344. 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. Colleges Fail U.S. Financial Test, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed - http://bit.ly/pAKXuh via @AddThis - "Institutions that score above 1.5 (on a scale of 3.0) are considered to be financially responsible; those below 1.5 but above 1.0 require some additional oversight, while those below 1.0 must post a letter of credit and face cash monitoring requirements from the department. An initial review of the list shows slightly more than 180 private nonprofit colleges with scores below 1.5, and about 100 of those with scores below 1.0. About 200 for-profit colleges -- many of them in fields such as cosmetology -- fall below the 1.5 threshold. A spreadsheet containing the institutions' scores can be downloaded here."

2. Speaker Madigan to block Quinn's veto on legislative scholarships, by Monique Garcia and Ray Longhttp://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-speaker-madigan-to-block-quinns-veto-on-legislative-scholarships-20111012,0,3654355.story - “The governor feels strongly that the political scholarship program is in disgrace,” Anderson said. “It’s past time to abolish the political scholarships, which are ripe for abuse.” Lawmakers are allowed to award two four-year scholarships to public universities each year. They often break them apart into eight, one-year tuition waivers. They come with just one legal requirement: that recipients live in the same district as the lawmaker who doles them out. While some lawmakers form committees to award the scholarships, the program has been long abused, with waivers going to relatives, family members of campaign contributors and the offspring of lobbyists."

3. 25 Colleges With the Unhappiest Freshmen, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/25-colleges-with-the-unhappiest-freshmen/6888/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "How do you measure if a freshman is unhappy? An easy way is to look at a school’s freshmen retention rate, which indicates how many first-year students return for their sophomore year. The schools on this list have the lowest freshmen retention rates of the 650 top colleges that the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, an education think tank, used when compiling the college rankings for Forbes Magazine."

4. Mixed reactions to the new NCLB bill, by Nick Pandolfo - http://p.ost.im/p/eMkxwE -"Senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Michael Enzi (R-Wyoming) announced new legislation to revamp the 2001 No Child Left Behind law yesterday, garnering some strong reactions from the education policy world."

5. Chicago Schools Slow to Embrace Longer School Days, by Julie Rasicot - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/13/08chicago.h31.html via @educationweek -"In the 405,000-student Chicago school system, the expanded-day initiative is driven by the fact that public school students in the nation’s third-largest district spend 15 percent less time in the classroom than the average American public school student, according to school district officials. Public schools nationwide provide an average of 6½ hours of instruction time per school day; Chicago offers about 5½. The district also struggles with a persistent achievement gap between African-American and Latino students and their white counterparts and a graduation rate below 60 percent."

6. State Puts Pressure on City Schools Over English Language Learners, by Sharon Otterman - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/education/13ell.html?hpw - "As a measure of the problem, he said, in 2010 only 7 percent of the city’s English language learners were found to have graduated on time and ready for college and careers. In the lower grades, 12 percent were proficient in English and 35 percent in math, well behind city averages. “These numbers are not acceptable,” Dr. King said. “We can’t leave so many students behind academically without access to college and career opportunities.”

7. For Colleges, Location Matters, by Jeff Selingo -http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2011/10/12/for-colleges-location-matters/ - "Like real estate, location matters in higher ed. But unlike many homeowners, colleges looking for a better neighborhood can’t simply hang a “For Sale” sign and move to a more desirable place. That’s problematic for colleges in struggling small towns and declining manufacturing cities. It’s sometimes difficult for them to attract prospective students and faculty members, or keep entrepreneurial young alumni around to build new businesses. And as the economies of those towns deteriorate further, local officials have few employers to turn to for help. Often colleges are asked to take on demands well beyond their mission."

8. The problems with the PSAT and National Merit program, by Valerie Strauss - The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-problems-with-the-psat-and-national-merit-program/2011/10/10/gIQA7w0pfL_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "About 50,000 students qualify based on their PSAT scores, and that number is whittled down to about 16,000, who become semifinalists (the 34,000 others get letters of commendation). About 8,500 are named finalists, eligible for a scholarship of varying amounts, based on test scores as well as other criteria including academic performance. But here’s something you might not expect: the initial cutoff scores separating the possible winners from the definite losers are not the same in each state."

9. Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t), by Diane Ravitch - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/ravitch-why-finlands-schools-are-great-by-doing-what-we-dont/2011/10/12/gIQAmTyLgL_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "What makes the Finnish school system so amazing is that Finnish students never take a standardized test until their last year of high school, when they take a matriculation examination for college admission."

10. The 10 Colleges That Receive the Most Applications: US News List - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/13/the-10-colleges-that-rece_n_1008663.html - "7 California schools appear on US News and World Report's list of the 10 colleges that receive the most applications. UCLA tops the list. St. John's University (a rare east coast contender) came in second."