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

2. Average student loan debt tops $25,000, by Blake Ellis - http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/03/pf/student_loan_debt/ via CNNMoney.com - "College seniors who took out loans to fund their college education owed an average of $25,250, 5% more than the class of 2009 owed, according to a report from the Institute for College Access & Success' Project on Student Debt."

3. U.S.-born children take fight over tuition to court, by Alan Gomez – http://usat.ly/uj42II via @USATODAY - "Now a Florida lawsuit is highlighting a rare practice of forbidding U.S.-born students — citizens by birth — from getting in-state tuition because their parents are illegal immigrants. Five students, all born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents, sued the state last month for denying them in-state tuition rates even though they'd lived in Florida, graduated from state high schools and were entering state colleges and universities."

4. American Students Gaze Across the Atlantic and See College, by Rebecca R. Ruiz: http://nyti.ms/tcSYKl - "At a time when more international students are choosing to study in the United States, a separate phenomenon is on the rise: that of American students choosing to spend their entire college experience abroad. Some international institutions have noted American students’ increased willingness to travel farther from home, which has prompted the schools to bolster their outreach efforts."

5. Report Finds Colleges Fail to Disclose Information, by Libby A. Nelson Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/uHHnRt via AddThis - "Three years after the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which included new disclosure requirements for institutions, the majority of colleges are failing to provide public information on graduation rates for low-income students, and many do not adequately disclose other required information, according to a study published today by Education Sector and the American Enterprise Institute."

6. Essay: Focus student success efforts on what happens in the classroom, by Vincent Tinto Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/uHOQca via AddThis - "It is one thing to hold high expectations; it is another to provide the support students need to achieve them. At no time is support, in particular academic support, more important than during the critical first year of college when student success is still so much in question and still malleable to institutional intervention."

7. NAEP Scores Flat, Sun Rises Again, by Robert Slavin - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/sputnik/2011/11/naep_scores_flat_sun_rises_again.html - "Recent research from Don Hernandez shows that for students not reading on grade level by 3rd grade, one in six did not graduate from high school on time. This rate is four times greater than that for proficient readers. If this doesn't sound an alarm, I don't know what will. Reading well is a fundamental necessity for learning in all other subjects from math to history, even art. Children who are not reading on grade level simply cannot reach their full potential in any other subject. Economically, this leads to immeasurable loss in untapped potential of our future workforce."

8. College Graduates’ Debt Burden Grew, Yet Again, in 2010, by Tamar Lewin - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/education/average-student-loan-debt-grew-by-5-percent-in-2010.html?_r=1&hpw - “Student debt goes up and it doesn’t ever go down,” said Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of Finaid.org and Fastweb.com, two Web sites that offer advice on paying for college. “We’re clearly heading in the direction of decreased college affordability. Among lower-income students, the canaries in the cage that squawk first, we’re already seeing a decline in enrollment in four-year colleges and an increase in lower-cost two-year institutions,” he said. Mr. Kantrowitz estimated that for the class of 2011, average debt was $27,200 — or, if parent loans were included, $34,000."

9. Is community college the best value in academia? by Daniel de Vise - College, Inc. -http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/is-community-college-the-best-value-in-academia/2011/11/03/gIQA9xabiM_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost -"Have you considered community college as a pathway to a four-year degree?"

10. Grab college major or lose career, by Jay Mathews - Class Struggle - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/grab-college-major-or-lose-career/2011/11/02/gIQARHF5gM_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "Using a sample of 62,218 first-time community college students in Washington state, researchers Davis Jenkins and Madeline Joy Weiss noted that students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, on average less likely to graduate, were also “less likely than higher SES students to enter a concentration, which we define as taking and passing at least three courses in a single field of study.”They were slowed by remedial courses, but even when they had a chance to pick majors, they weren’t quick and often did not see what choices would help them get jobs. The only majors with good career prospects that low-income students chose in large numbers were in nursing and other health fields."