284. 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. 4 Out of 5 in Community College Want to Transfer, Report Says, by Lily Altavena - http://nyti.ms/rdKwU4 - "The popularity of community colleges can be attributed to a number of factors, including proximity to home and rising tuition at four-year institutions. The average tuition at a public community college is 36 percent of that at a public four-year university, according to the report."

2. Improving Student Transfer from Community Colleges to Four-Year Institutions -The Perspective of Leaders from Baccalaureate-Granting Institutions, The College Board http://advocacy.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/11b3193transpartweb110712.pdf - "Twenty-one higher education leaders were interviewed at 12 four-year institutions that are known for theircommitment to transfer students; these leaders possess expertise in one or more facets of institutionaladministration, including outreach and recruitment, admission and enrollment, financial aid, and student and academic affairs."

3. Remedial Plus, by Derek Quizon - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/mRoIsC - "CASH-to-ROI isn't meant to replace remedial courses but to supplement them with group study sessions, which some Daley students were required to attend during the spring 2011 semester. Students in the CASH-to-ROI program are divided into groups of 7 to 10, with each group assigned a part-time staff member as a "tutor-facilitator" to lead discussions."

4. Saving Money With a College’s Summer Melt, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/vO0XBUI via @cbsmoneywatch - "Thanks to enrollment practices, a school often will only give a student just enough of an award in its original financial aid/merit aid package that it assumes it will take to seal the deal. To see if you can increase your award, contact the financial aid office and be nice when asking for more money. And don’t mention that you’re calling because of summer melt."

5. 20-Year Hispanic Academic Gaps Persist in Math, Reading, by Sarah D. Sparks - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/07/13/36hispanic-2.h30.html?tkn=QPUFlV74RrfKI8%2FemRDWoTx6Rhu5TVxmmlsX&cmp=clp-edweek"While growing numbers of Hispanic students have changed the face of American education in the past two decades, the gap between them and their white classmates in math and reading remains as wide as it was in the 1990s, says a new federal study."

6. Bringing Girls Into the Science-Major Pipeline, by Nancy Linde - http://chronicle.com/article/Bringing-Girls-Into-the/128099/ - "Finding the right messages for New Image for Computing meant conducting some deep research on collegebound high-school girls. Working with two professional marketing firms from New York, the group created a national online survey. One thousand girls responded."

7. The Most Hipster Colleges - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/14/the-most-hipster-colleges_n_898059.html#s308137&title=Grinnell_College - "This year, we scoured the country for campuses where skinny jeans, American Spirits and Moleskins are de rigueur. Check out our winners below -- and let the intellectual debate rage in the comments section."

277. 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 on http://t.co/UftEiOc

2. Dozens of Atlanta educators falsified tests, state report confirms #cnn - http://t.co/En0SGWx - "I think the overall conclusion was that testing and results and targets being reached became more important than actual learning for children," Deal said. "And when reaching targets became the goal, it was a goal that was pursued with no excuses."

3. NCAA could see 'fundamental changes' in way it operates, by Steve Wieberg - http://usat.ly/q0MqFN via @USATODAY - "The system is bent. If not broken."There's a lot of motive to make some fundamental changes . . . more sweeping changes than we've probably seen in the past," Big 12 Conference commissioner Dan Beebe says."

4. Roundup: Michigan Admissions, Student Loans and Prospects for Film Graduates, by Jacques Steinberg - http://nyti.ms/qREYEI - "Summer is typically a slow season on the admissions news (and news-you-can-use) front. But several articles over the holiday weekend caught our eye, and we wanted to bring them to the attention of those readers — especially future applicants and their families — who may have missed them."

5. Teacher Beat: UPDATED: NEA Delegates Take Swipe at Teach For America, by Stephen Sawchuk - http://t.co/kavQ4kb via @educationweek - "In the union's strongest stance yet against the popular Teach For America alternative-certification program, National Education Association delegates approved an item that accuses TFA of taking jobs from other teachers in locales with job shortages."

6. District Dossier: State Investigation Reveals Widespread Cheating in Atlanta Schools, by Christina Samuels - http://t.co/SmaUtWO - "Beverly L. Hall, the former superintendent of Atlanta schools, knew about cheating allegations on state standardized tests and either ignored or tried to hide them, the Associated Press reported after obtaining a copy of an 800-page state investigation report.
Earlier today, Gov. Nathan Deal's office released a synopsis of the report's findings, which noted that investigators found evidence of cheating at close to 80 percent of the Atlanta schools where they examined the 2009 administration of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, or CRCT. Teachers and principals at more than four dozen schools are accused of helping students, or changing the answers once students handed in their test sheet."

7. Running a Race Against Ourselves, by Jonathan Plucker & David Rutkowski - http://t.co/qXtKqhE via @educationweek - "As would be expected, many of these reforms have been touted as the silver bullets that will result in major improvements in American education. However, the dirty little secret among researchers is that these reforms will almost certainly have little to no effect on the performance of most students.Volumes of nonpartisan research over the past 20 years suggest that most reforms (e.g., vouchers, charters, merit pay) have marginal effects on student achievement."

8. Tight Budgets Whittle Away School Days, by Sam Dillon - http://nyti.ms/jChMUm - "For two decades, advocates have been working to modernize the nation’s traditional 180-day school calendar, saying that the languid summers evoked in “To Kill a Mockingbird” have a pernicious underside: each fall, many students — especially those who are poor — return to school having forgotten much of what they learned the previous year. The Obama administration picked up the mantra: at his 2009 confirmation hearing, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared, “Our school day is too short, our school week is too short, our school year is too short,” but its efforts in this realm have not been as successful as other initiatives."

9. Top 10 YouTube Videos Posted by Colleges, and What They Mean, by Rachel Wiseman - http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/top-10-youtube-videos-posted-by-colleges-and-what-they-mean/32070 - "More than 400 colleges and universities have set up channels on YouTube as part of the YouTube EDU section of the popular video site, but university officials admit they are still experimenting with the service and learning what types of videos resonate with off-campus audiences.With data provided by YouTube, The Chronicle has determined the 10 most popular videos on YouTube EDU of the 2010-11 academic year (from June 2010 to June 2011)."

10. The 24 Most and Least Affordable Public Colleges, by Kayla Webley - http://moneyland.time.com/2011/07/06/the-24-most-and-least-affordable-public-colleges/ - "Last week, the U.S. Department of Education released a new web tool that lets users calculate the costs of getting a college degree. While much has been made of the highest and lowest tuition rates, you can also use the tool to calculate the “real” cost for an academic year, often called the net price. That includes the cost of attendance (tuition, required fees, books, supplies, average room and board and other expenses) minus grant and scholarship aid. Using the data, TIME Moneyland assembled a list of 24 of the most and least affordable U.S. public colleges."

11. As would-be students ‘melt,’ colleges try to keep cool, by Wayne Washington - TheState.com: http://bit.ly/pecBEU - "Based on her 32 years in higher education, Perry Wilson, director of admissions at Florence’s Francis Marion University, said schools face a melt percentage of about 10 percent — that is, one in 10 students tell a college or university they plan [to enter] in the fall but end up not enrolling."

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."