342. 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. How to avoid defaulting on your student loans, by Sandra Block – http://usat.ly/oBR9h8 via @USATODAY - "Some 8.8% of borrowers whose first payments came due between Oct. 1, 2008, and Sept. 30, 2009, defaulted on their loans, according to a recent report from the Department of Education. For every student loan borrower who defaults, two others are delinquent, according to a study by the Institute for Higher Education Policy."

2. Dream Act Becomes Law in California, by Rebecca R. Ruiz - http://nyti.ms/q66LLA - "The legislation allows illegal immigrants who graduate from high schools in California to apply to the state’s public universities as residents, granting them a reduced tuition rate. (Students must prove themselves to be “on the path to legalization,” meaning that if they are undocumented, they must apply for lawful immigration status or swear to do so.) The law also affords such students the right to both private loans and public aid to help in paying for their education."

3. Moneycollege, by Ryan Craig - Inside Higher Ed - http://bit.ly/nM2IfM via AddThis - "With the right data, dozens of would-be Billy Beanes will spring up across the country arguing what the on-base percentage equivalent for higher education is, coalescing on persistence and completion metrics that are meaningful for all students (i.e., traditional/adult, full-time/part-time, on-ground/online) and helping their institutions reform and restructure to increase “wins.”

4. 25 Colleges With the Happiest Freshmen, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/25-colleges-with-the-happiest-freshmen/6873/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "What you’ll find here is the list of the 25 colleges and universities with arguably the happiest freshmen. These schools enjoy the highest freshmen retention rates, according to the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, an education think tank, which collected the figures when compiling the college rankings for Forbes Magazine."

5. Ohio universities to drop most remedial classes, by Christopher Magan - http://www.middletownjournal.com/news/middletown-news/ohio-universities-to-drop-most-remedial-classes-1266589.html?cxtype=ynews_rss via @middjournal - "The nearly 40 percent of college freshmen in Ohio who are not ready for college-level work will take most of their remedial courses at community colleges under a statewide plan that dramatically changes how four-year schools provide instruction to those needing extra help."

6. Advocates Worry ESEA Rewrite May Weaken Law, by Alyson Klein - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/01/27esea.h30.html via @educationweek - "Subgroup accountability is an especially complicated piece of the already very complicated NCLB law, which requires that public schools test their students in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school. Schools first are required to break out student-achievement data to show how racial and ethnic minorities, students from low-income families, English-language learners, and students in special education are doing relative to their peers."

7. Jobs's Wife Backs Education Causes, by Geoffrey A. Fowler and Jessica E. Vascellaro - http://on.wsj.com/oMmn8U via Wsj - "Ms. Powell Jobs's charitable activities date back at least to the mid-1990s, when she mentored high-school students in East Palo Alto, Calif. In 1997, she co-founded the nonprofit College Track, which helps low-income students prepare for college through intensive academic and extra-curricular programs. Founding and running College Track involved "significant" financial donations from the Jobs family, according to a person familiar with the organization. Ms. Powell Jobs thought "this is important enough that I am not going to just write a check—I am going to build with my own hands an infrastructure that can help students go to college," Mr. Watson says. The program has trained more than 1,000 students, he says, 90% of whom went on to a four-year college."

8. The Spillover Effect: Beware the Explosive Teen, by Jeffrey Kluger - http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/10/the-spillover-effect-beware-the-explosive-teen/ -"The researchers' findings, which were published in the September-October edition of the journal Child Development, showed that fights or other conflicts with peers raised the risk of similar outbreaks of hostility in the home for at least a full day after. Conflicts inside the home had an even more persistent spillover effect, increasing the odds of fights with friends for an average of two full days. The effect was evident in both genders, though for girls it was more pronounced than it was for boys. Regardless of the sex of the teen, the phenomenon may also have a spiraling effect, with a fight in the living room leading to a fight in the schoolyard, which leads to another fight in the home and so on."

9. College sticker shock: Is $55,000 the new $50,000? by Daniel de Vise - College, Inc. - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/college-sticker-shock-is-55000-the-new-50000/2011/10/10/gIQAw10zaL_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "Nineteen colleges now charge $55,000 or more in annual tuition, fees and living expenses, according to the latest survey of most expensive colleges from CampusGrotto. Back in 2007, by contrast, $50,000 was the upper limit of college sticker price and only one university — our own George Washington University — had reached it."

10. When the Best is Mediocre, by Jay P. Greene and Josh B. McGee: Education Next - http://bit.ly/rd1zVQ via @AddThis - "Even the most elite suburban school districts often produce results that are mediocre when compared with those of our international peers. Our best school districts may look excellent alongside large urban districts, the comparison state accountability systems encourage, but that measure provides false comfort. America’s elite suburban students are increasingly competing with students outside the United States for economic opportunities, and a meaningful assessment of student achievement requires a global, not a local, comparison."