364. 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. South Korean students' 'year of hell' culminates with exams day, by Jiyeon Lee #cnn http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/10/world/asia/south-korea-exams/index.html READ THIS. "Most South Korean students consider their final year in high school "the year of hell." It is when all students are put to the ultimate test. About 700,000 test applicants sat down in classrooms across the country Thursday to take their college entrance exams -- also known as the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). . . . For many, this one test -- which lasts a good eight hours -- will determine which university they enter. It is considered the chance to make or break one's future."

3. A New Book Argues Against the SAT, by Rebecca R. Ruiz: http://nyti.ms/rMhctr - "That study broke applicants into three socio-economic classes. They found that 29 percent of students from the highest social class scored above 1400 on the SAT, compared to 24 percent of middle class students and 14 percent of lower class students. Turning that pyramid on its head, the study found that those students from lower social classes were more likely to have earned a top high school G.P.A.. . . “High school grades are the single most powerful predictor of college performance,” he said. “High SAT scores over-predict how well a student is going to do in college, and they’re inversely related to academic engagement.”

4. Part 4: Answers to Your Questions on Applying with a Learning Disability, by Marybeth Kravets: http://nyti.ms/uIDMUQ - "In this fourth round, Ms. Kravets addresses the question of physical disabilities that impact learning capacity."

5. Report Finds One in Three College Students Has Taken an Online Class, by Rebecca R. Ruiz: http://nyti.ms/ssMpaB - "Nearly a third of all college students are now taking online courses, so said a new study released on Wednesday by the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board."

6. L.I. Inquiry on Cheating Now Covers Five Schools, by Jenney Anderson - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/nyregion/sat-cheating-inquiry-on-long-island-expands-to-include-act.html?_r=1 - "At the hearing, representatives of the Educational Testing Service said that about 3,000 test scores were examined for irregularities each year — out of more than two million exams taken — and that of those, 1,000 were canceled, most after test-center supervisors reported irregularities, or because of large jumps from scores on previous tests. Suspected impersonations constituted about 150 of those canceled scores. About 700 people were turned away for questionable identification at test sites."

7. Penn State president and football coach lose jobs amid sex abuse scandal, by Kevin Kiley Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/sav1IK via AddThis - "The Pennsylvania State University Board of Trustees and Graham Spanier have decided that, effective immediately, Dr. Spanier is no longer president of the University," the board said in a statement Wednesday. "Additionally, the board determined that it is in the best interest of the University for Joe Paterno to no longer serve as head football coach, effective immediately."

8. Essay on why smart people make foolish ethical choices, by Robert J. Sternberg Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/t68Gdz via AddThis - "Every time there is a new ethics scandal, whether in a university or some other setting (such as in government or the corporate world), observers wonder how those involved could have been so stupid. Could they really have done the things of which they are accused? If so, what were they thinking? In fact, there are three precipitating factors for ethics scandals that practically guarantee that they will not be going away anytime soon. The three factors are foolishness, the complexity of ethical reasoning, and ethical drift, which I discuss in turn."

9. Survey Finds Pell Grant Support Among Young Adults Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/s8id8n via AddThis - "Adults aged 18 to 34 are overwhelmingly concerned about the cost of college and levels of student debt, regardless of whether they attended college, and oppose cuts to federal student aid programs, according to survey results announced Wednesday by the Institute for College Access and Success, Young Invincibles and Demos: Ideas and Action, three advocacy groups. The survey found that 73 percent of respondents believe college students graduate with too much debt, while only 21 percent described the average debt as "manageable."

10. Digital Education: Blended Learning on the Rise, Report Says, by Katie Ash - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2011/11/blended_learning_on_the_rise_r.html via @educationweek - "The eighth annual Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning, released today at the Virtual School Symposium in Indianapolis, finds that single-district online programs—many of which include blended learning—are the fastest-growing segment of online education this year. (Single-district online programs are created by a district for the students in that district only.)"

11. Community Colleges Open an Online Doorway to Better Grades and Graduation Rates, by Josh Fischman - http://chronicle.com/article/7-Community-Colleges-Try-an/129605/ - "There are two things Clint McElroy knows about community-college students: A huge number of them don't stay in school. And many of them—who are often the first in their families to go to college, and who must juggle work and parenting—don't understand how to balance all those demands while studying at the college level. . . . And just 27 percent of all students graduated within three years of starting community college, according to "What Works in Student Retention," a 2010 report by ACT, the nonprofit education-assessment organization. The survey, of 305 colleges, reported that the leading reasons for attrition were a student's lack of readiness for college-level work, deficient study skills, and money problems."

12. Is an Ivy League education money wasted? by Brad Tuttle http://ti.me/u1FlJq via @TIMEMoneyland - "The college-selection equation today is not unlike shopping for a new car, with some consumers preferring a flashy, eye-catching model, and others seeing more value in a dependable, unexciting product that is cheaper to pay off, and that still gets you where you need to go.Continuing with this metaphor, what we’re seeing is that more students are going with the Honda Civics of higher education, rather than the Porsches and Corvettes. The Wall Street Journal reports on the trend for students to not only question the value of an Ivy League education, but to attend cheaper (or free) public colleges even though they were admitted to much “better” institutions."

13. Did Penn State officials violate the Clery Act? by Jenna Johnson - Campus Overload - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/campus-overload/post/did-penn-state-officials-violate-the-clery-act/2011/11/09/gIQAh0CZ6M_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "The Clery Act requires colleges and universities to annually disclose campus crime statistics and, in some cases, to warn the community if a crime poses a safety threat. The education department oversees compliance of the act, and notified the university of its investigation on Wednesday. “If these allegations of sexual abuse are true then this is a horrible tragedy for those young boys. If it turns out that some people at the school knew of the abuse and did nothing or covered it up, that makes it even worse,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement. “Schools and school officials have a legal and moral responsibility to protect children and young people from violence and abuse.”

290. 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. Separate but Equal? by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/p7xxKG - "But part of Peace College's announcement was quite different from the pattern: the college announced that once it admits men, some courses will remain single sex. The official announcement said that "the new coeducational institution will continue to be student-centered. One way is ... to offer select single-gender courses in targeted disciplines where research shows that women and men learn differently and that each benefit from a single-gender classroom. As a coeducational institution, all classes will be accessible to all students."

2. Does Performance Funding Work? by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/qg9Cur - "Based on that premise, several states -- including Ohio and Indiana -- have altered their formulas for allocating state funds in recent years, but those programs are too new to offer any evidence of their efficacy. But several other states have had performance-funding programs in place for much longer, and in a paper released this spring at the annual meeting of the Association for Institutional Research, two scholars studied Tennessee's -- the country's "oldest and most stable performance funding program" -- for insights into how such programs affect retention and graduation rates. Not very much, the authors report."

3. 20 Things High School Seniors Should Be Doing Now, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/pogJ1cX via @cbsmoneywatch - "Time is running out for high school seniors, who will soon be overwhelmed with college applications. Teenagers will be less stressed if they take advantage of the last month of summer to get a jump on the college admission process. Here are 20 things they can be doing now:"

4. College Bound: Efforts to Save Pell Grants From Cuts Ramp Up, by Caralee Adams - http://t.co/8L2sC2j via @educationweek - "Advocates have dubbed July 25 "Save Pell Day" to draw attention to potential reductions in the federal program that gives grants to needy students to attend college. A website dedicated to the cause encourages supporters to send elected officials tweets and emails asking them to fund the $5,550 maximum Pell Grant. The site also asks students to use blogs and Facebook to share information on the potential impact of Pell cuts."

5. South Korea to Replace All Paper Textbooks With Digital Content http://t.co/VKOLwHd via @educationweek - "France, Singapore, Japan and others are racing to create classrooms where touch-screens provide instant access to millions of pieces of information. But South Korea—Asia's fourth-largest economy—believes it enjoys an advantage over these countries, with kids who are considered the world's savviest navigators of the digital universe."

6. Amazon to Start Renting Out Electronic College Textbooks, by Christopher F. Schuetze - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/us/25iht-EDUCBRIEFS25.html?src=recg - "The company announced last week that electronic versions of textbooks would be available for rent for periods of between 30 and 360 days. Once books are rented, the lending period can be extended by as little as a day. “Tens of thousands of textbooks are available for the 2011 school year,” according to a press release from Amazon, from publishers including John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis. Amazon claims that rentals can save students up to 80 percent compared with the original price.

7. R.O.I., By Cecilia Capuzzi Simon - http://nyti.ms/pmJSnr - "So as a strictly financial calculation, does the investment pay off? . . . But if schools of applied learning aren’t asking the tough questions about the financials of a degree, potential students should, says Anthony P. Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. “No one’s telling them what it’s worth. Certainly the colleges aren’t.”

8. Web restrictions draw ire of some educators, by Greg Toppo - http://usat.ly/olF2kS via @USATODAY - "Filtering software and school rules designed to keep out violence and pornography are also blocking key educational and otherwise useful sites, teachers say, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — not to mention Google and National Geographic."

9. Why ‘no excuses’ makes no sense: Revisiting the Coleman report, by Gary Ravani - The Answer Sheet - http://t.co/07F3tn0 via @washingtonpost - "Perhaps the single best-known piece of social science research ever done in this country is the study produced by sociologist James Coleman in 1966 under the authority of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, commonly called “the Coleman Report.” Coleman’s work is the second largest social science research project in history, covering 600,000 children in 4,000 schools nationally. Coleman concluded that school-based poverty concentrations were negatively impacting school achievement for the minority poor."

10. Action steps can close racial gap, by Donna Y. Ford http://t.co/xeTRwIr via @Tennessean"The pervasive achievement gap is the greatest problem facing schools."

11. Racial gap hinders academic progress, by Dwight Lewis http://t.co/tUiz7Wn via @Tennessean - “Some individuals in this country still believe that the achievement gap exists because children of certain backgrounds — namely, low-income or minority children — are inherently less capable than others,” Jason Kamras, the 2005 National Teacher of the Year, has written. “Nothing could be more false.”

12. Consumer Corner: What's a college degree worth? Plenty. by Marcella S. Kreiter - http://t.co/cjjbQIc via @upi_top - "The bottom line is that getting a degree matters, but what you take matters more," said Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Center on Education and the Workforce. Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney of The Hamilton Project agree. "Higher education is a much better investment than almost any other alternative, even for the 'Class of the Great Recession' (young adults ages 23-24)," they said on the project's Web site. "In today's tough labor market, a college degree dramatically boosts the odds of finding a job and making more money. . . ."