375. 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. Financial Aid Help: http://t.co/eV0mVNlE - "Seniors and Senior Parents: It’s a great time to sign up for your pin #’s from FAFSA.ED.GOV (the Free Application for Federal Student Aid). A parent needs a pin # and a student needs a separate pin # in order to file. Go to fafsa.ed.gov and click “Get Pin #” to proceed."

3. 'Evaluating, Understanding And Comparing Financial Aid Offers' http://t.co/9SmcutMC - "So you have been accepted at several colleges that you applied to. You filed your FAFSA and other financial aid forms. You have been waiting for the numbers to arrive and finally they start filling you mailbox. Now what?"

4. Counselors Urge Applicants to Hit Aid Deadlines http://t.co/DkQaiIT7 via @townnews - "High school officials are urging parents to pay attention to deadlines so there are no missed opportunities while applying for student loans and financial aid for high school seniors."

5. North Star Financial Advisor Gives Back http://t.co/dEUXTXC4 via @sfgate - "Clarisa Hernandez of North Star Resource Group works to help create a better future for underprivileged children."

6. Minnesota Early Childhood Education Achievement Gap http://t.co/EFKnJgLk via @ABC6NEWS

7. Are black students lacking basic skills? http://t.co/mNyf0AtQ - "OPINION - Across the country, the achievement gap between white students and black students persists. . . ."

8. Minorities’ ISAT scores on rise in D300 - Elgin Courier News: http://t.co/gCVAZ0xb via @AddThis - "ALGONQUIN — Elementary and middle school students who are Hispanic and black are closing achievement gaps in Community Unit School District 300."

9. Frenzy over SATs - http://t.co/cUcqeSZC - "In my work with families I encounter a great deal of anxiety about the college application process. Much of this anxiety occurs when parents and kids come late to the tasks at hand. In a panic, they desperately try to play catch-up in order to get through everything that needs to be done . . . ."

10. Mexicans in New York City Lag in Education, by Kirk Semple: http://nyti.ms/tt9mlb - "Mexicans, the fastest-growing major immigrant group in the city, have the highest dropout rate: about 41 percent of Mexicans ages 16 to 19 have dropped out of school. . . . This crisis endures at the college level. Among Mexican immigrants 19 to 23 who do not have a college degree, only 6 percent are enrolled. That is a fraction of the rates among other major immigrant groups and the native-born population."

352. 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)

(I'm just back from Portland, OR.)

1. Facebook's Impact on Student Grades, by Rebecca R. Ruiz - http://nyti.ms/nMA4mn -"While overall time spent on Facebook negatively affected G.P.A., the results were not clear-cut. As it turned out, those who frequently shared links on Facebook or checked the site to see what friends were up to tended to have higher grades. Those students who posted status updates tended to have lower grades. . . . Meanwhile — contradicting the zero-sum logic of some who might believe that a minute spent social networking is a minute spent not attending to schoolwork — the study found no substantive link between time spent on Facebook and time spent studying."

2. Online students might feel less accountable to honor codes, by Steve Kolowich Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/rRjY7Q via AddThis - "In a series of experiments, researchers at Ohio University found that students in fully online psychology courses who signed an honor code promising not to cheat broke that pledge at a significantly higher rate than did students in a “blended” course that took place primarily in a classroom. “The more distant students are, the more disconnected they feel, and the more likely it is that they’ll rationalize cheating,” Frank M. LoSchiavo, one of the authors, conjectured in an interview with Inside Higher Ed."

3. College Admissions: What Do Schools Really Care About? by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/college-admissions-what-do-schools-really-care-about/6985/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "A new college admission study by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, which represents many colleges and universities, provides a handy cheat sheet on what schools do value when they review applications. . . . Clearly the best things that teenagers can do to increase their chances of getting accepted is to perform well in college prep courses and to make sure they include some rigorous classes in their schedule."

4. How Student Loan Borrowers Are Getting Into Trouble, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/how-student-loan-borrowers-are-getting-into-trouble/6903/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "Private student loans don’t provide the protections that federal students loans offer and yet a new federal study suggests that an alarming number of college students are turning to private lenders before they’ve taken full advantage of their federal options."

5. Hechinger More, better early education could help close California’s achievement gap, by Sarah Garland: http://hechingerreport.org/content/more-better-early-education-could-help-close-californias-achievement-gap_6653/#.TqbKtAVPJkM.twitter via AddThis - "In California, the state with the largest population of Hispanic students in the country, the achievement gap starts early—long before children enter school.Hispanic children are much less likely to enroll in preschool than white or black children, and begin kindergarten more than half a year behind their white counterparts. First-generation immigrant students, many who speak only Spanish, start out more than a year behind. One way to combat this problem, educators argue, is enrolling more Hispanic children in preschool, where they can learn to count, say the alphabet and practice the other pre-reading and math skills they will need later on."

6. Push Is On to Add Time to School, by Nora Fleming - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/26/09elt_ep.h31.html via @educationweek - "But while policymakers and recently proposed federal legislation promote expanded learning time as a strategy for school turnaround, some worry that it may be gaining steam too rapidly as a fix for schools that lack the know-how, resources, or research to implement it effectively."

7. NAEP's Odd Definition of Proficiency, by James Harvey - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/26/09harvey.h31.html via @educationweek - "Joanne Weiss [is] the chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. According to an article in the Aug. 24 issue of Education Week, Weiss said the practice of permitting each state to set its own proficiency standards amounts to “lying to parents, lying to children, lying to teachers and principals about the work they’re doing.” . . . The No Child Left Behind Act, passed by Congress in 2001 as the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, permitted states to develop their own assessments and set their own proficiency standards to measure student achievement. Most states, for their purposes, quite sensibly defined proficiency as performance at grade level.What about NAEP? Oddly, NAEP’s proficient standard has little to do with grade-level performance or even proficiency as most people understand the term."

8. Screen Time Higher Than Ever for Children, by Tamar Lewin - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/us/screen-time-higher-than-ever-for-children-study-finds.html?_r=1&hpw - "Despite the American Academy of Pediatricians’ longstanding recommendations to the contrary, children under 8 are spending more time than ever in front of screens, according to a study scheduled for release Tuesday. The report also documents for the first time an emerging “app gap” in which affluent children are likely to use mobile educational games while those in low-income families are the most likely to have televisions in their bedrooms."

9. College Readiness Is Lacking, City Reports Show, by Fernanda Santos - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/education/25progress.html?src=recg - "Only one in four students who enter high school in New York City are ready for college after four years, and less than half enroll, according to the A-through-F high school report cards released on Monday."

10. When the Answer to 'Access or Excellence?' Has to Be 'Both' by Beckie Supiano - http://chronicle.com/article/When-the-Answer-to-Access-or/129423/ - "Pursuing both excellence and access is something most colleges try to do, and it's never easy. Top faculty and state-of-the-art facilities cost money, but raising tuition can shut some students out. If the college makes scholarships to attract high-performing students a priority, it might not be able to support those with financial need."

11. Business leaders inject themselves in school reform, by Valerie Strauss - The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/business-leaders-inject-themselves-in-school-reform/2011/10/24/gIQArm5mFM_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "This news release was issued in regard to the bill that the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions passed last week revamping NCLB. The bill reduces the federal role in public education that has become so prominent in the NCLB era, and it eliminates a key accountability provision of the law that wound up declaring thousands of schools failing, even when they weren’t. It turns back to the states the right to create their own accountability systems for schools, a move opposed by the Obama administration — and, apparently, leading businessmen. . . . Here’s the statement, which shows that the coalition doesn’t think the bill is tough enough:"

12. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ today's top stories via @rottenbornj ▸ http://t.co/tvhFwZar

344. 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. Colleges Fail U.S. Financial Test, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed - http://bit.ly/pAKXuh via @AddThis - "Institutions that score above 1.5 (on a scale of 3.0) are considered to be financially responsible; those below 1.5 but above 1.0 require some additional oversight, while those below 1.0 must post a letter of credit and face cash monitoring requirements from the department. An initial review of the list shows slightly more than 180 private nonprofit colleges with scores below 1.5, and about 100 of those with scores below 1.0. About 200 for-profit colleges -- many of them in fields such as cosmetology -- fall below the 1.5 threshold. A spreadsheet containing the institutions' scores can be downloaded here."

2. Speaker Madigan to block Quinn's veto on legislative scholarships, by Monique Garcia and Ray Longhttp://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-speaker-madigan-to-block-quinns-veto-on-legislative-scholarships-20111012,0,3654355.story - “The governor feels strongly that the political scholarship program is in disgrace,” Anderson said. “It’s past time to abolish the political scholarships, which are ripe for abuse.” Lawmakers are allowed to award two four-year scholarships to public universities each year. They often break them apart into eight, one-year tuition waivers. They come with just one legal requirement: that recipients live in the same district as the lawmaker who doles them out. While some lawmakers form committees to award the scholarships, the program has been long abused, with waivers going to relatives, family members of campaign contributors and the offspring of lobbyists."

3. 25 Colleges With the Unhappiest Freshmen, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/25-colleges-with-the-unhappiest-freshmen/6888/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "How do you measure if a freshman is unhappy? An easy way is to look at a school’s freshmen retention rate, which indicates how many first-year students return for their sophomore year. The schools on this list have the lowest freshmen retention rates of the 650 top colleges that the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, an education think tank, used when compiling the college rankings for Forbes Magazine."

4. Mixed reactions to the new NCLB bill, by Nick Pandolfo - http://p.ost.im/p/eMkxwE -"Senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Michael Enzi (R-Wyoming) announced new legislation to revamp the 2001 No Child Left Behind law yesterday, garnering some strong reactions from the education policy world."

5. Chicago Schools Slow to Embrace Longer School Days, by Julie Rasicot - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/13/08chicago.h31.html via @educationweek -"In the 405,000-student Chicago school system, the expanded-day initiative is driven by the fact that public school students in the nation’s third-largest district spend 15 percent less time in the classroom than the average American public school student, according to school district officials. Public schools nationwide provide an average of 6½ hours of instruction time per school day; Chicago offers about 5½. The district also struggles with a persistent achievement gap between African-American and Latino students and their white counterparts and a graduation rate below 60 percent."

6. State Puts Pressure on City Schools Over English Language Learners, by Sharon Otterman - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/education/13ell.html?hpw - "As a measure of the problem, he said, in 2010 only 7 percent of the city’s English language learners were found to have graduated on time and ready for college and careers. In the lower grades, 12 percent were proficient in English and 35 percent in math, well behind city averages. “These numbers are not acceptable,” Dr. King said. “We can’t leave so many students behind academically without access to college and career opportunities.”

7. For Colleges, Location Matters, by Jeff Selingo -http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2011/10/12/for-colleges-location-matters/ - "Like real estate, location matters in higher ed. But unlike many homeowners, colleges looking for a better neighborhood can’t simply hang a “For Sale” sign and move to a more desirable place. That’s problematic for colleges in struggling small towns and declining manufacturing cities. It’s sometimes difficult for them to attract prospective students and faculty members, or keep entrepreneurial young alumni around to build new businesses. And as the economies of those towns deteriorate further, local officials have few employers to turn to for help. Often colleges are asked to take on demands well beyond their mission."

8. The problems with the PSAT and National Merit program, by Valerie Strauss - The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-problems-with-the-psat-and-national-merit-program/2011/10/10/gIQA7w0pfL_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "About 50,000 students qualify based on their PSAT scores, and that number is whittled down to about 16,000, who become semifinalists (the 34,000 others get letters of commendation). About 8,500 are named finalists, eligible for a scholarship of varying amounts, based on test scores as well as other criteria including academic performance. But here’s something you might not expect: the initial cutoff scores separating the possible winners from the definite losers are not the same in each state."

9. Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t), by Diane Ravitch - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/ravitch-why-finlands-schools-are-great-by-doing-what-we-dont/2011/10/12/gIQAmTyLgL_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "What makes the Finnish school system so amazing is that Finnish students never take a standardized test until their last year of high school, when they take a matriculation examination for college admission."

10. The 10 Colleges That Receive the Most Applications: US News List - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/13/the-10-colleges-that-rece_n_1008663.html - "7 California schools appear on US News and World Report's list of the 10 colleges that receive the most applications. UCLA tops the list. St. John's University (a rare east coast contender) came in second."

343. 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. Politics K-12: Senate ESEA Draft Bill Would Scrap Adequate Yearly Progress, by Alyson Klein - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/10/senate_esea_draft_bill_would_s.html via @educationweek - "The measure, which is already being decried by civil rights groups as a giant step backwards when it comes to accountability for poor and minority children, would scrap the 10-year-old law's signature yardstick, known as Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP. Instead, states would have to ensure that all students are making "continuous improvement" in student outcomes. . . . The draft would keep in place the law's requirement that states continue to report information on specific subgroups of students. And the law's testing schedule for reading and math—grades 3 through 8 and once in high school—would remain the same."

3. Bills Show Dueling Priorities on K-12 Spending, by Alyson Klein - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/12/07spending.h31.html via @educationweek - "Both bills strive to keep the maximum Pell Grant at $5,500. The Senate bill would do that by making changes to the Federal Stafford Student Loan Program. The bill before the House committee, by contrast, would make significant changes to the program’s eligibility requirements, according to a New America Foundation analysis. For instance, students who attend college less than part time would no longer be eligible for Pell Grants. And students would be able to take part in the program for only a maximum of 12 semesters, down from 18 now. In addition, the maximum family income that would automatically qualify a student for the biggest Pell Grant would be cut in half, to $15,000, from $30,000."

4. Bill Would Overhaul No Child Left Behind, by Sam Dillon - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/education/12educ.html?_r=1&hpw -"But for about 9 of every 10 American schools, it would scrap the law’s federal system of accountability, under which schools must raise the proportion of students showing proficiency on the tests each year. That system has driven classroom teaching across the nation for a decade."

5. Alumni Tutoring Effort Strives to Raise Diversity at Elite Public Schools, by Anna M. Phillips - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/nyregion/graduates-of-elite-new-york-city-public-schools-tutor-students-seeking-admission.html?src=recg - "For more than a decade, the number of black and Hispanic students scoring high enough to be offered a seat at the city’s specialized high schools has been on the decline. Last February, just 12 black and 13 Hispanic students were admitted to Stuyvesant High School, which had 3,287 students."

6. Pressure and Lack of Repercussions Are Cited in SAT Cheating - http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2011/10/12/pressure-and-lack-of-repercussions-are-cited-in-sat-cheating via Schoolbook - "Some teenagers believe that student integrity keeps cheating rates close to zero, while others say illegal score boosting is the norm. “After [students] are done with a section, they share answers in the bathrooms,” a Stuyvesant High School senior, Ahlam Rafita, said. “If the person is really good at math, they’ll finish it and can easily switch back to the reading sections.”

7. Poor kids still lose race despite better scores, by Jay Mathews - Class Struggle - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/poor-kids-still-lose-race-despite-better-scores/2011/10/08/gIQAN9qTeL_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via Washingtonpost.com - “We find that although low-income students have shown strong gains in the indicators that lead to admission to highly selective schools . . . higher income students have simultaneously made even stronger gains on these same indicators,” they say in their paper “Running in Place: Low-Income Students and the Dynamics of Higher Education Stratification” in the September issue of the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis."

8. NCLB bill: The problem with ‘continuous improvement,’ by Valerie Strauss - The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/nclb-bill-the-problem-with-continuous-improvement/2011/10/11/gIQA7nztdL_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive - "Instead of requiring all students to be “proficient” in these basic skills by 2014 (as NCLB demands), or to be “college ready” by 2020 (as the Obama Administration proposes), the Harkin bill will require only that schools show “continuous improvement” for all students, and for students from low-income families, those who don’t speak English, minority students, and students with disabilities (see page 52 of the draft bill)."

320. 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. How I saved $50,000 in college costs - http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/pf/college/1109/gallery.college_savings_strategies.moneymag/ via @CNNMoney - "These three students saved themselves tens of thousands of dollars -- and a lifetime of debt -- by pursuing less conventional approaches to college."

2. Study: Gap in education plagues Valley, by Karl Henkel - Newswatch: http://www.vindy.com/news/2011/sep/08/study-gap-education-plagues-valley/?nw via Vindicator - "From 2005 through 2009, the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman region had the seventh-highest education gap among the top 100 metropolitan areas, according to the Education, Demand and Unemployment in America report released today by Brookings. Education gaps are defined as “shortage of educated workers relative to employer demand.”

3. Tuition hikes fail to stop higher-ed cuts - http://www.vindy.com/news/2011/sep/09/tuition-hikes-fail-to-stop-higher-ed-cut/ via @vindicator - "The cost shift from states to students has been going on for years, according to State Higher Education Executive Officers, a group that tracks college funding."

4. The Net Price Calculator: Financial Aid 'Game-Changer'? by Rebecca R. Ruiz : http://nyti.ms/oLcODs - ". . .Here’s a definition for the uninitiated: it is an online device that offers customized approximations of college costs based on standardized inputs − family size and savings, for example. The calculator estimates a prospective student’s financial aid; subtracts that amount from a college’s “list price,” or full cost; and spits out a “net price,” the amount a particular student must pay or borrow to enroll."

5. No spots for hundreds of NYC school kids, by Melanie Eversley - http://usat.ly/niM1YH via @usatoday - "Hundreds of public schoolchildren in New York City won't be going to class today, the first day of classes, because there are no seats for them, the NY Daily News is reporting."

6. Where community colleges go wrong, by Jay Mathews - Class Struggle - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/where-community-colleges-go-wrong/2011/09/08/gIQA5kGNCK_blog.html via @washingtonpost -“The remedial placement process is ground zero for college noncompletion in America,” she says. “If the nation is going to make any headway in helping more students graduate from college, it will have to completely overhaul the way students enrolling in nonselective colleges are tested for college readiness, and make fundamental changes in how colleges use that information to help students earn degrees.”

7. Washington Monthly - How the Other Half Tests, by Susan Headden -http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2011/features/how_the_other_half_tests031638.php -"In open admissions colleges, placement tests typically trump everything else. If you bomb the SAT, the worst thing that can happen is you can’t go to the college of your choice. If you bomb the Accuplacer, you effectively can’t go to college at all."

8. Early Decision: 10 Things You Need To Know About Applying - CBS MoneyWatch.com http://t.co/XEWM6Mo via @cbsmoneywatch

9. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ Today's top stories on college access and success via @rottenbornj ▸ http://t.co/x7cmxSo

269. Review of 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 via @rottenbornj ▸ http://t.co/UftEiOc

2. Our view: Charter school debate overlooks lessons learned - http://usat.ly/miWolo via @USATODAY - "In the debate over how to improve the nation's educational system, there is typically no middle ground on the value of charter schools. You're either for them or against them. But in their fervor, both sides are missing a more fundamental question: Which charters work, and why?"

3. Opposing view: Rethink the charter experiment, by Richard D. Kahlenberg - http://usat.ly/kGQ22Y via @USATODAY - "After two decades, it's time to fundamentally rethink the charter school experiment. The prevailing charter model isn't working because it is based on two profoundly flawed ideas: that teachers' unions are the biggest problem in education; and that packing poor kids into separate, high-poverty charter schools will produce educational success."

4. District Dossier: Clinton to Charters: 'Keep This Country in the Change Business,' by Mary Ann Zehr - http://t.co/PfbZcDL - "Peter C. Groff, the president and chief executive officer of the alliance, called Clinton an "early champion of charter schools" and "instrumental" to their growth. He observed that Clinton had created in 1994 the federal Charter Schools Program, which is now a $256 million program, to help finance such schools. Over Clinton's presidency, the number of charter schools grew from one in 1992 to 2,000, he said.Now the United States has 5,277 charter schools, which make up 5.4 percent of all public schools, according to the alliance."

5. Many From A-Rated N.Y.C. Schools Need Help at CUNY, by Anna M. Phillips and Robert Gebeloff - http://nyti.ms/mBTNMI - "Of the 70 high schools that earned an “A” on the most recent city progress report and have at least one-third of graduates attending a college of the City University of New York, 46 posted remediation rates above 50 percent, according to reports sent to the city’s high schools."

6. Counseling in an ‘Error-Averse’ Culture, by Eric Hoover - http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/28410/28410 - "Over the last two days here at the annual conference of the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools, I’ve heard tales of parents threatening to sue schools after their child didn’t get into a selective college. I heard another about a student who publicly blamed her counselor after being denied by her dream school. And I heard one counselor say this: “I spend more of my time counseling parents.”

7. Admissions and the Adolescent Brain, by Eric Hoover - http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/admissions-and-the-adolescent-brain/28400 - "In other words, helping a teenager apply to college is not only an admissions issue—it’s also a developmental issue. As such, there’s much room for teaching. Guilt and punishment typically won’t help a teenager remember to turn in his application materials on time, Ms. Deak said, but helping him develop a plan for remembering to meet such deadlines just might."

8. An Expensive Education: Top 10 Priciest Prep Schools, by Tim Newcomb - http://t.co/KWhhbEm via @TIMENewsFeed - "And you thought spending over $30,000 per year for an Ivy League education was a hefty bill. Private schools throughout the East Coast make Ivy League price tags look like bargains, easily topping $30,000 per year and even passing the $40,000 threshold. And that is just the day-school tuition, which doesn’t touch how high room and board rates soar, sometimes adding as much as $10,000 to the bill."

265. Review of 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 via @rottenbornj ▸ http://t.co/UftEiOc

2. Athletic departments see surge financially in down economy, by Steve Berkowitz and Jodi Upton - http://usat.ly/la5yCa via @USATODAY - "Much of the rise in athletics revenue came from an escalation in money generated through multi-media rights deals, donations and ticket receipts, but schools also continued increasing their subsidies from student fees and institutional funds."

3. Rich Get Richer in Athletics, by David Moltz - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/j6Yxv1 - "The median net generated revenue for those FBS programs that reported a surplus was nearly $4.4 million in 2009 but rose to about $7.4 million in 2010. By comparison, the median net deficit for the remaining FBS programs (98 programs lost money in 2010) was nearly $11.3 million in 2009 and increased to around $11.6 million in 2010."

4. Do Majors Matter? by W. Robert Connor - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/m011SC - "When one looks at these data, one thing is immediately clear. The fields that show the greatest gains in critical thinking are not the fields that produce the highest salaries for their graduates. On the contrary, engineers may show only small gains in critical thinking, but they often command salaries of over $100,000."

5. 10 Great Opening Lines from Stanford Admissions Essays, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/GIhhZ5h via @cbsmoneywatch - "Here are samples from winning college essays courtesy of Stanford University. These are opening lines of admissions essays that the Stanford admission reps especially liked. All of the essay writers were accepted as members of the class of 2012. You can find even more opening lines of sample admission essays in the Stanford Magazine."

6. Experts Call for Early Focus on Black Boys' Nonacademic Skills, by Mary Ann Zehr - http://t.co/XpkuUuz via @educationweek - "The convergence of “maleness, ethnicity, and poverty,” he said, contributes to academic outcomes for black boys, which tend to be more negative than those for black girls."

7. 37% of New York Graduates Meet College-Readiness Standard, by Sharon Otterman - http://nyti.ms/ksSnnR - "The new calculations, part of a statewide push to realign standards with college readiness, also underscored a racial achievement gap: 13 percent of black students and 15 percent of Hispanic students statewide were deemed college-ready after four years of high school, compared with 51 percent of white graduates and 56 percent of Asian-Americans."

8. Syracuse Sends Personalized Video Messages to Admitted Students to Stop ‘Summer Melt,’ by Jie Jenny Zou - http://bit.ly/jyymx5 - "Each video begins with Ms. Brewer or Mr. Crowley saying the first name of the recipient, followed by a brief general message. Recording a personal intro for each of the more than 300 students took some practice, pronunciation keys, and a few hours."

9. The Fathering Gap: Pitfalls of Modern Fatherhood, by Belinda Luscombe - http://t.co/8GqFRwP via @TIMEHealthland" - A new analysis by the Pew Research Center of data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) has found that more than a quarter (27%) of all fathers with children under the age of 19 now live apart from at least some of their children. Black fathers (44%) are more than twice as likely to live apart from their kids as white fathers (21%), while just over a third of Hispanic fathers maintain a separate abode. Similarly, 40% of fathers who didn't finish high school are not residing with their children, a living situation shared by only 7% of fathers who graduated college."

10. 3-year college degree programs not catching on, by Daniel de Vise - http://t.co/CxNS2ix via @washingtonpost - "But students have not responded, and most three-year degree programs have flopped — a reminder, college leaders say, that students still regard college as an experience to be savored. Why rush the best four years of your life?"

11. The Most Expensive Public Colleges For In-State Students - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/16/the-most-expensive-public_n_878006.html#s293193&title=Pennsylvania_State_UniversityUniversity - "On Tuesday, US News and World Report compiled their list of the 10 most most expensive public colleges for in-state students. Although these schools are not exactly costly compared with the most expensive private colleges (those top out around 40,000) they still dwarf the public college average."

200. 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. Princeton and Harvard Reinstate Early Admissions, by Catherine Rampell - http://nyti.ms/fnhiRj

". . . Both Princeton and Harvard on Thursday reinstated their early admission programs. (The University of Virginia, which had also ended its early admission program with great fanfare, gave in last year.) . . . And from the 2006 press release in which Princeton announced it was ending the early admissions program: “We agree that early admission ‘advantages the advantaged,’” Tilghman said."

2. Jane Fonda at Vassar: College Tours, Campus Legends, by Michael Kolomatsky - http://nyti.ms/gDaVt2

"College tour season will soon heat up as high school seniors make final visits to schools at which they’ve been accepted. In search of the magic that will tip the scales toward one college or another, they’ll be joined by juniors who typically begin visiting schools about now."

3. Surrender to Early Admissions, by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/gCDaKu

"On Thursday, both Harvard and Princeton announced that they were restoring early admissions options. Significantly, they are restoring nonbinding "early action" options, not early decision -- and many skeptics about early admissions say that the biggest problems arise with binding programs, particularly at colleges that are not as generous with student financial aid as are Harvard and Princeton."

4. CNU: University accidentally sent 2,000 acceptance e-mails, by Samieh Shalash - http://bit.ly/dI7eXP

‎"Christopher Newport University e-mailed acceptance letters to 2,000 students Wednesday afternoon with the subject line "Welcome to CNU!"It was followed about four hours later by an e-mail saying the first e-mail was sent by mistake and apologizing for any confusion."

5. Lawsuit accuses TCU of fraud - http://es.pn/he7WmS

"The records describe how the 300-pound Jones remained in an English class even though the instructor considered him "dangerous," how Taylor was admitted to the university despite graduating 300th in his high school class of 377 and how both remained in good standing on their teams despite repeatedly being cited for misconduct on campus."

6. Using Social Media to Get Into College, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/988Af8a

‎"A Kaplan survey of admissions counselors from some of the top colleges and universities found that 80 percent visited potential students’ online profiles during their recruiting process. While counselors are checking students out online, they are also trying to engage them on the Internet. According to Tsouvalas, here are ways that high school students can take advantage of Facebook and other social media:"

7. 'Pathway to Prosperity' authors educate me - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2011/02/pathway_to_prosperity_authors.html

‎"Despite the fact that nearly all young people now say that they want to go to college and that increasing percentages of high school graduates are in fact enrolling in college, our college completion rate is stuck at about 40 percent. Many organizations are now focused on the challenge of how to increase our college completion rate and have set a very aggressive target of 55 percent by 2025. But even if this very ambitious improvement goal were to be reached, what is our strategy for getting the other 45 percent of young people the skills and credentials they will need to get launched on a career path that can enable them to earn a family-supporting wage and lead a productive life? This is the big question our report raises. . . ."

8. On Science Exams, New York’s Students Fall Short, by Fernanda Santos - http://nyti.ms/g19C6n

"New York was one of 17 large cities that agreed to have their results reported separately. A large majority of those cities scored below the nation as a whole. New York was in the middle among the large cities for its fourth graders and slightly below average for eighth graders. . . . The best of the 17 were Charlotte, N.C., Austin, Tex., and Louisville, Ky.; the worst were Detroit, Baltimore and Cleveland."

9. In the so-called School of Financial Aid, it can pay to get the lowest score, by Alice Murphey - http://nydn.us/i0KvaZ

"Everybody wants to get high marks in college, but in the so-called School of Financial Aid, it can pay to get the lowest score. That's the case with your expected family contribution. Your contribution is determined by the information on your Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. (There's still time to file if you haven't already, but . . .some students are starting to receive their award letters.)"

10. Harvard Tuition Rises to $52,650, by Julie M. Zauzmer - http://bit.ly/edbKMQ

"Harvard College tuition and fees will climb 3.8 percent for the next academic year, reaching a total cost of $52,650. The jump in price will be coupled with a $2 million increase in the financial aid budget, bringing the total cost of financial aid to a record high of more than $160 million.Already, more than 60 percent of Harvard undergraduates receive some financial aid from the College."

11. Panel Discusses Education Gap, by Rediet T. Abebe - http://bit.ly/gCsSJl

‎"Ferguson also noted that the gap develops rapidly as young minority students approach kindergarten. Though there is “not much of a gap” around the first birthday, a divergence in test scores is already apparent by age three, he said."

12. What to Do as Colleges Cut Back on Financial Aid, by Jane J. Kim - http://on.wsj.com/igbgKP via WSJ.com

"Amid greater financial pressures, colleges are scaling back their financial-aid packages to students in ways that are likely to give wealthier families an admissions edge.Some colleges, such as Williams College, Middlebury College and Wake Forest University, are no longer "need blind" when it comes to admitting international or wait-listed students."

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