297. Summer College News

Here are some links to today's stories

about 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://t.co/UftEiOc

2. NCAA cost-of-attendance puzzle: many schools, many methods, by Calder Silcox, Steve Berkowitz, and Jodi Upton - http://t.co/6IG4nQ3 via @USATODAY - "Instead, each school's financial-aid office makes an estimate — and each school uses its own formula. An estimate for in-state and out-of-state students is reported to the NCAA each year."

3. New school set to open, by Virginia Shank - Tribune Chronicle - Warren, OH: http://bit.ly/ofUjGz - "In 1997 the state legislature passed a law allowing community, or charter schools, to operate in Ohio. According to the Ohio Department of Education, there now are some 300 such schools in Ohio, including several in the Mahoning Valley. The privately operated schools receive public dollars, and typically cater to at-risk pupils. Like other community schools, STEAM is to be funded with public money; therefore, there is no cost to the family for a student to attend."

4. Debt, Dropouts and Degrees, by Libby A. Nelson - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/n6DiJq - "The report, “Debt to Degree: A New Way of Measuring College Success,” was released Wednesday by Education Sector. Its authors say they aim to give a more complete picture of higher education -- rather than judging by graduation rates alone or by default rates alone -- by dividing the total amount of money undergraduates borrow at a college by the number of degrees it awards."

5. Debt to Degree: A New Way of Measuring College Success, by Kevin Carey and Erin Dillon - http://www.educationsector.org/sites/default/files/publications/Debt%20to%20Degree%20CYCT_RELEASE.pdf - "The American higher education system is plagued by two chronicproblems: dropouts and debt. Barely half of the students who start college geta degree within six years, and graduation rates at less-selective colleges oftenhover at 25 percent or less. At the same time, student loan debt is at an all-timehigh, recently passing credit card debt in total volume. Loan default rates haverisen sharply in recent years, consigning a growing number of students to yearsof financial misery. In combination, drop-outs and debt are a major threat to thenation’s ability to help students become productive, well-educated citizens."

6. Texas orders ATI to stop enrolling new students - http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9OORN3G2.htm - "The Texas Workforce Commission has ordered ATI Enterprises Inc. to halt new enrollment at its 16 careers schools and complete training programs for current students. . . . The commission in April announced the company had been put on probation and required an outside auditor to review 2010 placement results."

7. University Reveals the Secrets of Winning Merit Scholarships, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/6qmUu8v via @cbsmoneywatch - "That’s why I was excited when the University of Rochester decided to share its fascinating accounting of just what mattered when the school was deciding which applicants would get its latest round of merit awards. After the university’s freshmen class had been selected, Jonathan Burdick, Rochester’s dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid, sat down this summer and analyzed the merit scholarship numbers to determine what admission factors had influenced the scholarship decisions."

8. Bloomberg to Use Own Funds in Plan to Aid Minority Youth, by Michael Barbaro and Fernanda Santos - http://nyti.ms/qOwY7K - "Even as crime has fallen and graduation rates have risen in New York over the past decade, city officials said that black and Latino men, especially those between ages 16 and 24, remained in crisis by nearly every measure, including rates of arrest, school suspension and poverty. Although the populations of young white, black and Latino men in New York are roughly the same size, 84 percent of those in the city’s detention facilities and nearly all of those admitted to children’s and family services facilities are black and Latino youth, according to data from the Bloomberg administration. “The magnitude of the disparities is stunning,” said Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services. “It’s tragic.”

9. Teach for America 2011 acceptance rate: 11 percent, by Jenna Johnson - Campus Overload - http://t.co/TQlr2g6 via @washingtonpost - "Since 2008, Teach for America has compiled a “top contributors list” to rank schools of similar size by the number of students who are accepted into the program. This year, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor had the highest number of students selected, with 119. For medium-sized schools, Harvard led the pack with 66 placements. And for small schools with fewer than 2,999 undergraduates, Spelman College had 36 placements."

10. America's Top Colleges: Forbes List - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/03/forbes-top-colleges-for_n_917203.html#s320311&title=Williams_College - "For the second year in a row, Williams College, a small, western-Massachusetts liberal arts school, has been named as the best undergraduate institution in America. With total annual costs adding up to nearly $55,000, a Williams education is certainly not cheap, but the 2,000 undergraduates here have among the highest four-year graduation rates in the country, win loads of prestigious national awards like Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships, and are often rewarded with high-paying careers."

11. HBCU Voices: Students On Why HBCUs Remain Relevant - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/03/hbcu-voices-students-on-w_n_917066.html#s320667&title=Danyelle_Gary_Hampton - "Here at HuffPost College, we asked current HBCU students to share what their schools meant to them. The response to this question was overwhelming. Many students said they were accepted to "predominantly white institutions," but chose instead HBCUs to connect to their past and present. Others said they sought the communities they found at HBCUs, or wanted to continue a family tradition of HBCU education."

131. 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. Some Early Returns on Early Admission, by Jacques Steinberg http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/early-admission-2011/

‎"Among those colleges and universities with binding early-decision programs — in which those applying have consented in advance to attend if admitted — Northwestern is reporting that early applications increased by 24 percent, to about 2,100, when compared with last year; submissions to the University of Pennsylvania are up 18 percent, to 4,557; Duke and Johns Hopkins are each up by nearly 14 percent, having received 2,282 and 1,314 applications, respectively; and Rice is up about 15 percent, with about 1,000 early applications."

2. For-Profit College Recruiters Caught Giving False Info (WATCH) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/12/forprofit-college-recruit_n_782982.html

"After a Remington College professor was surprised to find two convicted felons on his class roster, ABC sent an undercover producer posing as a convicted felon to meet with a Remington recruiter. When the producer told the recruiter of his felony conviction, the recruiter assured him they would work with him and that he could find work in law enforcement or corrections. But according to the Texas Department of Public Safety, those convicted of felonies are barred from working in those areas. In another instance, a DeVry University recruiter grossly exaggerated the percentage of graduates who obtained jobs upon graduation."

3. 7 Most Affordable College Towns: Forbes List http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/12/most-affordable-college-towns_n_782341.html#s180096

‎"A new study by Coldwell Banker Real Estate reveals that many students and their families are opting to purchase houses in college towns rather than pay for dorms, reports Forbes. To determine rankings, Coldwell Banker looked at the list prices of houses in 120 college towns, which had at least 6 homes available for purchase between April and September of 2010. Forbes gives the fifteen most affordable college towns. Below, check out the top seven -- and why buying, rather than renting, might be a good idea."

4. College study abroad suffers its first decline, by Mary Beth Marklein - http://usat.ly/bPGX3z - RT @USATODAY

"Europe still attracted the largest share of U.S. students — more than 140,000 — but enrollments dropped 4%. They rose in Africa (16%), Asia (2%) and South America (13%). That growth was fueled in part "by new and sometimes more affordable" programs in developing countries, the report says."The economic situation around the world, not just the U.S., is clearly having an impact," says Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the institute. Although the 2008-09 figures are the latest available, there are signs that the most recent year has begun to see an uptick in U.S. students going abroad."

5. Black Colleges Look To Increase Online Education Presence, by Kathy Matheson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/14/black-colleges-look-to-in_n_783277.html

"Blacks comprised about 12 percent of total enrollment in higher education in 2007 but were 21 percent of students at for-profit institutions – many of which are online, according to an American Council on Education report released this year. Tom Joyner, a syndicated radio host with a largely black audience, also sees the market's potential. The longtime historical black college and unversity booster and philanthropist has invested about $7 million to start HBCUsOnline.com, an educational services venture run by his son."

6. Questionable Science Behind Academic Rankings, by D.D. Guttenplan - http://nyti.ms/d93SWh

"But researchers who looked behind the headlines noticed that the list also ranked Alexandria fourth in the world in a subcategory that weighed the impact of a university’s research — behind only Caltech, M.I.T. and Princeton, and ahead of both Harvard and Stanford. Like most university rankings, the list is made up of several different indicators, which are given weighted scores and combined to produce a final number or ranking. As Richard Holmes, who teaches at the Universiti Teknologi MARA in Malaysia, wrote on his University Ranking Watch blog, according to the Webometrics ranking of World Universities, published by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Alexandria University is “not even the best university in Alexandria.” The overall result, he wrote, was skewed by “one indicator, citations, which accounted for 32.5% of the total weighting.”

7. China Surges Past India as Top Home of Foreign Students, by Tamar Lewin - http://nyti.ms/cZL6l9

"The report found that a record high of 690,923 international students came to the United States last year — nearly 128,000 of them, or more than 18 percent, from China. Over all, the number of international students at colleges and universities in the United States increased 3 percent for the 2009-10 academic year. India, which in recent years had been in the top spot, increased its numbers only slightly, to 104,897 last academic year. “The number of students from China is booming, because of that booming Chinese economy,” said Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the institute. “But India, which also has a booming economy, is only up 1.6 percent. I think one factor is the great number of Chinese families with disposable income, two working parents and only one child, and a determination to invest their money to make sure that child receives the best education possible.”

8. Pay of 30 Private-College Presidents Topped $1-Million in 2008, by Andrea Fuller http://chronicle.com/article/Compensation-of-30/125371/

"The Internal Revenue Service overhauled the way it instructed colleges to report compensation for 2008. Colleges were asked to report salaries according to the calendar year, not the fiscal year, as in years past, meaning that some dollar amounts overlap with what was reported the previous year. But one thing remained the same: As in years past, the top earners included presidents who received large payouts when they stepped down. John R. Brazil, who retired in January as president of Trinity University, in Texas, was the second-highest earner during 2008, receiving $2,777,653 in total compensation. More than $2-million of that amount included payout and interest on deferred compensation.The highest-paid sitting president was R. Gerald Turner, of Southern Methodist University, who earned $2,774,000 in total compensation. According to the university, Mr. Turner's compensation was unusually high because he cashed out a life-insurance policy and bought his own policy. . . ."

9. Top district lets average kids lag, by Jay Mathews - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/11/top_district_lets_average_kids.html

"Dan Stephens, who teaches math at Northwood High School, thinks he knows why. It is a reason I have never heard before from his renowned district. The most prevalent complaint, buttressed by the new documentary “Race to Nowhere” being shown in Montgomery County, is that teachers and principals put too much pressure on the kids. They are jittery, sleep-deprived, maybe suicidal. Stephens, who teaches Precalculus and Geometry to mostly average kids, thinks his students are the opposite of too stressed. They don’t try very hard and know they will still graduate, so no problem. “All I can do is beg my students to study. Ultimately, they know they don’t have to and don’t,” said Stephens, who has taught for 20 years. “I would guess fewer than a handful actually studied for their test last week. No joke.”

10. Black-White Differences in Oracy and Literacy: A Needed Conversation, by Tom Sticht - http://www.educationnews.org/commentaries/opinions_on_education/102925.html

"Listening to adults speak in early childhood may, as suggested by Ferguson, produce differences in both oracy (listening to and comprehending speech) and literacy (reading). In research for the U. S. Department of Defense, colleagues and I found that there were significant differences between black and white young adults who were applicants for military service in the oracy skills involved in listening to and recalling information from spoken messages. Additionally, when simultaneously listening to and reading information from a 5th grade passage spoken at 100 words per minute, whites correctly identified 95 percent of mismatches between the spoken and written versions of the same message while blacks answered 85 percent correctly, a ten point gap. Surprisingly, however, when the spoken message was presented for listening at 250 words per minute, forcing examinees to listen and read at that rate, which is about the average rate for silent reading by college-oriented, high school graduates, whites got 60 percent of mismatches correct while blacks got only 30 percent correct, a 30 point gap. For some reason, accelerating the rate of speech from 100 to 250 words per minute tripled the gap between scores for whites and blacks. This suggests some differences in the internal brain processes involved in the fluency of processing oral and written language at rates of reading typical for entering college freshman."

11. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily for today's top stories on college admissions/financial aid in newsletter form - http://paper.li/rottenbornj