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1. Educate black men now, or we'll all pay later, by DeWayne Wickham http://usat.ly/9Q00JS - RT @USATODAY

"Black males continue to perform lower than their peers throughout the country on almost every indicator," the Washington-based Council of the Great Schools, which represents the nation's 66 largest urban public school systems, said in a recent report.While much of the news coverage of the council's gut-wrenching report has focused on the failure of nearly all fourth- and eighth-grade black males to read and do math at proficiency levels, less attention has been paid to its conclusion that educational improvements alone won't fix this problem. What's needed, the council said, is a "concerted national effort to improve the education, social and employment outcomes of African-American males. "If you think that's just a warmed-over pitch for more funding of a liberal agenda, you're being shortsighted. In 13 years, minorities will be a majority of this nation's children younger than 18. In just 29 years, most working-age Americans will be black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American."

2. Survey: More college presidents make millions - http://usat.ly/cgoi7x RT @USATODAY

"According to the College Board, average tuition and fees at private colleges and universities have risen almost 35% in the past decade, to $27,290. Many students, though, pay much less because of grants and tax benefits. The average net price at private schools was $11,320 this fall, less than what students paid on average a decade ago.Public college presidents generally earn less than their private counterparts. Only one public university president topped $1 million in 2008-09 —Ohio State University president Gordon Gee brought in $1.5 million. Then there are for-profit colleges, which are under fire for their heavy reliance on federal student aid money and high student loan default rates. Strayer Education Inc. paid chairman and CEO Robert Silberman $41.9 million last year, according to a Bloomberg report last week."

3. Bracing Students, and Parents, to Hear 'No', by Sue Biemeret - http://nyti.ms/caWafM

"I often worry about the student who compiles a long list of colleges where admission is iffy for every single school except for the one they have deemed their “safety school.” And I also worry that this same student knows every statistic about those hypercompetitive schools, but nearly nothing about that “safety,” which could very well be home for the next four years. Truly amazing students get rejected from equally amazing colleges every single year through no fault of their own. For some of these young people, it’s the first time they’ve been denied, and that can unearth their stability. All that self-esteem can come crumbling down in April."

4. Headed to College? Be Prepared to 'Click,' by Jacques Steinberg - http://nyti.ms/aAPEOq

"In an article on The Times’s Web site, I write about an undergraduate course on “Organizational Behavior” at Northwestern University where all 70 students have been given clickers by the professor. Multiple choice quizzes are given via the devices, always just a minute into class, and the results count for nearly 20 percent of the students’ grade. The devices also record absences automatically. If readers of The Choice have encountered these devices, we’d like to hear what you thought of them. You can use the comment box below to tell us."

5. Speeding Toward a Slowdown? - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/aqX0Rh

"Nearly one million more students took an online course in fall 2009 than in the previous year, according to the new survey, which drew responses from 2,583 academic leaders at both nonprofit and for-profit institutions across the country. That is the biggest numerical increase in the eight-year history of the report, and the largest proportional increase (21.1 percent) since 2005. Online enrollments have grown at more than nine times the rate of general enrollment since 2002. Almost a third of all college students in the country take at least one course online."

6. So Far, 12 Schools See Increase In Early Applications http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/15/early-decision-colleges_n_783775.html#s182529

"Among them are the University of Pennsylvania, which experienced a 17 percent increase in early applications. Duke saw a 14 percent increase, and its admissions director Christoph Guttentag told the Duke Chronicle that he had never seen interest so high in his 28 years working in college admissions. Overwhelmingly, schools who have calculated changes have seen an upward trend. This may be because early applicants have a better chance of being admitted than those students who choose to apply regular decision. Deadlines still loom, however -- Nov. 15 for some schools and Dec. 1 for others and early decision/action II. Check out which schools got more early decision (which is binding) and action (which is not) applications this year than last."

7. Highest-Paid College Presidents (PHOTOS) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/15/the-highest-paid-college-presidents_n_783236.html#s183035

"The Chronicle evaluated 448 private institutions to determine who were the top earning executives in the 2008-2009 school year. At the head of their list was the late Bernard Lander, founder and president of Touro College, who earned a whopping $4,786,830 in 2008 (including $4.2 million in retroactive pay and retirement benefits). Other top earners who are no longer affiliated with their institutions include Trinity University's John R. Brazil, USC's Steven B. Sample, Drexel University's Constantine Papadakis (deceased), Stevens Institute of Technology's Harold J. Raveche, Baylor University's John M. Lilley and Northwestern University's Henry S. Bienen. The university leaders left for a variety of reasons, including term endings and retirements, which in some cases help to explain their hefty salaries."

8. There Is No College Cost Crisis, by Stanley Fish http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/there-is-no-college-cost-crisis/

"The causes of the increase in college costs (an increase that has not, they contend, put college “out of reach”) are external; colleges are responding, as they must, to changes they cannot ignore and still provide a quality product. Chief among these is the change in the sophistication and cost of the technology that has at once transformed the setting of higher education and become one of the areas of knowledge higher education must impart to students. Students expect to be instructed in the new technologies, and that instruction requires their installation, and then as new refinements emerge, their re-installation. “[A] modern university must provide students with an up-to-date education that familiarizes students with the techniques and associated machinery that are used in the workplace the students must enter.”

9. Graduation Percentages for Basketball Players Trail Those of Students in General - http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/graduation-rates-for-basketball-players-trail-those-of-students-in-general/28341

"The graduation rate for men’s basketball players in the NCAA’s Division I is 20 percentage points lower than the rate for full-time male students in general, according to a new report from the College Sport Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The gap is even greater in the top-ranking conferences—30.8 percentage points. Women’s basketball players fared better in the institute’s report, but their graduation rate still fell below that of their peers. The gap was 6.2 percentage points on average, and 14.6 percentage points in the top-tier conferences."

10. Be careful of 'snap apps' in college admissions - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/college-admissions/be-careful-of-snap-apps-in-col.html

"Snap apps are applications that colleges and universities send out that invite students to submit without paying a fee or writing an essay. Some of the information is already filled in for the student, just to make things as easy as possible.These applications have different names: Some are called express applications, or they come labeled "VIP applications," but they all are sent with the same end in mind: To get a student to apply. Students are selected by colleges sometimes because they have shown an interest in the school by visiting or seeking information, while some schools target students with high test scores or some other academic honor.These applications can leave a kid who receives one with the the illusion that they have a leg up when it comes to getting admitted. They don't, and some kids are stunned when they get rejected, having assumed they were wanted by the school and had an easy way in."

11. Gregory Kane: Nobody wants to talk about black America's gender crisis Washington Examiner: http://bit.ly/cKZTiG

"Now that the problem has been defined, we can talk about the particulars. Anybody notice the gender question? We're not talking about black girls underachieving, or black girls having a crisis when it comes to education. We're talking about black boys. That means the girls are achieving, and the boys aren't. That means black America's old, reliable whipping boy -- white racism -- might not be solely to blame for this crisis. And a crisis it is. What we have here is a failure to communicate about the Great African-American gender crisis. (My apologies to Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson, the screenwriters for the film "Cool Hand Luke".) It's our nasty little secret, the dirty laundry we don't want washed in public. If, indeed, white racism, specifically institutional white racism, were the cause of black academic underachievement, we would expect it to affect black girls and black boys in equal, or near equal, measure."

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

129. 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. Analyzing salaries for Football Bowl Subdivision coaches http://usat.ly/22JgPq

‎"USA TODAY obtained at least some information on all but nine schools, most of which are private. Four public schools did not provide contracts; 17 did not provide the NCAA-mandated outside income report, which covers athletically related income the coach receives from non-university sources (e.g. support organization, apparel contracts). Schools that provided contract information were given the opportunity to review their figures. A not available (NA) in the chart denotes schools that are private or did not release the information or schools whose coaches are new and had not filed an outside income report."

2. Encouraging Deep Learning - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/bEGCoi

"The authors of this year’s survey argue that the percentages of students who reported that they engaged “often or very often” in “deep learning” activities indicate that community colleges must do a better job of promoting them in the classroom if they hope to boost student performance. Only 43 percent of students reported that they “included diverse perspectives (different races, religions, genders, political beliefs, etc.) in class discussions.” Forty-five percent noted they “learned something that changed [their] viewpoint about an issue or concept.” Fifty-six percent stated that they “put together ideas or concepts from different courses when completing assignments or during class discussions” and “examined the strengths or weaknesses of [their] own views on a topic or issue.” Finally, only 57 percent reported that they “tried to better understand someone else’s view by imagining how an issue looks from his or her perspective."

3. Executives Collect $2 Billion at For-Profit Colleges http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=am_MEK7XWQr0

"Strayer Education Inc., a chain of for-profit colleges that receives three-quarters of its revenue from U.S. taxpayers, paid Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Robert Silberman $41.9 million last year. That’s 26 times the compensation of the highest-paid president of a traditional university. Top executives at the 15 U.S. publicly traded for-profit colleges, led by Apollo Group Inc. and Education Management Corp., also received $2 billion during the last seven years from the proceeds of selling company stock, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show. At the same time, the industry registered the worst loan-default and four-year-college dropout rates in U.S. higher education. Since 2003, nine for-profit college insiders sold more than $45 million of stock apiece. Peter Sperling, vice chairman of Apollo’s University of Phoenix, the largest for-profit college, collected $574.3 million. Education corporations, which receive as much as 90 percent of their revenue from federal financial-aid programs, are “private enterprise that’s almost entirely publicly funded,” Henry Levin, director of Columbia University’s National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, said in a telephone interview."

4. 10 Issues Affecting Student Veterans - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/11/10-issues-affecting-stude_n_782049.html#s177524

"For a veteran, making the transition from military life to college life can be especially difficult. Beyond the stresses of the classroom, veterans must cope with a host of other issues, from anxiety disorders to simply feeling like they fit in. The Washington Post offers a list of what colleges can do to better support their student veterans -- and below, we outline ten issues affecting the men and women who've gone from the service to campus."

5. Some simple rules for managing student loans, by Michelle Singletary - http://t.co/fYPPSVQ via @washingtonpost

"For years, I've written, talked and generally fussed about the way people handle their money. Yet it never - and I mean never - ceases to amaze me how people borrow money with so little understanding about how much they owe and how long it will take to pay it back. And the worst are borrowers who take out loans for college. So what should you do if your grace period is coming to an end this month? Here are some suggestions from the Project on Student Debt, an initiative of the Institute for College Access & Success, a nonprofit independent research and policy organization. You can find all 10 of its tips at http://bit.ly/avNe7V:"

6. Thousands Of UK Students Protest Tuition Fees Hike - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/10/thousands-of-uk-students-_n_781493.html#s179091

‎"Organizers said 50,000 students, lecturers and supporters demonstrated against plans to raise the cost of studying at a university to 9,000 pounds ($14,000) a year – three times the current rate – in the largest street protest yet against the government's sweeping austerity measures."

7. Is Any University President Worth $42 Million Dollars? by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/uDePJNY

‎"According to Bloomberg, that’s what Robert Silberman, the chair and chief executive officer of Strayer Education Inc., a chain of for-profit colleges, pocketed last year.The for-profit colleges that Silberman oversees enroll roughly 54,000 students, which is the same number of students as Ohio State University. Gordon Gee, Ohio State’s president, whom Time Magazine named one of the nation’s 10 best college president in 2009, is the highest paid president of any public university. Gee’s salary and compensation exceeds $1 million.$114,794-a-Day Pay???Silberman’s pay is about 42 times greater than Ohio State’s president. I’m not sure what’s more galling, Silberman’s $114,794-a-day compensation last year or the fact that he must surely believe that he deserves the money."

8. High School Teachers Don't Think Students Are College Ready, by Caralee Adams - http://t.co/IVJolVl via @educationweek

While just 31 percent of high school teachers think their graduating seniors are prepared for college, 68 percent of current college students say they were prepared for college coursework during their first year. Still, about 28 percent of students surveyed had to take remedial classes to get up to speed. Other sources, such as the College Board, put that number as high as 40 percent.What then should high schools do to get students on a solid footing for college careers? Teachers want more data to help them better measure how well their students do in college so they can adjust coursework accordingly."

9. University Giving Falls, With No Rebound in Sight, by Geraldine Fabrikant - http://nyti.ms/9QBjqd

"But in 2009, giving to 1,027 universities and colleges plummeted 11.9 percent, to $27.85 billion, according to data compiled by the Council for Aid to Education, the greatest single annual decline since the Depression. Fund-raising advisers and experts anticipate a slow recovery. Indicators are that overall giving for fiscal 2010 may be flat; data for the year, which generally ended June 30, is not available yet. A handful of institutions have already released their numbers. At Harvard, for example, giving was down 1 percent, to $596 million, and Yale also had a slight decline. Chicago was up 1 percent, and for the University of Texas, Austin, giving rose more than 3 percent."

10. Community Colleges Must Focus on Quality of Learning, Report Says, by Sara Lipka - http://chronicle.com/article/Community-Colleges-Must-Focus/125344/

"Community-college students also do not use support services to the extent they may need to, the report says. Nineteen percent of entering students were unaware that their college had an orientation program, and 26 percent didn't know about financial-aid advising, according to the report. Seventy percent were familiar with writing, math, or other skill labs, and 72 percent knew about academic advising, but 65 percent and 47 percent, respectively, never used those services. Many of those students drop out of college. According to the report, only 28 percent of first-time, full-time students seeking an associate degree finished a certificate or a degree within three years. After six years, still fewer than half (45 percent) of students who enrolled in community college to earn a certificate or degree had met that goal."

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