355. 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. NCAA enacts broad academic, scholarship reforms, by Andy Gardiner – http://usat.ly/uy14V7 via @USATODAY - "Athletes will be eligible for up to $2,000 annually to cover incidental expenses above their basic scholarship for room, board, books and tuition. . . . Beginning with the 2012-13 school year, teams will have to post a minimum Academic Progress Rate (APR) to be eligible for bowl games, NCAA tournaments and other NCAA championships. The cutoff will start at a score of 900 (on a scale of 1000) and rise over three years to 930, which the NCAA projects to be a 50% graduation rate."

2. Ron Paul: The truth about my student loan plan – http://usat.ly/sT8hc3 via @USATODAY"The accumulated total student loan debt in this country is over $1 trillion. Think about that for a moment. Our entire national deficit for this year is $1.5 trillion, and the cost of college education alone is two-thirds of our country's entire budget shortfall. This is staggering."

3. 'The Ideal High School Graduate,' by Rebecca R. Ruiz: http://nyti.ms/u7KJZq - "Mr. Fitzsimmons called successful applicants to Harvard “good all-arounders – academically, extracurricularly and personally,” and he stressed the importance of demonstrating humanity and three-dimensionality in one’s college application. “I want to know, what is it this person does beside chew gum and produce good grades or scores?”

4. NCAA board approves athletic eligibility rules for D-I athletes, by Allie Grasgreen Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/vtRL36 via @AddThis - "Under new rules beginning in August 2016, to be eligible for competition incoming freshmen must have a 2.3 grade point average in a set of high school core courses, up from 2.0, and the appropriate standardized test score on the NCAA’s sliding scale, which has been adjusted slightly to account for the new GPA minimum. However, under a new “academic redshirt year” model, students whose GPA falls between the old and new minimums will still be eligible to receive athletic scholarships and practice with the team in their first term of enrollment, and can practice in the next term as well as long as they pass nine semester or eight credit hours."

5. High Schools, Colleges Push Financial Literacy, by Caralee J. Adams - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/28/10finance.h31.html via @educationweek - “This budget worksheet slows you down a bit and makes you realize, ‘Hey, I have to pay this money back,’ ” said the 26-year-old, who says it took just 15 minutes to meet the college’s new financial-aid requirement. Despite qualifying for Pell Grants and veterans’ benefits, Mr. Chandler estimates he will have accumulated $45,000 in debt by the time he finishes his education, including a master’s degree."

6. Chicago to Judge High Schools by College-Readiness Metric, by Catherine Gewertz - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2011/10/chicago_to_judge_highn_schools.html via @educationweek - "A Power Point presentation given at the board of education's meeting yesterday makes the case for tightening the screws on high schools, noting that fewer than six in 10 students graduate, and that students' average ACT score is 17, short of the ACT's "college readiness" benchmark of 21. Only 8 percent of 11th graders are testing "college ready" in all subjects on the Prairie State Achievement Exam, which includes the ACT."

7. Should College Grads Get a Break on Their Loans? - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/201...

‎"Will the Obama plan make a difference? Will it help prevent defaults or will it lead today's students to borrow more, if they view their debts as potentially negotiable and if they believe the government is assuming more of the risk? What should government do about student debt and the college loan industry?"

8. Obama's student Debt Plan Is a Good First Step, by Sandy Baum - Room for Debate - http://nyti.ms/tHdLme - "The strength of the anti-student-loan movement and the number of students defaulting on their student loans suggest a serious lack of awareness of the repayment protections already in place. Unemployed students don’t have to make payments. But that doesn’t help people who don’t know they have this option. And stories of people unable to wade through the bureaucratic barriers to entering the Income Based Repayment plan abound."

9. Subsidizing the College Bubble, by Richard Vedder, Ohio U. - Room for Debate - http://nyti.ms/s6Dtij - "Our system of federal student financial assistance is broken --and very costly. It has done little to help low-income people go to college -- a smaller percentage of college graduates come from the bottom quartile of the income distribution than in 1970, before these programs were large -- and probably has contributed to the explosion of college tuition and fees."

10. Obama's Inadequate Response on Student Debt, by Anya Kamenetz - Room for Debate - http://nyti.ms/sj8Ebd - "But these numbers clearly show that the relief offered by income-based repayment is inadequate to the scope of the problem. It doesn’t apply to parental PLUS loans. It doesn’t apply to private, unsubsidized student loans, which bear higher interest rates, have been growing at 25 percent a year (compared with federal loans at 8 percent a year) and are on track to match the volume of federal student loans by 2025. It doesn’t help defaulted borrowers, who face lifelong nightmares of snowballing interest rates and fees with little to no possibility of relief even through bankruptcy."

11. The Worst Lesson We Could Teach, by Neal P. McCluskey - Room for Debate - http://nyti.ms/v8W5YZ - "What the administration is proposing isn’t all that grand: If you have debt through both the federal direct, and now-defunct guaranteed, loan programs you’ll be able to consolidate your loans and get a modest interest rate reduction. And if you don’t earn much, your maximum monthly payment could go down, with whatever debt remains forgiven after twenty years. Taxpayers will make up the revenue shortfall. That’s lovely for you if you qualify, but relatively few people will. Only around eight million of the roughly 36 million Americans who hold federal loans will probably benefit."

12. Student Debt Plan Compounds the Suffering, by Cindy Warner - Room for Debate - http://nyti.ms/rE4n5H - "Obama’s new plan for student loan repayment fails to address the problem of the financial industry's failure to disclose how a for-profit lender and servicer operates with its Draconian fees and penalties under the auspices of “financial aid,” or what students perceive as assistance. The financial industry failed to disclose that student loans come with no consumer protections and will remain that way for life. They are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, and if unpaid, the balance due will continue to escalate forever."

13. Intellectual Curiosity Predicts Academic Success, Study Finds - http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/intellectual-curiosity-predicts-academic-success-study-finds/37502 - "Intellectual curiosity is a strong predictor of future academic performance, says an article in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. That conclusion was based on a meta-analysis of 200 previous studies of students who rated their own intellectual curiosity, among other factors. Intellectual curiosity has as large an effect on academic performance as conscientiousness, though not as much as intelligence, the article says."

14. How to Calculate the Real Cost of College, by Kayla Webley - http://ti.me/sNjxWk via @TIMEMoneyland - "The calculators, which are mandated by the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, come up with net prices for individuals by taking the estimated costs — including tuition, fees, housing, books, transportation and other expenses — and subtracting the estimated aid a particular student is likely to receive, based on financial need and academic achievement. This aid comes in the form of scholarships from the school and grants (i.e., free money) from the federal government. After the net price is predicted, the calculators go a step further and detail the savings that could come from utilizing government-backed loans, which have low, fixed interest rates, and participating in a school’s work-study program."

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