377. 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. Whatever happened to…Nancy Guarneros, undocumented student, DREAM Act hopeful? By Thelma Gutierrez – http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/25/whatever-happened-to-nancy-guarneros-undocumented-student-dream-act-hopeful/ via CNN - "Currently, undocumented students cannot apply for student financial aid and they can’t legally work – so unless they can come up with tuition on their own, many are forced to give up their academic aspirations."

3. The Fallout Over Syracuse's Abuse Scandal, by Rebecca R. Ruiz: http://nyti.ms/sbL9lV - "The events again raise the question: What should applicants think? Syracuse’s basketball team and its N.C.A.A. tournament record are points of pride for many students. The school’s strong sports culture has surely served as a draw for some applicants. Will some now see it as a liability?"

4. Report suggests approach to improving graduation rates, by Kaustuv Basu Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/rOwyBk via AddThis - "Only 32.9 percent of men earn a degree in four years, while the percentage for women is 43.8. The gap shrinks to 5.5 percentage points at the end of the sixth year. First-generation college students earn a degree at the rate of 27.4 percent after four years, while students whose parents have college degrees have a graduation rate of 42.1 percent. Asian American and white students had the highest four-year graduation rates, at 44.9 percent and 42.6 percent respectively. Degree-attainment rates remain is the highest at private universities; the lowest numbers come from public four-year colleges."

5. 6 reasons to invest in a 529 plan today, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-57331762/6-reasons-to-invest-in-a-529-plan-today/?tag=mncol;lst;9 - "Are you wondering whether it's a good time to open up a college 529 savings account? One of the nation's foremost 529 plan experts says the answer is a resounding Y-E-S. Joseph Hurley, the founder of SavingforCollege.com, says there are a number of timely reasons why families shouldn't dawdle in opening a 529 plan. Here are six great reasons to consider acting now."

6. Middle Schoolers Getting Prepped for College, by Nora Fleming - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/11/29/13middle_ep.h31.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW via @educationweek - "ACT researchers found in 2008 that the academic level students achieve by 8th grade has a bigger impact on college and career readiness and success than anything that happens academically in high school."

7. College Bound: Report Sheds Light on Factors Influencing College Graduation, by Caralee Adams - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/college_bound/2011/11/report_sheds_light_on_who_is_graduating_from_college.html via @educationweek - "There are distinct racial disparities in completion. Asian-Americans had the highest four-year graduation rates at 44.9 percent, followed by whites, 42.6 percent; Latinos, 25.8 percent; African-Americans, 21 percent; and American Indians, 16.8 percent."

8. At Top Colleges, Anti-Wall St. Fervor Complicates Recruiting, by Kevin Roose: http://nyti.ms/tvpf3m - "Banks and hedge funds have long wooed undergraduates from elite colleges with lavish dinners, personalized e-mails and free trips to New York for interviews. It’s all part of an annual courtship ritual known as on-campus recruiting. But this fall, the antibank animus of the Occupy Wall Street movement has seeped onto college campuses. At some schools, anger at big banks has turned the on-campus recruiting process into a crucible of controversy."

9. Secretary of Education Urges Colleges to Rein In Costs, by Kelly Field -http://chronicle.com/article/Secretary-of-Education-Urges/129912/ - "The department is billing the speech as the start of a "national conversation" on college costs."

10. Graduation Rates Can Be Predicted More Precisely by Examining Student Characteristics, Report Says, by Jennifer Gonzalez - http://chronicle.com/article/Graduation-Rates-Can-Be/129914/ - "Many colleges now use basic student information such as race and ethnicity, gender, high-school grade-point average, and SAT and ACT scores to project an expected graduation rate. By considering other, more-personal characteristics, such as how students rate their emotional health, whether they are the first in their family to attend college, and whether they anticipate having to work full time while enrolled, an institution can increase the accuracy of its four-year graduation-rate prediction by 66 percent, its five-year rate by 54 percent, and its six-year rate by 53 percent, says the report."

11. It's time to fight unemployment the old-fashioned way, says Elaine Chao http://ti.me/syS2bn via @TIMEIdeas - "One of the lessons all ages should take away from this era — and one which parents and grandparents should drill into children balking at homework or at going back to school — is that education is the best protection against ruin in hard times. Those with higher educations certainly have not been invulnerable to harm in this recession, many are underemployed and unemployed, but they always have been in the best position to survive and thrive."

12. Common Core standards pose dilemmas for early childhood, by Samuel J. Meisels - The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/common-core-standards-pose-dilemmas-for-early-childhood/2011/11/28/gIQAPs1X6N_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "But early childhood education — concerned with children from birth to the end of third grade — seems nearly an afterthought in the standards. Not only do they end (or begin) at kindergarten, ignoring more than half of the early childhood age range, they simply don’t fit what we know about young children’s learning and development."

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."