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."

299. 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. Confessions of an Edu-Traitor, by Cathy Davidson - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/roDpgt via @AddThis - "Here goes: I do not think going to university should be the be-all and end-all of K-12 education. The importance of going to college should be intrinsically the rationale by which we justify public support of higher education. Higher education is incredibly valuable, even precious, for many. But it is bad for individuals and society to be retrofitting learning all the way back to preschool, as if the only skills valuable, vital, necessary in the world are the ones that earn you a B.S., BA, or a graduate and professional degree."

3. 15 Worst-Paying College Degrees in 2011, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/KGVN1Sh via @cbsmoneywatch - "When you look at this year’s list of the lowest-paying college degrees, which was provided to me by PayScale, it doesn’t contain a lot of surprises. Three of the worst-paying degrees involve teaching or being involved in some way with children."

4. Rural Education: Rural Struggle: Get Students to Graduate, Go To College, by Diette Courrege - http://t.co/kGoHYF4 via @educationweek - "One of the big problems discussed at the Southeast Regional Rural Education Summit last week was the difficulty rural schools face in getting students to go to college. Speaker after speaker agreed that one of the major hurdles is family support. They said that, in many cases, students aren't encouraged by their families to seek post-secondary education."

5. Rural Education: How Two Rural Schools Prepare Kids for College, Part 1, by Diette Courrege - http://t.co/vP2zmwK via @educationweek - "Superintendent Larry McClenny said the school pushes students to achieve, and one of the ways it does that is through dual-credit courses. Students can graduate from high school with 30 hours of college credit. Both of McClenny's children had that many hours when they finished, and both finished college in three years."It saves parents a lot of money to be able to get in numerous hours in high school," he said."

6. Rural Education: Two Rural Schools Preparing Kids For College, Part 2, by Diette Courrege - http://t.co/FNDs3C3 via @educationweek - "That led to the adoption of a curriculum with programs of study aligned to the National Career Clusters model, which organizes high school classes around job occupations to boost real-world relevance. Loving High has strong dual credit offerings—75 percent of the school's students are enrolled in those classes—and district Superintendent Kristina Baca talked about how the school's programs of study are aligned to post-secondary education."

7. Status of Education in Rural America, 2007 - http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007040.pdf - "College enrollment rates for both 18- to 24-year-olds and 25- to 29-year-olds were generally lower in rural areas than in all other locales in 2004. In rural areas, as in the nation as a whole, females enrolled in postsecondary education at a higher rate than males." (p. 64.)

8. Arne Duncan to Override ‘No Child Left Behind’ Requirement, by Sam Dillon - http://nyti.ms/rpzlLP - "Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has announced that he will unilaterally override the centerpiece requirement of the No Child Left Behind school accountability law, that 100 percent of students be proficient in math and reading by 2014. Mr. Duncan told reporters that he was acting because Congress had failed to rewrite the Bush-era law, which he called a “slow-motion train wreck.” He is waiving the law’s proficiency requirements for states that have adopted their own testing and accountability programs and are making other strides toward better schools, he said."

9. Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade, by Virginia Heffernan - http://nyti.ms/q8ExIU - "According to Cathy N. Davidson, co-director of the annual MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions, fully 65 percent of today’s grade-school kids may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet."

10. Top 10 Schools Where Students Study The Most - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/08/top-10-schools-where-stud_n_920830.html#s324337&title=Harvey_Mudd_College - "Princeton Review recently named the schools where the students study the most. Claremont engineering giant Harvey Mudd College topped the list, followed by the perennially bookish MIT. Check out our slide show of the most studious schools."

11. The Decade of Lost Children, by Charles M. Blow - http://t.co/ktxi4ga - "According to “The State of America’s Children 2011,” a report issued last month by the Children’s Defense Fund, the impact of the recession on children’s well-being has been catastrophic."

12. The State of America's Children 2011, Children's Defense Fund - http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/state-of-americas-2011.pdf - "This may be the first time in our history when our children and grandchildren will be worse off than their parents and grandparents. We must correct course with urgency and do whatever is necessary to get them to safe harbor. We have pushed so many of our children into the tumultuous sea of life in small and leaky boats without survival gear and compass. I hope God will forgive us and help our children to forgive us."

291. 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. Recession worsens racial wealth gap, by Ben Rooney - http://t.co/i7LDA0A via @CNNMoney - "The wealth gap in the United States has grown wider in the wake of the Great Recession, with black and Hispanic American households faring much worse than white households, according to a study published Tuesday.The study, from 2009 data compiled by the Pew Research Center, found the median wealth of white households was 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households."

2. 'Class Dismissed' by Serena Golden - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/nCdWHR - "What I learned — and what I wanted to convey in the book — is the unsettling truth that if people truly care about lessening poverty and economic inequality, they should forget about education."

3. A Partial G.I. Bill Fix, by Libby A. Nelson - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/q22v8C - "Veterans currently attending private colleges and universities that charge more than $17,500 in tuition and fees won’t see their tuition spike next month after all, after Congress approved a change to the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill on Monday night. But veterans using their benefits to attend public universities in states where they are not residents might still have to come up with thousands of dollars on their own to pay for their studies after Aug. 1."

4. Iron Cage of Accountability, By Douglas Dempster and Steven J. Tepper - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/raRUIO - "Surprisingly, 8 of the top 10 highest net-price schools are art schools (fine art, design, theater, dance) or music conservatories. In fact, almost every major private art school in America is listed in the top 5 percent of most expensive colleges in the United States."

5. Recession Study Finds Hispanics Hit the Hardest, by Sabrina Tavernise - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/us/26hispanics.html?_r=1&src=rechp - "The share of Americans with no wealth at all rose sharply during the recession. A third of Hispanics had zero or negative net worth in 2009, up from 23 percent in 2005. For blacks, the portion rose to 35 percent from 29 percent, and for whites, it rose to 15 percent from 11 percent. About a quarter of all black and Hispanic households owned nothing but a car in 2009. Just 6 percent of whites and 8 percent of Asians were in that situation."

6. 'It Gets Better,' Harvard Education School Tells Gay Teens, by Don Troop - http://chronicle.com/article/It-Gets-Better-Harvard/128397/ - "Adolescent bullying and harassment are central concerns of education schools, but the institutions rarely have an opportunity to speak directly to the perpetrators and victims. In a poignant video that will be unveiled on Tuesday, several students, staff members, and administrators of Harvard University's Graduate School of Education do their best to change that, describing the traumas they endured as gay and lesbian youths and the triumphs they have enjoyed since then as their careers and personal lives have flourished. The video is part of the It Gets Better Project, which the gay columnist Dan Savage started last September with his husband, Terry Miller, in the wake of a wave of suicides by teenagers who had been bullied for being gay or being suspected of it."

7. The 13 Best-Paying College Majors: PayScale List - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/26/the-best-paying-majors-pa_n_909472.html#s316047&title=Petroleum_Engineering - "You've worked hard in your major, now how will your major pay you back? According to salary data site PayScale, engineers of many different stripes are poised to earn the most money over the course of their careers. At mid-career, the average petroleum engineer earns a whopping $155,000 per year (perhaps more if he or she went to Princeton). Below, check out which other majors pay off over time."

8. Campus Progress Presents The History Of The Pell Grant - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/campus-progress-presents-_n_908937.html -"Campus Progress has handily put together a history of the diminishing Pell Grant as a handy infographic. Can you believe that in 1972, the Pell Grant covered almost the entire cost of a student's education?"

9. Education summit begins today, by Dar Danielson - http://www.radioiowa.com/2011/07/25/education-summit-begins-today/ - "Duncan says is we are serious about closing the achievement gap, how we integrate technology into learning 24-seven is important as he says we have been “far too slow to move.” He says other countries are already moving ahead with the use of technology in education."

10. Possible cuts in Pell grants raises alarms in college sports, by Andy Gardner - http://usat.ly/p43snm via @USATODAY - "Pell Grants are usually part of a larger financial aid package for students, including athletes. They can be particularly important to athletes in sports outside of football and basketball where full scholarships are not typically awarded.The program, begun more than 30 years ago to help make college more accessible to low-income students, awarded more than 8 million students nearly $30 billion in aid in 2009-10. Grants are awarded on a need basis with the current annual limit of $5,500. The Department of Education estimated that 76% of those recipients had a total family income at or below $30,000."

285. 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. Loans and the Deficit, by Libby A. Nelson and Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/qeubRC - "The federal government is making a lot of money on students and on parents," says Becky Timmons, assistant vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education. "There’s a risk of almost treating students like an ATM machine."

2. More Default Danger Ahead, by Libby A. Nelson - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/nsoXw0 -"While they recommended several strategies, including financial literacy classes, advising students to borrow as little as possible and requiring counseling sessions for those who are borrowing a large amount of money, they also said that many of the factors that go into defaults are ultimately outside of institutions’ control -- except for one. Students who complete college are far less likely to default than are those who drop out, said Jacob Gross, policy and planning research analyst at the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission. “The most important thing we can do to help students not default is to help them finish their credential,” Gross said at one of two default-rate sessions Sunday."

3. At Two-Year Colleges, Less Scrutiny Equals Less Athletic Equality, by Katie Thomas - http://nyti.ms/r6ujU1 - "Even as they play an increasingly vital role in American higher education — enrolling more than eight million students nationwide last fall, a 20 percent jump since the fall of 2007, just before the start of the recession — community colleges are routinely failing to provide enough athletic opportunities to women, as required under Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in education. Many community colleges offer an array of options for men but just a single team for women. And dozens of colleges over the years had no women on their athletic rosters, according to federal education statistics."

4. Law School Economics - Job Market Weakens, Tuition Rises, by David Segal - http://nyti.ms/nxcd2n -"Legal diplomas have such allure that law schools have been able to jack up tuition four times faster than the soaring cost of college. And many law schools have added students to their incoming classes — a step that, for them, means almost pure profits — even during the worst recession in the legal profession’s history. It is one of the academy’s open secrets: law schools toss off so much cash they are sometimes required to hand over as much as 30 percent of their revenue to universities, to subsidize less profitable fields."

5. After The Recession, Students Borrow Reluctantly, by Lisa Lambert - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/18/after-the-recession-stude_n_901381.html - "To cope, many students turn to federal loans. In the 2009-10 school year, 35 percent of all undergraduate students took out a federal Stafford student loan, compared to 23 percent 10 years before, Draeger said. Students may also use private loans and parents can take federal "PLUS" loans. Paying for college has usually involved many parties, Draeger said, including universities themselves pitching in."We're seeing this gradual shift in the burden for paying for college to individual students and families and the way that students do this is through loans," he said."

6. Concern grows about default rates on student loans in Kentucky - http://www.kentucky.com/2011/07/17/1814399/concern-grows-about-default-rates.html - "They quit school last year because of day care problems with their son and defaulted on the loans. That buried them in debt. They haven't filed for bankruptcy, in part because changes to bankruptcy law make it difficult to erase student loans. Daymar College financial aid officials "signed us up" for the loans and controlled access to the accounts, Donald Lee said last week as he prepared to start another shift washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant."It's an awful lot of money for just two years at this little school," he said. "When the loan papers came in, they just handed them to us, told us to sign them and took them back. We never saw them again."

280. 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 via @rottenbornj ▸ http://t.co/UftEiOc

2. Mixed News on State Student Aid, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/opfhDm - "State spending on financial assistance to students increased by 3.8 percent in 2009-10, even as many governments struggled with recession-driven cuts in many programs. But nearly half of all states cut back on their all-important spending on need-based financial aid, even as enrollments boomed and as many students and families struggled to keep pace with tuitions that public colleges (or their legislatures) raised sharply."

3. Despite Fiscal Woes, Spending Rose on Student Aid in Many States in 2010, by Eric Kelderman - http://chronicle.com/article/Despite-Fiscal-Woes-Many/128173/ - "Ohio cut need-based grants the most last year, with a 66-percent decrease, while Alaska and Michigan cut them by more than half. Both Hawaii and Utah slashed need-based grants by nearly a third."

4. Jobless College Graduates Struggle Under Ongoing Recession, by Amanda M. Fairbanks and Andrew Lenoir - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/08/college-graduates-jobs-unemployment_n_893495.html - "Seventy-five job applications. Forty cover letters. Twelve interviews. Zero job offers.Since graduating from Wellesley College four years ago, Kayla Calkin, 25, has yet to get a break.In May, Calkin completed a master's degree in public policy from George Washington University. Like so many her age, she believed a graduate degree might guarantee a more stable future.Calkin now works as a full-time nanny in Washington, D.C., while continuing to scour for an eventual dream job in politics. Her two degrees make her overqualified for even the most basic, entry-level position."

5. Grants and student loans are the trend when paying for college tuitions, by Maegan Clearwood - herald-mail.com http://t.co/bVwt9tS - "According to a College Board report, the average in-state public tuition and fees increase was 7.9 percent in 2010-11. With other expenses, such as room and board, total annual charges average at $16,140."Frankly, students are not prepared at all," said Britney Carter, student financial aid counselor at Hagerstown Community College."

119. 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. NCAA football grad rates at all-time high, but top ... http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/2010-10-27-ncaa-graduation-rates-study_N.htm

"The rate for black players, a longtime concern, jumped five points to 61% of those who entered school in 2003, the association's latest study showed.But the annual academic scorecard was less flattering to many of the sport's top-tier programs. Seven of the top 10 — including No. 1 Auburn, No. 2 Oregon and No. 3 Boise State — and 16 of the top 25 in the current Bowl Championship Series standings fell beneath the sport's four-year average. Oklahoma and Arizona graduated fewer than half of their players.The numbers also were low in the other marquee college sport, men's basketball, where three of last season's eight NCAA regional finalists and more than one in five programs overall had four-year rates beneath 50%. Those multi-year averages count players who arrived on campus from 2000-2003, giving them six years to earn degrees."

2. Irish Athletes Again Rank Number One In 2010 NCAA GSR Comparisons http://www.und.com/genrel/102710aaa.html

"University of Notre Dame athletic programs again rank among the best in the country in graduation rates, based on Graduation Success Rate (GSR) figures released today by the NCAA - including first-place ratings in the sports of football, men's basketball and women's basketball, and a close second in ice hockey. Among the 120 Football Bowl Subdivision institutions, Notre Dame had the highest percentage of its sports with 100 percent scores (for the fifth time in six years), with a .863 figure (19 of 22). In football, Notre Dame achieved a 96 GSR rating for the highest figure among FBS schools."

3. Rise in college costs hits public schools hardest, by Blake Ellis - money.cnn.com/2010/10/28/pf/…

"For the school year 2010-11, in-state tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities rose to $7,605, up 7.9% from a year ago, the College Board reported Thursday. At private four-year institutions, the average cost rose 4.5% to $27,293.31. Dwindling state budgets are sparking the hikes at public colleges. Over the past decade, public school tuition has risen at an annual rate of 5.6% vs. 3% at private schools. "Prices are continuing to rise more rapidly than the rate of inflation, particularly in the public sector," said Sandy Baum, independent policy analyst at the College Board. "Public colleges and universities are getting less money from the states because the states just don't have money to give them."

4. Tuition Rises, But So Does Financial Aid, by Jacques Steinberg in The Choice - http://nyti.ms/c5RMXk

"If there is “good news 2010 “Trends in College Pricing” and “Trends in Student Aid” reports,” Ms. Lewin writes, it is “that fast-rising tuition costs have been accompanied by a huge increase in financial aid, which helped keep down the actual amount students and families pay.” Ms. Lewin quotes Sandy Baum, the economist who is the lead author of the reports, as saying that in 2009-2010, students received $28 billion in Pell grants, “and that’s $10 billion more than the year before.” In fact, Ms. Lewin says, growth in student aid from the government this year “was so large that unlike former years, government grants surpassed institutional grants.”

5. A Potential Vaccination for ‘Senioritis,’ by Dave Marcus - http://nyti.ms/9qnXO7

‎"As a journalist visiting scores of high schools, I have found a wasteland no one wants to acknowledge. It’s the final five- or six-month stretch of 12th grade, when college applications are done and students’ minds drift far from the classroom.For many, the boredom starts in October, after early applications are filed. Quite a few principals agree that we need to reinvent senior year. It should be a chance for teenagers to make the transition from the predictable routines and 42-minute blocks of secondary school to the self-discipline, public speaking and teamwork that is vital in college and many careers."

6. Tuition Hikes of the Downturn - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/9oO0XU

"For room and board, public increases also outpaced the privates, and privates are also more expensive. The average public college rate is going up by 4.6 percent, to $8,535, and the average private rate is going up by 3.9 percent, to $9,700. Those figures are for four-year institutions only, as the pool of community colleges and for-profit colleges charging for room and board remains small. As is the case every year, College Board officials stress that the data show that most colleges -- however much their prices frustrate students and families -- are not in the mid-$50,000 range that attracts so much attention. Total expenses for a private four-year institution are, on average, just under $37,000 a year. But because the most famous private institutions tend to be well above that average, many people assume tuition rates are even higher than they are."

7. (Almost) Final Rules - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/cxI8Hc

"More than ever before, the department emphasized in a statement released to reporters late Wednesday that for-profit higher education was its target. “These new rules will help ensure that students are getting from schools what they pay for: solid preparation for a good job,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. While the department has in the past framed the rules as designed to protect the integrity of the Title IV program, the statement cites the for-profit sector’s “rapid growth of enrollment, debt load, and default rates” as having “prompted” the public hearings in the summer of 2009, the negotiated rule making sessions that spanned from November to January, and the months of revisions that produced the final regulations. Most of the regulations released today take effect on July 1, 2011."

8. Reframing College Completion - Inside Higher Ed insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/2…

"Focusing on the states creates difficulties in those metropolitan areas where multiple states intersect, putting up unnecessary barriers (in the form of financial aid, tuition and credit transfer policies) that inhibit the flow of students. And viewing higher education completion through the prism of individual institutions' productivity -- judging them on how many graduates they produce -- ignores the rapidly increasing numbers of students who attend multiple colleges. "[A]n institution’s graduation rate is not what we truly care about," three of the center's staff members write. "What matters more is whether a student completes a degree anywhere in the system -- regardless of that student’s pattern of mobility."In the two papers, the center offers alternatives -- to complement, not replace, the existing approaches. In "Easy Come, EZ-GO," three researchers at the Institute for Higher Education Policy propose that the federal government seed an "educational zone" experiment. . . ."

9. NCPA Scholarship Shortfall Search: NCAA Forces College Athletes to Pay http://www.ncpanow.org/research?id=0018

"A study conducted by the NCPA and the Ithaca College Graduate Program in Sport Management reveals that NCAA rules force players to pay for thousands in educational-related expenses. Scholarship shortfalls are different from one college to the next so it is important for recruits to consider how much they are expected to pay at each school. The range of out-of-pocket expenses for a "full" scholarship student-athlete is $200/year to $10,962/year depending on the college....NCAA rules prevent all of its colleges from providing athletic scholarships that fully cover the price tag of the school better known as the cost of attendance. That leaves players on "full" scholarship with significant out-of-pocket expenses for education-related expenses such as various academic supplies and fees. This joint study revealed that, in 2009, student-athletes in Division I receiving a so-called "full" scholarship were left with an average scholarship shortfall of $2951/year, or $14,755 over five years. The NCAA formula for scholarships leaves very different shortfalls from one college to the next. The range in scholarship shortfalls is $200/year - $10,962/year. A full scholarship athlete at the University of Arkansas (Little Rock) would be expected to pay almost $55,000 over five years."

10. Fall College Tuition Costs Climbing Again, by Eric Gorski http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/28/college-tuition-costs-cli_n_775186.html

"When adjusted for inflation, the tuition increases this fall amount to 6.6 percent at public four-year colleges and 3.2 percent at private ones, according to the College Board. Many students are finding relief in expanded federal aid, including tax credits, veterans' benefits and a record expansion of the Pell Grant program for low-income students. In 2009-10, 7.7 million students received $28.2 billion in Pell Grants - an increase of almost $10 billion from the year before, according to a companion College Board report, "Trends in Student Aid. "Even so, the maximum Pell grant covers just 34 percent of the average cost of attending a public four-year college, down from 45 percent two decades ago."

11. College Sustainability Report Card 2011 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/27/college-sustainability-report-card-2011_n_774351.html

"Participating schools were graded in nine categories, include climate change and energy, green building and endowment transparency and then given an overall GPA. Schools were assessed according to public data as well as custom surveys sent out to campus officials and student organizations. Inside Higher Ed notes that this particular report card has caused some controversy among certain colleges because it takes into account transparency in its rankings. In July, 24 colleges issued a letter saying that they would not cooperate with the institute. Still, SEI's set of rankings is regarded as one of the most comprehensive assessments of campus sustainability. Along with the report, SEI launched a corresponding website, GreenReportCard.org, which features an interactive map, detailed profiles of each school and full answers to survey questions."

12. Tuition Over Time, 1999-2010 - Find An Institution http://chronicle.com/article/Interactive-Tool-Tuition-Over/125043/

"The published price of college continued to climb in 2010-11, according to "Trends in College Pricing 2010," the newest installment in a series of annual reports issued by the College Board. To explore tuition trends at a particular college or university, start by choosing an institution type and a state, and then select an institution. You will then be able to compare its tuition and fees with those at other institutions, stretching back to 1999."

13. In Final Rules, Ed Dept. Makes Several Concessions to Colleges, by Kelly Field http://chronicle.com/article/In-Final-Rules-Education/125134/

‎"Under the revised rules, for-profit colleges would be required to notify the department when they create new programs, but only a small percentage of those programs would be subject to formal approval.The changes being announced today do not affect the even more unpopular "gainful employment" rule, which will not be published until next year. That rule, which would cut off federal student aid to programs whose graduates carry high student-debt burdens and have low loan-repayment rates, could force for-profits to shutter thousands of programs or lower their tuition considerably. But the revisions, which department officials discussed in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, do represent a rare bit of good news for a sector that has been on the defensive for months. Over the last year, for-profits have come under intense criticism from Congress and the Obama administration for their aggressive recruiting of students, high costs, and overdependence on federal aid."

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

114. 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. Over All, Colleges Accept an Average of 2 of 3 Applicants, by Jacques Steinberg on The Choice: Demystifying College - http://nyti.ms/brt1HG

‎"In its annual “State of College Admission” report, which is being released Wednesday afternoon, the National Association for College Admission Counseling has tallied a fresh statistic that underscores the above point: The average acceptance rate at four-year colleges and universities was 67 percent for last fall’s freshmen class. For those families fixated on the nation’s most selective colleges — some of which accepted fewer than 10 percent of those who applied last year — such figures are probably of little comfort. But for others seeking to take a broader view, that 67 percent acceptance rate should be of some solace."

2. A Father's Acceptance: His Son Won't Follow His Ivy Footsteps, by Dave Marcus - http://nyti.ms/asjPrF

"For seven years, I’ve crisscrossed the country, discussing what I learned while writing two books about teenagers. Help your children find their hidden talents, I advise parents. Teach your children to be independent. Don’t live your dreams through your son or daughter.... Somewhere in my files, I have a photo of my son, Benjie, and me on the steps of the admissions office of my alma mater, Brown University. We were framed by glowing yellow forsythia, and I was beaming. Benjie was two weeks old."

3. Measuring 2-Year Students' Success - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/awMeel

‎"Supporters and critics of community colleges alike question the merits of the primary success metric currently produced by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System: the "federal graduation rate," the completion rate for first-time, full-time students who earn credentials within 150 percent (recently changed to 200 percent) of the generally accepted amount of time it takes to complete. (In other words, four years for a two-year degree, and eight years for a four-year degree.) Supporters say the current data don't reflect the good work the colleges do, failing to account for the many students who transfer to four-year institutions without degrees, and the many students who come to the institutions for something less than a degree -- a certificate, or even just some retraining -- and get what they wanted. Critics argue that better data would simply provide clearer evidence that community colleges are failing in their mission, reinforcing what are terribly low completion rates. . . ."

4. Early Decision Bounces Back - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/aq0xAh

"During 2009, 47 percent of colleges reported an increase in the number of early decision applications they received, about the same proportion as the previous two years. But 65 percent of colleges with early decision reported admitting more students through the process in 2009, compared to only 43 percent reporting such increases the year before. And the gap is growing between the admissions rates for early decision and regular applicants at the same institutions. Colleges with early decision admit on average 55 percent of all applicants, but 70 percent of early decision applicants.In another data point on the return of early decision, in 2009 only 5 percent of colleges with the option reported admitting fewer applicants that way than they did the year before. In each of the previous three years, more than 30 percent of colleges reported such a shift."

5. Young Men Earn Fewer College Degrees: Report http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/men-college-degrees_n_769838.html

"According to the American Council on Education's analysis of 2008 data, 33 percent of men aged 25 to 34 hold postsecondary degrees, compared to 40 percent of men aged 55 to 64. Women, on the other hand, continue to exceed older generations in levels of higher education -- 42 percent of 25 to 34 year old females have a college degree, as opposed to 34 percent of those aged 55 to 64. This pattern is consistent across ethnic groups, with the exception of Asian-Americans, for whom both younger men and women earn undergraduate degrees at higher rates than their older counterparts."

6. The Latest Scoop on College Admissions, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy http://t.co/OEtFKI9

"The number of graduating high school students peaked at 3.3 million in 2009 while at the same time the recession made it more difficult for families to afford colleges. Higher-ed observers had predicted that students would limit their college choices and, sure enough, a significant minority of colleges have experienced that retrenchment. Twenty nine percent of colleges and universities said they experienced a drop in applications in 2009. That is the largest number of colleges to report fewer applications than at any time since 1996."

7. 10 Reasons to Attend Canadian Universities, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/hJVul1N

". . .To help get some answers about Canadian colleges, I sought out Whitney Laughlin, a veteran college consultant who is a leading expert on universities north of the border. Here are 10 reasons why Laughlin, who has offices in Santa Fe, NM, and Victoria, British Columbia, believes American teenagers should explore universities in Canada."

8. Early-Decision Programs May Lift Odds of College Admission, by Jacques Steinberg - http://nyti.ms/9RwQk3

"A report released Wednesday by an association of guidance counselors and admissions officers could be worth a look. It provides new evidence for those who believe that applying to college early in the academic year — or, more specifically, submitting applications under binding early-decision programs — increases the likelihood of acceptance. Nearly three of every four students who applied last year under such programs, which are offered by many of the nation’s most selective colleges, were accepted, compared with just over half who applied to the same colleges in the main application round, according to the annual report, “The State of College Admission,” by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. All told, the percentage accepted last year in the early-decision round, in which those accepted are compelled to withdraw all other applications and enroll, was 15 points higher than in the main phase. And that gap is rising, the authors said. In fall 2006, 61 percent, on average, were accepted early, compared with 53 percent in the regular pool."

9. The Economy and College Admissions, by Beckie Supiano http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/the-changing-state-of-college-admissions/27569

"During the 2009 cycle, the number of students graduating from high school in the United States reached a peak of 3.33 million; the number of high-school graduates is projected to decline through 2014-15. In recent years, many colleges have seen their application numbers increase as more students graduated from high school and as students applied to more colleges. This year, 65 percent of colleges reported an increase in the number of applications received. But despite the peak number of high-school graduates, 29 percent of colleges reported a drop in the number of applications they received, the highest share reporting a decline since 1996. That finding, the report’s authors suggest, could be the result of changed student behavior because of the recession. In a survey the association conducted last year, many counselors reported that more students were considering two-year colleges or were looking at public colleges rather than private ones because of cost considerations."

28. "College Applicants Forego 'Dream Schools' in Recession"

Here's a link to this article of interest from the Boulder (CO) Daily Camera:

http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_13604363

To read a summary of the various guides that "rank" colleges, click on the post "Which College Rankings Set Should You Use," by Danielle Wiener-Bronner on The Huffington Post of 9/14/10, at this link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danielle-wienerbronner/which-college-rankings-se_b_716526.html