336. 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. AT WHAT COST: Pursuing athletic scholarships is expensive for families http://t.co/OhNiGNTc via @reviewjournal - "It doesn't pay for most families chasing the dream of an athletic scholarship. . . . "I marvel at the money parents spend over the years in the pursuit of athletic scholarships," says Beth Walker, a former college volleyball player at Kansas and now owner of College Funding Coaches. . . . "For most athletes, if they can get even 25 percent of their tuition paid, that's huge. But many of these families are sure they have the next Division I superstar and there are full scholarships coming. I don't know what they're smoking. They're not coming from a place of reality. It's scary."

2. Long Island SAT Fraud Prompts Wider Investigations, by Rebecca R. Ruiz - http://nyti.ms/rrmgXy - "When the Educational Testing Service, the company that administers the test, detects irregularities, it simply notifies the affected students that their scores are being withdrawn. Neither colleges nor high schools are ever alerted that cheating was suspected.
That happens about .04 percent of the time, Ms. Anderson reports, with about 1,000 scores being withdrawn each year out of 2.25 million. Nearly all of those withdrawals – 99 percent of them – are due to one test-taker having copied off of another."

3. Public Schools Also Lose When Online Students Fail, by Burt Hubbard and Nancy Mitchell - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/03/06enc_online.h31.html via @educationweek - "Colorado taxpayers will spend $100 million this year on online schools that are largely failing their elementary and high school students, state education records and interviews with school officials show. The money includes millions in tax dollars that are going to K-12 online schools for students who are no longer there."

4. Are Top Students Getting Short Shrift? - Room for Debate - http://nyti.ms/oSu0fj -"By trying to teach children of varying abilities in one classroom, is American society underdeveloping some of its brightest young people?"

5. In Classrooms, the Ideal vs. the Reality, by C. Kent McGuire - Room for Debate - http://nyti.ms/n8bpom - "The central challenge for American schools is to produce much higher levels of achievement for the vast majority of students. National attention to new Common Core Standards and to 21st Century Skills is based on this challenge. The policy debate we need to have is about how to accomplish this."

6. Latinos Need More Support to Raise Lagging Graduation Rates, Report Says, by Lacey Johnson - http://chronicle.com/article/Latinos-Need-More-Support-to/129247/ - "The study, conducted in 2009, found that only 19.2 percent of Latinos between the ages of 25 and 34 had earned a two- or four-year degree, compared with 41 percent nationally. To increase Latino college completion, policy makers and educators must, among other steps, improve middle- and high-school counseling, make preschool more available to low-income families, provide additional need-based grant money, and simplify the financial-aid system, the report says."

7. Two bitter education rivals begin to bury the hatchet, by Greg Toppo - http://usat.ly/o3HTwG via @usatoday - "We believe you cannot ignore poverty. We just believe right now the reason we have this problem is we're sending kids who face all these extra challenges into the same setup -- not even, because the kids in the more resourced communities have stronger schools, so we're sending them into a lesser version of the same setup that we send kids with many more privileges into, and that is why we have the achievement gap."

8. Online textbooks moving into schools, by Emma Brown - http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/online-textbooks-moving-into-schools/2011/09/27/gIQAwn0KGL_story.html via Washingtonpost.com -"Starting this fall, almost all Fairfax middle and high school students began using online books in social studies, jettisoning the tomes that have weighed down backpacks for decades. It is the Washington area’s most extensive foray into online textbooks, putting Fairfax at the leading edge of a digital movement that publishers and educators say inevitably will sweep schools nationwide."

9. Best Bang For Your Buck Colleges: Unigo List - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/03/bang-for-your-buck-colleges-unigo_n_991943.html - "Want a great education but don't want to accrue tremendous debt to get it? Well, you are in luck. College information site Unigo recently named the colleges that are the best "bang for your buck" --vi.e. colleges that are relatively inexpensive that provide a first-class education."

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

298. 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. Suicide attempts higher for veterans on campus, by Sharon Jayson - http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/medical/mentalhealth/story/2011/08/Suicide-attempts-higher-for-veterans-on-campus/49808298/1 - "Nearly half (46%) of the 415 men and 110 women studied reported having had suicidal thinking sometime in their lives; 20% had suicidal thoughts with a plan. That compares to 2010 data from the American College Health Association, which showed 6% of college students reported seriously considering suicide."

3. Degrees of Wealth, by Steve Kolowich - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/r2wcRp - "But notwithstanding the apparent persistence of racial and gender-based handicaps, “obtaining a postsecondary credential is almost always worth it” for everyone, the researchers say. Broadly, people with associate degrees would typically earn around $1.7 million over their lives; those with professional degrees would earn $3.6 million. The degrees in between -- bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral (in that order) -- make up pretty even steps, each worth about $400,000 more than the last."

4. Tackling Urban Inequalities, by Kevin Kiley - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/qVQfEz - “When we look at poverty rates, graduation rates, crime rates, employment rates, one thing stands out,” Bloomberg said at the press conference. “Blacks and Latinos are not fully sharing in the promise of American freedom, and far too many are trapped in circumstances that are difficult to escape from.”

5. When it Comes to Earnings, Higher Education Isn't the Whole Story, by Beckie Supiano - http://chronicle.com/article/Education-Pays-but-So-Does/128526/ - "Within each occupation, like health professionals or sales and office workers, the more education a person has, the more that person is likely to earn. But some occupations pay better than others, so less-educated workers in them can earn more than more-educated workers in a different line of work. That finding echoes the center's report on college majors, since college major is closely tied to occupation."

6. Smart college shopping saves time, money and the environment, by Oliver St. John and Jayne O'Donnell: http://t.co/t6bKTeq via @USATODAY - ". . . Parents and students plan to spend an average of $808.71 on apparel, electronics, dorm furnishings and food items this year, down from $835.73 last year, according to a National Retail Federation survey by consumer intelligence firm BIGresearch."

7. A conversation: Kopp, West, Smiley on Teach for America, by Valerie Strauss - The Answer Sheet - http://t.co/zcFut19 via @washingtonpost - "I think of the degree to which we still put such low value on the lives and the opportunities for poor and working class kids of all colors, disproportionately black, brown and red. . . . It’s a moral disgrace when you look at the schools in our urban areas. Not just black, but brown and white poor and so forth."

8. Unigo Expert Network: Best Jobs for College Students - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/unigo/unigo-expert-network-best_b_918965.html - "College students being strapped for cash is no surprise, but it does beg the question of what jobs make the best fits for students? Should students make as much money as they can and graduate with as little debt as possible - or - take on internships or lower paying positions in their field of interest?"

9. The 10 Colleges With The Best Dorms - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/05/the-10-colleges-with-the-_n_919218.html#s322931&title=Bryn_Mawr_College - "Dorms are notoriously spartan, cinderblock affairs. However, some colleges definitely have better living quarters than others. According to the Princeton Review, Pennsylvania liberal arts college Bryn Mawr has the best dorms in the country, followed closely by Maryland's Loyola University. Check out our slide show of the colleges with the best dorms.

10. 7 Tools to Aid the College Admissions Process, by Ryan Lytle - US News and World Report - http://t.co/ORmUWFQ - "As technology advances, digital tools have become more prevalent in making this life-altering process more manageable. Here are just a few of those tools available to students and parents:"