-time white college students complete degrees at a rate of about 47 percent, the same group of Latino students attain credentials at a rate of only about 35 percent."

7. #College101: Freshman year bucket list, by Jenna Johnson - Campus Overload - http://t.co/v7UEBbH via @washingtonpost - "Last week I shared a list of tips for surviving freshman year and asked you to share your tips for incoming freshmen . . . . The response was overwhelming. I combed through hundreds of tips and edited them into this 50-item “bucket list.” I suggest that you print it out, tape it to the back of your closet door and cross things off as you do them."

8. Top 10 Most Athletic Colleges - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/09/top-10-most-athletic-coll_n_921913.html#s325405&title=1_Stanford_Cardinals6615 - "Our friends at CampusSplash crunched the numbers to figure out the 25 most athletic colleges in the United States. They looked at everything from number of sports, to number of titles, program revenue and more. Below check out a slideshow of the top 10 schools . . . ."