367. 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. 529 college savings plan a great gift, by Sandra Block – http://usat.ly/u0eHfQ via @USATODAY - "Saving for college has never been more important. Federal and state budget deficits could lead to cuts in traditional sources of financial aid, which means there's a good chance there won't be as much available when your child goes to college, says Joseph Hurley, founder of SavingforCollege.com. Meanwhile, tuition continues to increase much faster than the rate of inflation. Tuition and fees at public colleges and universities rose more than 8% this year, according to a recent report by the College Board."

3. Program helps prepare kids for kindergarten, by Bob Coupland - Tribune Chronicle - Warren, OH: http://bit.ly/vLsGOE via AddThis - "Called SPARK Ohio (Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids), the program works with families, schools and the community to ensure children's readiness and schools' readiness to receive children and families, according to its website. . . . The program is designed to help 4-year-olds increase communication, language, literacy and math skills."

4. Part 2: Answers to Your Questions on Scholarships and Student Loans, by Mark Kantrowitz: http://nyti.ms/tcJAdo - "The unsubsidized Stafford loan and the Parent PLUS loan, both federal education loans, are available without regard to financial need. Even wealthy families may qualify for these loans. The Stafford loan is a student loan while the Parent PLUS loan is, as the name suggests, a loan borrowed by parents of undergraduate students. The unsubsidized Stafford loan has a fixed 6.8 percent interest rate and the Parent PLUS loan has a fixed 7.9 percent interest rate."

5. Occupy protests focusing increasingly on student debt, by Libby A. Nelson Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/vXcfBn via AddThis - “Student loan debt has been rising inexorably, and college students in the last couple of years are entering one of the worst job markets in a generation,” Kamenetz says. “There’s a real feeling of betrayal that hits a lot of people when they find out that the debt they were told was good debt is not paying off.”

6. Survey finds that counselors question effectiveness of schools, by Scott Jaschik Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/spuyVP via AddThis - "In function after function that the counselors found important -- such as helping students understand the kind of preparation they would need for colleges and careers, or promoting good understanding of the college application process -- relatively few found their schools to be doing well in them."

7. Report Links College to Promising 'Career Clusters' Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/tsmCx9 via AddThis - "The report argues that while there will be some jobs in the future for which only a high school diploma is required, those positions will be few and far between -- and will have limited advancement potential. The clusters in which students are likely to see the greatest number of jobs and advancement potential require a college education, the report says."

8. Georgetown U. Report on Career Clusters -- http://cew.georgetown.edu/clusters/ - "Here are several key highlights from the report:

While jobs for workers with high school diplomas are in decline, they still exist.

Jobs for middle skill workers (jobs for workers with some college, a certificate, or an Associate's degree) will make up 29 percent of the workforce by 2018.

Manufacturing will continue to decline in total employment, but retiring Baby Boomers will create 2 million job openings.

The gender gap in wages varies greatly from cluster to cluster. For example, the gap in Architecture and Construction is $2,000; in Health Science, it is $69,000."

9. Counselors See Conflicts in Carrying Out Mission, by Catherine Gewertz - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/11/15/13counseling.h31.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW via @educationweek - "Nine in 10 counselors, for instance, said that two objectives should top their schools’ priority lists: ensuring that all students have access to high-quality education and that they graduate well-equipped for college and careers. But fewer than four in 10 said their schools actually operated as if those goals were central to their mission."

10. Bachelor's Degree Is Still Best Path to Middle-Class Jobs and Earnings, Report Says, by Jennifer Gonzalez - http://chronicle.com/article/Bachelors-Degree-Is-Still/129784/ - "The study also concludes that women need education beyond high school to earn the same wages as men with only a high-school diploma. For example, a man can earn $35,000 annually with a high-school diploma in the manufacturing sector, while a woman must obtain a postsecondary credential and work in health care to earn as much, the report concludes. "A woman just can't make it with only a high-school diploma," said Anthony P. Carnevale, a research professor at Georgetown who directs the Center on Education and the Workforce."

11. Research doesn’t back up key ed reforms, by Valerie Strauss - The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/research-doesnt-back-up-key-ed-reforms/2011/11/12/gIQAPRoWFN_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "There is no solid evidence supporting many of the positions on teachers and teacher evaluation taken by some school reformers today, according to a new assessment of research on the subject. The Education Writers Association released a new brief that draws on more than 40 research studies or research syntheses, as well as interviews with scholars who work in this field."

349. 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. How colleges use, misuse social media to reach students, by Umika Pidaparthy - #cnn - http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/20/tech/social-media/universities-social-media/index.html -"For universities competing to attract top students, it's no longer enough to have a glossy brochure and a sleek website. Schools like Johns Hopkins are reaching out to engage with applicants on Facebook and Twitter. They're also finding that a robust social media campaign, along with such creative features as student-run blogs, can lure prospective students while a stale online presence can turn them off. College admissions officers are indeed learning to interact with students where they hang out: online. According to a recent study by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, 100% of universities surveyed use social media to communicate with students, up from 61% in 2007-08. The study found that 98% of the responding colleges have a Facebook page and 84% have a Twitter account."

2. Law aims to give more accurate tally of college costs, by Brandon James Smith – http://usat.ly/plFaea via @USATODAY - "Now, due to a federal law that kicks in on Oct. 29, there's an online tool required on college websites — a net price calculator — intended to to help give students and families a more accurate estimate of real costs."Universities all cost different amounts, so it's hard to know what the family might be responsible for until much later in the process and after they've applied for financial aid. This helps them to find what the real final cost will be early in the process," said Nanci Tessier, vice president of enrollment management of the University of Richmond."

3. Are Too Many Americans Earning Four-Year Degrees? by Rebecca R. Ruiz - http://nyti.ms/pDUsO7 - "The debate, held by Intelligence Squared in Chicago as part of that city’s Ideas Week, featured Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and entrepreneur, and Charles Murray, a political scientist, arguing that the college market is flooded with too many students. Arguing against them were Henry S. Bienen, president emeritus of Northwestern University, and Vivek Wadhwa, a director of research at Duke University."

4. Questions for The Times's Adam Liptak on the Future of Affirmative Action, by Jacques Steinberg and Adam Liptak - http://nyti.ms/oQmbUD - "As things stand now, under the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, admissions officers may take account of race and ethnicity as one factor among many in a “holistic review” of applications. A hypothetical decision overturning Grutter might forbid direct consideration of those factors but continue to allow consideration of, say, economic hardship or knowledge of a second language."

5. More Applications, More Waiting Lists, by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed - http://bit.ly/qiXSU0 via @AddThis - "Most four-year colleges saw an increase in applications in 2010, and more colleges used waiting lists than they did the year before, with smaller proportions of students admitted off the waiting lists, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. . . . The average selectivity rate (the percentage of applicants who are offered admission) at four-year colleges was 65.5 percent for fall 2010, down about one percentage point from the previous year. So all those reports about the few elite colleges with single-digit selectivity rates (while true) are about as unrepresentative as you could get."

6. Reframing the 'Stem Shortage' Debate, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed - http://bit.ly/mVCM3B via AddThis - "The country is still producing lots of workers with what the report calls "STEM competencies," including investigative and problem solving tendencies, the authors state. But those skills are increasingly in demand in other non-STEM fields such as health care management and professional and business services, and because those fields typically pay more and often offer some rewards that core science and engineering jobs may not -- such as social or entrepreneurial interests, or a chance to manage other people -- workers with STEM skills are increasingly being "diverted" to non-STEM jobs."

7. STEM full report, by Anthony Carnevale, Nicole Smith, and Michelle Melton - http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/stem-complete.pdf - "We find that the disagreement between those who argue thatSTEM workers are undersupplied and those who argue theyare oversupplied can be resolved by the fact that large numbersof people with STEM talent or degrees divert from STEMoccupations either in school or later in their careers."

8. Lastest Trends in College Admissions: 15 Things You Should Know, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/lastest-trends-in-college-admissions-15-things-you-should-know/6967/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "14. The average public high school counselors spend just 23% of their time on college counseling, while the average private school counselors devote about 55% of their time to college issues.15. Only 26% of public schools have at least one counselor who works exclusively on college counseling issues. In comparison, 73% of private schools have a dedicated college counselor."

9. New report: Dropout rates five times higher for poor students, by Nick Pandolfo - http://p.ost.im/p/eMn2Hx - "According to the report, the “event dropout rate,” which estimates the percentage of high school students who left school between the beginning of one school year and the beginning of the next, is five times greater for low-income teenagers than it is for those from affluent families. The difference in the dropout rate between white and minority teenagers also remains stark. The rate is twice as high for black teens (4.8 percent) as it is for white teens (2.4 percent). It is even higher for Hispanics, at 5.8 percent."

10. Illinois high school test scores fall to a new low, by Diane Rado and Tara Malone - http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-state-test-scores-1020-20111020,0,5375024.story - "About half of Illinois public high school students flunked state exams in reading, math and science this year, the worst performance in the history of the 11th-grade Prairie State Achievement Examination, statewide test results show. The record-low results, scheduled to be released Thursday, come after Illinois closed loopholes that kept academically weak juniors from taking the exams, a practice revealed in a 2009 Tribune analysis. Some local school officials attributed their declines in part to the larger testing pool that included less-prepared students."

261. 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. A college education is your best bet, by Joseph E. Aoun - http://t.co/xmXnAe1 - "In addition, a new Georgetown University study that analyzed the earning outcomes of 171 types of college degrees found that every single one generates a positive return -- even after college costs and foregone earnings are taken into account. It found that, overall, college graduates make 84% more over a lifetime than their high school-educated counterparts."

2. I'm an entrepreneur: College was invaluable, by Brian Forde - #cnn - http://t.co/nUGyUKl -"I applaud Thiel's efforts to encourage entrepreneurship, although if it is under the claim that education is better served through experience than the classroom I would disagree. If everyone took this route, the future of business would be all innovation and no operation."

3. Study shows preschool's benefits are long-lasting - USATODAY.com: http://usat.ly/jaYGkh - "Better jobs, less drug abuse and fewer arrests are among advantages found in the study. The researchers tracked more than 1,000 low-income mostly black Chicago kids for up to 25 years.Those who attended public preschool at Chicago's intensive Child-Parent Center Education Program were compared with those who mostly didn't attend preschool."

4. College mulls tuition hike - TribToday.com - Tribune Chronicle - Warren, OH: http://bit.ly/kZdJqm - "The proposed hike would increase a full-time student's tuition by $90 per semester, adding $6 to each credit hour. Currently, the college's tuition rate is $99 per credit hour in Ohio and $93 for Jefferson County residents due to the local levy."

5. Mind the (Scholarship) Gap, by David Moltz - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/lSLqd1 - "The National Collegiate Athletic Association defines a “full" athletic scholarship as “financial aid that consists of tuition and fees, room and board, and required course-related books.” By contrast, the NCAA and most college financial aid offices define cost of attendance as “an amount calculated by an institutional financial aid office, using federal regulations, that includes the total cost of tuition and fees, room and board, books and supplies, transportation and other expenses related to attendance at the institution.”

6. Schools Strengthen Counseling on Postsecondary Options, by Mary Ann Zehr - http://t.co/tlPIQ26 via @educationweek - "But experts say many counselors get little preparation themselves on how to advise students on choosing the right four-year college—let alone other kinds of postsecondary options.“There are numerous graduate school programs around the country that don’t even have a course dedicated to developing college-counseling skills for high school counselors,” says Jim Miller, the president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling."

7. National Coalition for College Completion - http://finishhighered.org/ - "Every student – of every race and every income level – needs quality education beyond high school."

8. More Hispanic Students Graduating And Attending College, Census Says - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/09/more-hispanic-students-graduating_n_874237.html?ir=College - "A higher percentage of young Hispanic adults is finishing high school, and the number attending a two-year college has nearly doubled over the last decade, according to Census data released Wednesday."

9. Summer jobs take a back seat for teens angling for college, by Jeffrey Sheban - http://t.co/RWOIfg1 - "With the job market tight and competition keen for college scholarships, more students are forgoing summer employment to pursue activities that will give them a leg up on college admissions."

10. Write 500 Words, Get Into College: Common Application Sets Essay Length Limit, by Kayla Webley - http://t.co/Wt1fle7 via @TIMENewsFeed - "In the essays, which are now accepted by 415 colleges and universities, students choose one of five prompts to write on. One of the prompts is, "Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence."The remaining prompts and a full preview of the 2011-12 Common Application is here."