328. College Access and Success News

Here are links to recent news on college access and success.

by

Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Students work on big ideas at Harvard's 'hack night' by Steve Kolowich: http://usat.ly/oxOLVh via @USATODAY - "HackHarvard, which is in only its second semester, operates on two premises: that most students cannot turn good ideas into operational apps, nor operational apps into successful businesses, without help; and that there are plenty of good ideas to go around. The club's leaders describe it as an incubator where students can get feedback on their ideas, learn the nuts and bolts of building Web applications, and meet with like-minded peers and potential collaborators."

2. Admissions 2011, by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed http://bit.ly/n0GFUA via AddThis - "For many colleges, a top goal of admissions directors is recruiting more students who can pay more. Among all four-year institutions, the admissions strategy judged most important over the next two or three years -- driven by high figures in the public sector -- was the recruitment of more out-of-state students (who at public institutions pay significantly more)."

3. Hechinger Report Getting a college degree doesn’t have to break the bank, by Justin Snider: http://bit.ly/qfSwOV via AddThis - "Cutting college costs has thus become a priority across the socioeconomic spectrum. The good news is there are countless ways to save money on college."

4. Universities Seeking Out Students of Means, by Tamar Lewin: http://nyti.ms/qnrxAJ -"More than half of the admissions officers at public research universities, and more than a third at four-year colleges said that they had been working harder in the past year to recruit students who need no financial aid and can pay full price, according to the survey of 462 admissions directors and enrollment managers conducted in August and early September."

5. Report Profiles Student Veterans Before Passage of New GI Bill - http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/report-profiles-student-veterans-before-passage-of-new-gi-bill/36454 - "Using data from just before the passage of the new GI Bill, the report, “Military Service Members and Veterans: a Profile of Those Enrolled in Undergraduate and Graduate Education in 2007-8,” found that the same proportion of undergraduates and graduate students, 4 percent, were service members or veterans."

6. Turn Middle School Into ‘Boot Camp for Life' by Valerie Strauss - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/middle-school/middle-school-as-boot-camp-for.html - "So let’s consider a different kind of education, one that would allow kids to learn skills in unconventional ways and that would give them far more time to engage in physical activity ouside the classroom."

7. Are High Schoolers Prepared for College? New Data Says Only 43% of Class of 2011 is Ready, by Gaston Caperton - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gaston-caperton/sat-college-gpa_b_970737.html?ir=College - "It is particularly fitting that we established the benchmark in a year when the SAT reached a record 1.65 million students -- many of whom are traditionally underserved -- and only 43 percent of them met the benchmark. After analyzing the results of a diverse group of students from more than 100 institutions all over the country, we set the national SAT benchmark at a composite score of 1550. That means, if a student's critical reading, math and writing scores add up to at least 1550, they have a 65 percent chance of earning a B-minus average their first year in college. Not to mention that students who meet the new SAT benchmark are more likely to enroll in, succeed at, and graduate from college."

8. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ today's top stories about college access and success, via @rottenbornj ▸ http://paper.li/rottenbornj

9. Youngstown schools celebrate academic progress, by Denise Dick - http://www.vindy.com/news/2011/sep/21/youngstown-schools-celebrate-academic-pr/ via Vindicator - "Superintendent Connie Hathorn acknowledges the city school system has much work to do to improve student achievement. “We got beat up for celebrating that we’re in academic watch,” Hathorn told about 200 school district employees and supporters at the Covelli Centre on Tuesday. “I’m not happy about that, but we made progress.” The district moved from academic emergency, the lowest designation, on the last two state report cards to academic watch on the one released last month."