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. . . ."

289. 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. Numbers to Say No, by Kevin Kiley - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/mSiquY - "By tracking data related to financial aid appeals, the financial aid office at Nazareth College found that students enrolled at the same rates (or even slightly higher rates) when their appeals were denied as when the appeals were accepted. That finding has emboldened the office to reject certain appeals and reallocate money to students whose decisions really do hinge on financial questions. It also highlights a trend of "frivolous" appeals by families who don't actually need the money."

2. For-Profit Debate Redux, by Libby A. Nelson - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/oT9zsp - "But in the Senate, debate about the for-profit sector marches on, driven by Senator Tom Harkin. The Iowa Democrat held a roundtable discussion with some for-profit college critics -- and the leaders of two private-sector colleges, including DeVry Inc.-- on Thursday, a three-hour forum that seemed to indicate that he would pursue additional legislative regulation of for-profit colleges."

3. College-going inches up from Chicago high schools, by Sarah Karp - http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/index.php/entry/1199/College-going_inches_up_from_Chicago_high_schools - "The move also shined a bright light on the stark reality of how few graduates went straight to college. In 2004, only 43.5 percent of graduates enrolled in college the following fall. Since then, the percentage has gone up each year. Of 2010 graduates, 55.7 percent enrolled, up from 54.4 percent in 2009."

4. Politics K-12: New Initiative Targets 'School-to-Prison' Pipeline, by Nirvi Shah - http://t.co/UDpeoNU via @educationweek - "A new undertaking from the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education targets school discipline policies that end up pushing children into the juvenile-justice system for crimes and rule-breaking on campus—and keeping them from pursuing their education."

5. The Case Against Law School - Room for Debate, The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/07/21/the-case-against-law-school?hp - "Law school tuition is rising four times as fast as the cost of an undergraduate degree, which itself is soaring. Despite the high price, students are still flocking to law schools, even if it means going into heavy debt to enter a tight job market with few top-paying openings."

6. For-Profit Allies and Critics Discuss Ideas for Improving the Sector, by Kelly Field - http://chronicle.com/article/For-Profit-AlliesCritics/128364/ - "The proposal met with support from Holly Petraeus, director of the Office of Servicemember Affairs in the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who said for-profits often view veterans and service members as "dollar signs wearing a uniform." ". . . . The sad truth is that a lot of them are signing up based on advertising and word of mouth," she said. If the colleges "wrap themselves in the flag and say they cater to the military, they get picked."

7. College presidents, students lobby to keep Pell Grant funding, by Jenna Johnson - Campus Overload - http://t.co/1ynP8OW via @washingtonpost - "This week, dozens of university presidents, students and education advocates are on the Hill to persuade lawmakers to protect Pell Grants. Monday has been designated as “Save Pell Day” by the Education Trust, a nonprofit focused on closing education achievement gaps."

8. Hechinger Report New efforts to raise U.S. college graduation rates, by Jon Marcus: http://bit.ly/pqDTba - "The graduation problem isn’t generally evident at elite colleges and universities, both private and public, whose graduation rates are comparatively high. It’s concentrated at community colleges and lower-tier public universities, which enroll most of America’s students. Such institutions increasingly serve the fastest-growing segment of American college enrollment: low-income, nonwhite, non-native-English-speaking students who are the first in their families to go to college. Community colleges enroll much higher percentages of students who work full or part time and are considered at risk for dropping out—and who are also more likely to have children at home and have interrupted their education, in some cases for years. In addition, the vast majority arrive unprepared for college-level work, with 60 percent or more steered into remedial education, according to Thomas Bailey, director of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University."

9. Schools’ equity efforts are promising, by Ruth Adkins - http://www.portlandtribune.com/opinion/story.php?story_id=131119485031541300 -"However, with the new Cradle to Career coalition, an unprecedented collaborative effort is under way among schools, local governments, nonprofits and the business community. The goal is that by aligning existing city, county, and private programs and resources, we can, as a community, help give Portland’s children the best possible chance for success."

288. 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. The Next Gate, by Jacques Steinberg - http://nyti.ms/oyZSoM - "As students contemplate graduate school, their frame of reference is likely the only admissions process most have ever known: the jagged maze they followed to college as high school seniors. There are some fundamental differences between the two processes — the weeding out of grad school applicants is largely the responsibility of faculty, for example, not a centralized admissions office; and there is nothing like the Common Application (except for law school, which has a universal form). But students should take comfort in the many parallels with college admissions."

2. In College, Without a Home, by Libby A. Nelson - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/oIFMmW - "The population is also growing, she said. The number of homeless youth has increased 69 percent in the past two years, to 1.6 million. Some are runaways; others are from chaotic family situations, maintaining contact with parents and siblings but spending the majority of nights on friends’ couches or in cars or mobile homes."

3. Paths to the Bachelor's Degree, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/ouCqN3 - "Bachelor's degree recipients in 2007-8 who began their postsecondary educations at a community college took almost 20 percent longer to complete their degrees than did those who started out at a four-year institution, those who began at four-year private colleges finished faster than did those at four-year public and for-profit institutions, and those who delayed entry into college by more than a year out of high school took almost 60 percent longer to complete their degrees than did those who went directly to college."

4. 5 Myths of Remedial Education, by Jane V. Wellman and Bruce Vandal - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/qtNqzl - "And everyone admits that remedial education is not working, with just 25 percent of community college students who receive it going on to complete a college credential. Recognizing that increasing college attainment is a linchpin in creating more jobs and growing the economy, what to do about remedial education is an issue that would benefit from clear thinking. Here are five powerful myths shared by policy makers and educators alike that clearly hinder our pursuit of college success."

5. What Are Some Mistakes to Avoid in the College Admissions Process? by Unigo - http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-admissions-experts/2011/07/20/what-are-some-mistakes-to-avoid-in-the-college-admissions-process - "For those of you who don't have older siblings, hearing about mistakes other college-bound students have made can be a huge time saver. Take a look at some of these mistakes that are completely avoidable, and if you have some of your own, share them in the comment section below!"

6. Report finds 2 of 4 tests in ACT poor predictors of college success, by Jay Mathews-Class Struggle - http://t.co/gnCRVfY via @washingtonpost - "An independent analysis of results in Ohio has concluded that two of the ACT’s four subject tests — Reading and Science — are lousy predictors of college success and should be ignored by admissions officers . . . . “Our model predicts that a student who gets an ACT composite score of 24 by getting a 26 on the Reading and Science tests and a 22 each on the Mathematics and English tests is 59 percent more likely to be a first-year dropout and 43 percent more likely to drop out by the third year of college, relative to a student who gets the same ACT composite of 24, but with a 26 each on the Mathematics and English tests and a 22 each on the Reading and Science tests,” the report said."

7. Learning to Feel Lucky to be in College, by Julia Bumke - http://t.co/hnc6JcL via @voastudentu - "One of the lessons that has really hit home for me is how many American students dismiss college because they cannot see how to navigate it financially. I came from a high school background where students who did not attend college were exceptions to the rule, but that ratio is entirely inverted with the students at ACCESS. The majority of the students working with nonprofits like ACCESS were on the fence about attending college before they met an advisor at their high school or community group."

287. 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. College budget cutbacks go outside the box, by Oliver St. John - http://usat.ly/mSPGrt via @USATODAY - "It may be hard to swallow, but budget-cutting is the new normal at the nation's 6,700-plus post-secondary schools. Creative cuts don't save much money, but they symbolize deep overall cuts. With funding down and enrollment up, state support per student hit a 25-year low last year, says Paul Lingenfelter, president of State Higher Education Executive Officers. "The current year will be lower yet."

2. A Numbers Game? by Kevin Kiley - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/q7uFc8 - "And that is what some people worry has been happening at Edison State College, in Florida, where an internal investigation found that about 75 percent of students in three particular programs were allowed to substitute elective credits for required courses -- with many of the substitutions approved in the week before graduation -- so that students could graduate on time and enroll in baccalaureate degree programs. Awarding degrees to students who don’t meet the set requirements would violate state law and accrediting standards, as well as raise questions about the value and integrity of the degrees."

3. Stepping Out, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/pM6ij3 - "But all of a sudden, groups of career colleges are rushing to team up to align themselves as accountable, transparent and all the other things that consumer advocates and critical policy makers have been accusing the worst of them of not being. The latest to emerge is a collection of 20 regionally accredited for-profit institutions that have adopted a "pledge of public accountability," under which they will publish information about themselves (prices, curriculums, and faculty qualifications) and their students (debt levels, loan repayment, and employment outcomes), with the goal of making the institutions "more transparent to students before they enroll."

4. Save Pell Day (July 25) website: http://www.savepell.org/ - "Stand up for students. Take action on July 25."

5. When Student-Loan Payments Are Due: A Borrower Shares His Experience, by Beckie Supiano - http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/when-student-loan-payments-are-due-a-borrower-shares-his-experience/28473 - "The borrower, Terron Austin, graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2008 with a degree in journalism. Mr. Austin lived at home during much of his college career to cut down his costs, and he had a job lined up at graduation. So, when his grace period ended six months after college, and his first bill was due, Mr. Austin was able to manage the payments.But then, Mr. Austin was laid off."

6. 'Report card' finds most students weak in geography, by Douglas Stanglin - http://usat.ly/nAPjuA via @USATODAY - "Less than one-third of the nation's students achieved at or above the proficient level in geography, according to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the s0-called Nation's Report Card. Although fourth-graders made gains in achievement since 2001, The Nation's Report Card: Geography 2010 shows that performance by eighth-graders remained flat, and achievement by 12th-graders declined from 1994."

7. The Fiske Guide's Most Interesting Colleges - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/19/the-fiske-guides-most-int_n_902401.html#s311311&title=Cooper_Union_New - "The Fiske Guide to Colleges 2012 made a special effort to include a good selection of four types of institutions that seem to be enjoying special popularity at present: engineering and technical schools, those with a religious emphasis, those with an environmental focus, and those located along the Sunbelt."

8. 10 CHEAPEST Public Colleges For Out-Of-State Students - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/24/10-cheapest-public-colleg_n_883762.html#s297444&title=New_Mexico_Highlands - "US News and World Report rated the cheapest public colleges for out-of-state students on Tuesday and apparently, the more snow there is, the cheaper the school. 8 out of the 10 schools in the list were located in North Dakota, South Dakota or Minnesota."

286. 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. Column: Combat pay for teachers will help students, DeWayne Wickham - http://usat.ly/oYQfub via @USATODAY - "Those good teachers who take on the job of educating young people in neighborhoods where the body count of underachieving students rivals that of Afghanistan's killing fields deserve combat pay."

2. Frustration with the Feds, by Libby A. Nelson - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/o8eId5 - "Most notable, of course, was the shift from a mix of bank-based and government lending to 100 percent government lending last summer, which changed the way the majority of student loans were issued. But the past year has also brought the end of the summer Pell Grant, the controversial rules on program integrity and the fight over the “gainful employment” regulation. Many new regulations will take effect in the coming months, including new measures of default rates and the hefty disclosure requirements for institutions that sponsor vocational programs subject to the gainful employment regulations."

3. Online and Incomplete, by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/pDffVx - "But a new study urges caution to those who believe that online education is a panacea for educating more community college students. The study finds that students who enrolled in online courses -- controlling for various factors that tend to predict success -- were more likely to fail or drop out of the courses than were those who took the same courses in person. Notably, there was not a gap in completion between those enrolled in hybrid and in-person courses."

4. Bowdoin Says No Need for SAT While Buying College Board Scores, by Janet Lorin - http://t.co/aHSc3Kk via @BloombergNews - "Colleges from Bowdoin in Maine to Pitzer in California dropped the SAT entrance exam as a requirement, saying it favors the affluent, penalizes minorities and doesn’t predict academic success. What they don’t advertise is they find future students by buying names of kids who do well on the test . . . . The company and its competitor, Iowa City, Iowa-based ACT Inc., both nonprofit, sell names for 33 cents apiece."

5. 10 Most Expensive State Universities for Outsiders, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/1MRTusS via @cbsmoneywatch - "Beware of extremely expensive out-of-state public universities. When you include tuition, fees and room/ board, the most expensive state universities for nonresidents are costing more than $50,000 a year . . . . The University of Michigan happens to be the most expensive public university in the nation for nonresidents, according to US News & World Report. Here are the top 10:"

6. Half of Texas' Students Have Been Suspended, Study Finds, by Nirvi Shah - http://t.co/d94aVpy via @educationweek - "Also, the study raises concerns about how nearly half the students disciplined 11 or more times also were in contact with the Texas juvenile justice system, raising the specter of the so-called “school-to-prison” pipeline . . . . Some groups of students were more vulnerable to suspension or expulsion than others, the study found. For example, 75 percent of African-American students were expelled or suspended, compared to 50 percent of white students.Also, 75 percent of students with disabilities were suspended or expelled, compared with 55 percent of students without a disability."

7. School Discipline Study Raises Fresh Questions, by Alan Schwarz - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/education/19discipline.html?_r=1&hp - "The study linked these disciplinary actions to lower rates of graduation and higher rates of later criminal activity and found that minority students were more likely than whites to face the more severe punishments."

8. A Sociologist Returns to the Mean Streets of His Youth, by Peter Monaghan - http://bit.ly/q4UNeZ - "In the boys' world, he says, "instead of feeling that you can graduate high school and go to college as a coming-of-age ritual, now you might grow up thinking that in order to show your manhood, you have to get locked up."

9. MinnPost - Admission Possible: Closing a disturbing divide in Minnesota's educational landscape, by Sharon Schmickle : http://bit.ly/pQ8t0v - "A disturbing divide cuts through Minnesota’s educational landscape. On one side, middle- and upper-income kids thrive academically in keeping with the state’s longstanding emphasis on quality education. On the other side, low-income minority kids can’t seem to get a toehold on success.Not only is this a breach of social justice. It also is a serious economic problem."

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."

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."