155. MVCAP fyi

See free MVCAP e-books on college admissions and financial aid for sharing, printing, and downloading at our online resource library: http://issuu.com/mvcap

1. Data on 760,000 at risk after The Ohio State University's server hacked, by Jim Kavanagh - http://t.co/3mry0Bh via @cnn

"It doesn't appear that anyone's personal data were accessed, the university said, but Ohio State is providing a year of free credit protection services to those potentially affected. . . . The university expects the investigation and credit protection services to cost it $4 million, according to the Dispatch."

2. Elite Colleges Continue to Fill Slots Early, by Jacques Steinberg: http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/early-admission-acceptances/

"At UPenn, for example, nearly half of the freshman class has already been admitted, according to my back-of-the-envelope calculations. At Haverford, Johns Hopkins and Bowdoin, the comparable figure is at or near 40 percent.

By allowing the most motivated — and, at times, some of the most financially able — applicants to lock in their college choices in December, selective colleges have in past years drawn criticism. The institutions have responded that it is in their interest to accept those applicants who are deemed the most qualified, and who have done sufficient research on a university to commit to it as their first choice."

3. More Tuition Struggles Projected, by Jack Stripling - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/e7yG2y

"Of 128 respondents, 15 percent of private institutions forecast zero growth or decreases in net tuition revenues for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30 for most colleges. That’s quite a change from the period between 2002 and 2008, when no more than 5 percent of private colleges saw annual decreases. The declines don't mean private colleges are cutting tuition, but rather that revenue lost from increases in discounting rates, which are at a 41 percent median, may be greater than revenue gained by tuition hikes."

4. Making P-16 Meaningful, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed http://t.co/ni0vzYK

"Education reformers have held out hope that the Common Core State Standards Initiative -- the bottom-up effort by governors and state school chiefs to define college readiness and create national standards and assessments to measure progress toward it -- could get college and K-12 leaders out of the silos in which they too often operate."

5. Tracking Students to 200% of Normal Time: Effect on Institutional Graduation Rates - http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011221.pdf

"A majority of college graduates take longer to earn a degree than what is commonly thought to be the “normal” amount of time it should take—4 years for a bachelor’s degree and 2 years for an associates degree."

6. Delaware man pleads guilty to duping Harvard - http://b.globe.com/h1zyqU (via @BostonUpdate)

"Adam Wheeler was sentenced to 10 years of probation and to pay restitution to Harvard for the financial aid, scholarship money and academic awards he received fraudulently from the school."

7. 2010 high school valedictorians - Boston.com: http://shar.es/XcocG

"Forty different paths, many that began in distant lands, have brought them together. Through hard work, caring parents, and perceptive teachers, they've conquered challenges. Now, they've made it to the top of their class. Here is a snapshot of Boston's 2010 valedictorians."

8. Sweating Bullets at the GAO, by Frederick M. Hess and Andrew P. Kelly - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/gFoGJo

"The authors of the Government Accountability Office’s for-profit secret shopper investigation pulled off a statistically impressive feat in August. Let’s set aside for the moment that on Nov. 30, the government watchdog quietly revealed that its influential testimony on for-profit colleges was riddled with errors, with 16 of the 28 findings requiring revisions. More interesting is the fact that all 16 of the errors run in the same direction -- casting for-profits in the worst possible light. The odds of all 16 pointing in the same direction by chance? A cool 1 in 65,536."

9. 10 Excellent College Towns: Unigo List - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/16/10-excellent-college-town_n_797873.html#s209457

"A school's location is the inherent culture surrounding the campus, and what that environment can offer its students. Don't worry though, if you are looking for great weather, we have that too! The perfect vista, town, or climate where you'll be truly happy is out there waiting for you. Here are ten of our favorites."

10. Seeberg parents feel betrayed by Notre Dame sex attack investigation - chicagotribune.com: http://bit.ly/h9Zm8A

"We are parents fighting for our daughter. We're fighting for our sisters, our nieces and our granddaughters," Tom Seeberg said. "If not at Our Lady's university, then where? Where in the world would you fight for women? Where in the world would you fight for a cause like this?"

11. 3 Reasons Colleges Accept More Early Applicants, by Kim Clark - US News and World Report: http://t.co/s8Y0AY5

"Many schools' early admission rates appear high because coaches often push recruited athletes, who are pre-screened, through early to ensure commitments. Yale University, for example, accepted 730, or 13.9 percent, of its 5,261 early applications last year. Meanwhile, Yale says it accepted just 1,309, or 5.6 percent, of the 23,273 regular candidates. But Yale spokesman Tom Conroy noted that many of the early applicants were recruited athletes."

12. A Plea Deal for George Huguely, by Liz Seccuro - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liz-seccuro/the-plea-deal-for-george-_b_797742.html

‎"It is important to note that today, as I sit a mere 10 minutes from Capitol Hill, Senator Robert Casey (D-PA) is introducing the SaVE Act in the Senate, a bill crafted in direct response to this horrific death. Let us not lose focus on what Yeardley's murder means, the facts of the case, and that it resonates beyond UVA and to every corner of America's college and university communities."

13. Should You Major in Journalism? by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/QEmDWuF

"I write a college blog for CBS MoneyWatch and the two most popular posts that I’ve written in 2010 focused on the 20 best-paying college degrees and the 20 worst-paying college degrees. Since this summer when I wrote those posts, they’ve had close to a half million hits. And this is no fluke. The most popular college blog post that I wrote in 2009 was also on the same subject."

14. Mentor Program Introduces Students to STEM-Related Fields, by Jamaal Abdul-Alim - http://t.co/ijMyOBl via @educationweek

‎"Just one of dozens of local chapters affiliated with the national ACE Mentor Program, headquartered in Stamford, Conn., the program provides early career exposure, mentoring, and scholarships to high school students in an attempt to encourage them to enter one of the three fields that make up the ACE acronym: architecture, construction, and engineering."

15. Tax Bill With Benefits for Colleges and Students Heads to President's Desk, by Kelly Fields - http://chronicle.com/article/Tax-Bill-With-Benefits-for/125737/

"The bill would extend for two years a series of expiring tax breaks, including several deductions and credits for research, tuition, and charitable donations. They include a tuition tax credit worth up to $2,500, a student-loan interest deduction worth up to $2,500, and a benefit that allows companies to provide up to $5,250 in tax-free tuition assistance to their employees.

The measure would also renew a tax credit for companies that give research dollars to colleges and allow individuals to continue to contribute up to $2,000 a year tax-free to Coverdell Education Savings Accounts."

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126. MVCAP fyi

See free MVCAP e-books on college admissions and financial aid for sharing, printing, and downloading at our online resource library: http://issuu.com/mvcap

1. A Time of Urgency, by Freeman A. Hrabowski III - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/bNqGXs

"Many might be surprised that underrepresented minorities aspire to earn STEM degrees at roughly the same rate as other groups. However, only about 20 percent of underrepresented minority students complete undergraduate STEM programs within five years. And while white and Asian American students are more successful, their completion rates are also troubling, with only 33 and 42 percent of those students, respectively, finishing STEM degrees in five years. The country is struggling to remain globally competitive in science and technology. Retaining and graduating undergraduates of all races in STEM fields is clearly an American issue."

2. Learning From For-Profits - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/9yF55R

"While panelists at TIAA-CREF mostly dodged or ignored the inner-Beltway debate, a noted news personality gave her two cents. Speaking at a post-conference dinner in the aristocratic confines of the University Club, Cokie Roberts, senior news analyst at NPR, predicted that Democratic lawmakers, in particular, will be reluctant to take on a sector with such clear ties to one of the nation’s most powerful newspapers. The Washington Post Co., which owns the newspaper, also owns Kaplan University, among other for-profits. “But I have to tell you, the biggest objection to [regulation] has come from the fact that The Washington Post would go out of business if Kaplan went out of business – yes, I see Peter Smith waiving,” Roberts said with a chuckle. “Because The Washington Post money all comes from Kaplan and the Democrats don’t want The Washington Post to go out of business, so I think there are a lot of forces militating against those rules at the moment.”

3. Wising Up on STEM Completion - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/903NgE

‎"According to NSF statistics cited in the AAUW report, despite the fact that women make up the majority of college students generally, only 88,371 of them graduated in STEM fields in 2007, compared to 138,874 of their male counterparts. In 2007, men outnumbered women in science and engineering careers, 73 percent to 27 percent. Gender biases -- conscious and unconscious -- often hinder women’s progress in these fields, the report says."

4. Harnessing Social Media - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/9bNYwW

"But a new study, scheduled to be released next week by the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, suggests that using Twitter in class might in fact lead to greater engagement and higher grades — as long as professors harness their students’ urges to Tweet for “educationally relevant activities”: class discussions, asking questions, getting reminders from instructors, organizing study groups, and so on. The students in the experiment, first-year pre-health majors (and Twitter novices), varied widely as far as how frequently they tweeted over the course of the 14-week semester — the median was 30 times and the mean was 48 — but overall their GPAs averaged half a point higher than those of the non-tweeting control group. "Using Twitter produced a more rich discussion of students' relationships to themes covered in the book than would have been possible during the limited class time,” write the study’s authors, researchers at Lock Haven University, South Dakota State University, and Penn...."

5. College leaders work to increase interest in humanities, by Tracy Jan - http://b.globe.com/bUXKv2

‎"Today, business is the most popular undergraduate degree in the United States; in 2008, 21 percent of bachelor’s degrees that were awarded were in that field, according to US Department of Education statistics. And many colleges, including Brandeis this year, have responded by expanding their majors in preprofessional fields like business. At Harvard, a liberal arts bastion that does not offer undergraduates a business major, the most popular field of study is economics, with more than 700 students choosing that as a major. That accounts for 11 percent of its undergraduates and more than three times the number of English or history majors. And the number of Harvard students who declare science and engineering majors has jumped 27 percent in the past five years — now making up nearly a third of the university’s undergraduates. “That’s a real shift from seeing an undergraduate education as general preparation in a wide range of fields. . . ."

6. Failure to educate, by Junia Yearwood - http://b.globe.com/dz8Hmo

"I knew that most of my students who walked across the stage, amidst the cheers, whistles, camera flashes, and shout-outs from parents, family, and friends, were not functionally literate. They were unable to perform the minimum skills necessary to negotiate society: reading the local newspapers, filling out a job application, or following basic written instructions; even fewer had achieved empowering literacy enabling them to closely read, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate text.However, they were all college bound — the ultimate goal of our school’s vision statement — clutching knapsacks stuffed with our symbols of academic success: multiple college acceptances, a high school diploma; an official transcript indicating they had passed the MCAS test and had met all graduation requirements; several glowing letters of recommendation from teachers and guidance counselors; and one compelling personal statement, their college essay."

7. 5 Student Loan Repayment Tips, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy http://t.co/JsGd7Tk

"The Project on Student Debt just released a list of ways that borrowers can manage their student loan repayments. Here are five of the nonprofit group’s student debt tips:"

8. The Real Price of College: Looking Beyond the Sticker http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-real-price-of-college-looking-beyond-the-sticker/27769

‎"Over the decade from 2000-01 to 2010-11, average published tuition and fees at public four-year colleges rose 72% after adjusting for inflation. The 35% increase at private four-year colleges and the 31% increase at public two-year colleges seem moderate by comparison. But after subtracting estimated average grant aid and federal tax credits and deductions received by full-time students, the net price actually declined in each of these three postsecondary sectors. In other words, on average the net tuition and fees students are paying are lower in 2010 dollars than they were a decade ago.So it’s not surprising that there are two very different stories out there about the price of college and college affordability. Why is it so hard for people to believe the numbers about declining net prices?"

9. Going SAT- Free - http://bit.ly/cXwO3e

"Not only do all four-year colleges that require a standardized test—including Harvard and Yale—let applicants choose between submitting SAT and ACT scores (the last school made the change in 2007), but a growing number of competitive institutions including Smith College, Wake Forest, American University, Bowdoin College, Bates College, and, most recently, Virginia Wesleyan, have decided to forgo standardized tests altogether. Today, about 830 of the country’s 2,430 accredited four-year colleges do not use the SAT or ACT to admit the majority of applicants. (Some schools require a test if you have a low GPA or class rank.) “Colleges are trying to increase the number of applicants and diversify their population,” says Kristen Campbell, executive director of college-prep programs for Kaplan Test Prep."