322. 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. California weighs college aid for illegal immigrants, by Alan Gomez: http://usat.ly/o0dN4x#.Tm9FcqvaMLc.twitter via @USATODAY - "The bill, passed Sept. 2 by the Legislature, would give illegal immigrant students about $40million in financial aid and fee waivers."

2. Part 2: Answers to Your Back-to-School Admissions Questions, By ROBIN MAMLET and CHRISTINE VANDEVELDE: http://nyti.ms/qQaygR - "Q: ACT or SAT? Is there really any preference among top colleges like Vanderbilt and Emory or should a student just take the test they are better suited for?"

3. Forget Who's No. 1 or No. 138: How to Use the U.S. News Rankings, by Jacques Steinberg: http://nyti.ms/oghZBd - “So buyer beware,” Mr. Reider concludes, “but it’s potentially of value, if you use it intelligently.”

4. Default Rates Up Again, by Libby A. Nelson - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/na4O2g via @AddThis - "The two-year "cohort" default rate, which represents the proportion of federal loan borrowers who entered repayment between October 2008 and September 2009 and had defaulted on their loans by the end of September 2010, increased to 8.8 percent, the highest such rate since 1997. The rate increased 1.8 percentage points from fiscal 2008. And while students in all sectors were likelier to default on their loans than they had been the previous year, defaults increased the most at for-profit colleges: 15 percent of borrowers from those institutions defaulted in 2009, compared with 11.6 percent in 2008."

5. 'Imagine HBCUs Differently' by Kevin Kiley - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/oJp2hd via @AddThis - "Since becoming president in January, Brown has launched a series of initiatives designed to tackle some of the largest problems threatening Alcorn State and some other historically black colleges and universities, such as stagnant enrollments; low retention and graduation rates, particularly among black males; financial instability; and a lack of student interest in what such institutions tend to offer."

6. Report: Top college athletes worth 6 figures, by FREDERIC J. FROMMER -http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g0a73PgzYlJtmqQdAE2aR7kWjsbw?docId=1546da5da23a4997b2c516cd64c3cdb1 -"A national college athletes' advocacy group and a sports management professor calculate in the report that if college sports shared their revenues the way pro sports do, the average Football Bowl Subdivision player would be worth $121,000 per year, while the average basketball player at that level would be worth $265,000."

7. Out-of-State Universities: Finding Bargains, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/out-of-state-universities-finding-bargains/6581/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "Typically outsiders need to be stellar students to receive scholarships from flagship universities, but many other state universities will give nonresidents, who are smart, but not at the top of the academic heap, a cut in price."

8. Inside School Research: U.S. Postsecondary Edge Shrinking Among G-20 Countries, by Sarah D. Sparks - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2011/09/us_postsecondary_edge_shrinkin_1.html via @educationweek - "The United States still leads the world in having a college-educated workforce, but it is the only country among the G-20 members whose incoming workers are less educated than those retiring, according to a study released this morning by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development."

9. Student Loan Default Rates Rise Sharply in Past Year, by Tamar Lewin: http://nyti.ms/oJIw9Z - "At public institutions, the rate was 7.2 percent, up from 6 percent, and at not-for-profit private institutions, it was 4.6 percent, up from 4 percent. . . . Although for-profit colleges, which typically serve low-income students, enroll only about 10 percent of the nation’s undergraduates, Mr. Kvaal said, their students made up 150,000, or almost half, of the defaults."

10. For-Profit-College Group Releases Code of Conduct With Protections for Students, by Kelly Field -http://chronicle.com/article/For-Profit-College-Group/128963/ - "The standards, which will be enforced by a foundation created by the coalition, require colleges that sign on to the voluntary program to provide prospective students with "clear and accurate" information, in writing, on program costs, completion rates, employment outcomes, and student-loan default rates. The standards also require colleges to disclose whether a program provides industry certifications or qualifies students for professional licensing exams."

11. U.S. News & World Report's Shocker-Free 2012 College Rankings, by Kayla Webley - http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/09/13/u-s-news-and-world-reports-shocker-free-2012-college-rankings/ via @TIMENewsFeed - "Nevertheless, here are this year's 10 Best Colleges in the Nation:"

12. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ today's top stories on college access and success via @rottenbornj ▸ http://t.co/x7cmxSo

222.Unstack the Odds--Cost, Part 4

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!

by

Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

11. Cost, Part 4

When it comes to cost of college, students and their parents must remember the old adage: “Let the buyer beware.” Today, horror stories abound of students who have gone into debt, often failed to earn a degree, and are still unable to find a job. One such student is Becky Loring, who attended Westwood College, a proprietary (for-profit) school in Florida. According to a Tampa newspaper article, “Loring, 32, now owes the government and private lenders more than $100,000. Working in sales, she is far from the graphic design job she studied for, barely able to make her college loan interest payments."When I think about it, I just feel nauseated," she said. "How did I let this happen?" (Lindsay Peterson, “For-profit colleges leave many with debt but no jobs,” The Tampa Tribune, March 27, 2011.) http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/mar/27/for-profit-colleges-leave-some-with-debt-but-no-jo/news-breaking/

For information on the sector of higher education alternatively referred to as "for-profit/private sector/corporate," you can access data released by the U.S. Education Department on April 6, 2010, at this link from Inside Higher Ed: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/07/enroll

On June 24, 2010, Chairman Tom Harkin opened hearings by the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions regarding for-profit higher education. At the outset, a report was issued, containing the following conclusions:

“The Federal government and taxpayers are making a large and rapidly growing investment in financial aid to for-profit schools, with few tools in place to gauge how well that money is being spent. Available data show that very few students enroll in for-profit schools without taking on debt, while a staggering number of students are leaving the schools, presumably many without completing a degree or certificate. To boost enrollment, some for-profit schools recruit large numbers of new students each year. In some cases, schools enroll more students over the course of the year than were enrolled at the beginning of the year. To ensure these enrollment increases, it is necessary for the schools to devote very large shares of Title IV dollars and other Federal financial aid to marketing activities, not education."

"These schools are increasingly relying on Federal financial aid dollars for revenue. When all Title IV, Department of Defense and Veteran’s Administration funds are included, many of these schools are receiving nearly all of their funds from Federal sources. While increasing their reliance on Federal dollars as a source of revenue, for-profit schools are at best spending only slightly more than half of revenues actually educating students, and in several cases are shrinking the amount spent on instruction. Yet these same schools are reporting profit margins of 20 percent and higher to investors."

"Students at for-profit schools are also taking on higher amounts of debt than their peers at public and nonprofit schools. Nearly half of student loan borrowers who entered repayment in 2007 and defaulted by 2009 attended for-profit schools (44 percent), even though less than 10 percent of students attend these schools.The publicly available data, in tandem with mounting reports of questionable practices and poor student outcome, yields a mixed portrait of the for-profit higher education sector that calls into question the taxpayers return on their multi-billion-dollar investment, and leaves many unanswered questions with regard to whether a sufficient number of students receive an education that provides them with the knowledge and skills they need to obtain jobs to repay their student debt.” (Emerging Risk?: An Overview of Growth, Spending, Student Debt and Unanswered Questions in For-Profit Higher Education, p. 11) http://harkin.senate.gov/documents/pdf/4c23515814dca.pdf

To access the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) report entitled "FOR-PROFIT COLLEGES: Undercover Testing Finds Colleges Encouraged Fraud and Engaged in Deceptive and Questionable Marketing Practices," dated August 4, 2010, click the following link:http://pervegalit.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/gaomarketing.pdf

According to that GAO report, you can watch video clips of applications by undercover investigators and listen to voicemail messages from proprietary educational institution recruiters at this link:http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-948T

To see the annual revenue and number of students enrolled by some of the largest for-profit companies/universities, click this link to an article in The Wall Street Journal, dated August 30, 2010:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703418004575455773289209384.html?mod=WSJ_article_related

To read the article by Stephanie Chen, "For-profit college risk: Huge debt, questionable degree," posted on 9/2/10, at CNN online, click this link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/09/02/for.profit.college.debt/index.html?hpt=C2

115. 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. Your Comments on High-Octane Parents, and their Blessedly Decaffeinated Children, by Jacques Steinberg - http://nyti.ms/9uzzqd

‎"I’ve been moderating your comments on Dave Marcus’s essay, “A Father’s Acceptance: His Son Won’t Follow His Ivy Footsteps,” and I’m having a bit of trouble keeping up. So many of you have been prompted to tell heartfelt stories of your own families, and the divergent, oft-rocky paths taken by parent and child. It’s obvious that Mr. Marcus touched a nerve, and that many of you saw yourselves in what he wrote about his relationship with his son, Benjie. (By the way, Benjie reviewed the essay in advance and gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up, his father says.)By contrast, some of you had a dissenting view from Mr. Marcus, which we’ll get to in a moment.I can’t possibly do justice to all your comments — you’ve posted more than 70, and counting, and the entire stream is probably worth savoring over a cup of coffee — but I’ll try to touch on a representative sampling."

2. Student Debt and the Class of 2009 http://projectonstudentdebt.org/files/pub/classof2009.pdf

"College seniors who graduated in 2009 had an average of $24,000 in student loan debt, up 6 percent from the previous year, according to data released Thursday by the Project on Student Debt. At the same time, unemployment for recent college graduates climbed from 5.8 percent in 2008 to 8.7 percent in 2009 – the highest annual rate on record for college graduates aged 20 to 24."

3. For-Profit Lobbying Escalates - Inside Higher Ed http://t.co/k3cOgYV

‎"As federal scrutiny of the sector has spread from the U.S. Department of Education's in-the-weeds negotiated rule-making process last winter to the high-profile series of hearings by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that began in June, for-profit higher education has responded by spending increasingly more on lobbying the Education Department, the White House and members of Congress. From the first quarter of the year (January-March) to the third (July-September), based on Inside Higher Ed's analysis of public disclosure data, for-profits' federal lobbying spending nearly doubled, from slightly more than $1.3 million to just short of $2.6 million."

4. Changing Course - Inside Higher Ed http://t.co/cRc7JE4

"Some nonprofit institutions that partner with companies on online education have been careful to emphasize their commitment to keeping a wall between the business and technology of online course delivery and the actual instruction. “Some things, we would never turn over to the private sector,” Philip Regier, dean of Arizona State University’s online programs, said earlier this month, after his institution announced it was going into business with Pearson to help boost its online offerings. But Blackboard and K12 are betting that remedial education will be an exception. About 75 percent of first-year students at community colleges need at least one remedial course, according to a report released earlier this year by the The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. And yet the percentage of students who end up moving beyond such courses is typically less than half. Under the circumstances, it might be hard for faculty to reject outsourced courses on territorial grounds."

5. Somewhere Along the Line - Inside Higher Ed http://t.co/8kzMErN

"A greater share of students who began at higher levels of remediation -- in other words, those levels closest to “college-ready” -- were “of traditional college age when they entered community college,” and they “aspired to more ambitious academic goals,” “enrolled full time during their first year,” “completed college-level coursework beyond the [remediation] sequence,” and “transferred or completed a degree or certificate. ”At the other end of the spectrum, few students who began at the lower levels of remediation “completed the last course in the remedial sequence or beyond.” Black and Hispanic students “were overrepresented” in these lower levels."

6. Average Student Debt: $24,000 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/22/average-student-debt-2400_n_772276.html

"The report reveals that northeastern states have the highest concentration of debt, with averages across states ranging from $13,000 to $30,000. The report looked at graduates of private and public non-profit four-year colleges. Institute for College Access & Success President Lauren Asher told the New York Times that the "consistent growth in debt over the last few years really adds up." She said students should consider federal loans over private loans as they come with more repayment options and borrower protections."

7. New Measurements For Success At Community Colleges? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/21/new-measurements-for-succ_n_771488.html

"Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System currently publishes degree attainment for first-and full-time students who graduate within four years. Those who support a new means of measurement argue that the IPEDS falsely deflates the success of two year institutions by failing to report on students who transfer to a four year college before graduating, as well as on students who never intend to gain a degree (i.e. individuals who seek a certificate or retraining)....The study found that 50 percent of students who passed English classes within their first two years graduated, compared with only 20 percent of students who failed such courses, and that 55 percent of students who passed math classes in their first two years attained a degree -- as opposed to a graduation rate of 21 percent for those who did not earn passing marks. The report's authors contend that such figures should encourage states to make a nuanced effort to increase graduation rates. . . ."

8. Students Applying to More Colleges and More Online, by Caralee Adams - http://t.co/myyrqtW via @educationweek

"The 2010 State of College Admission Report shows that nearly 75 percent of students now apply to three or more colleges, an increase of 14 percent in the past two decades. The percentage of students who submitted seven or more applications reached 23 percent last year, up from 9 percent in 1990. Although most colleges reported increases in the number of applications for fall 2009, the largest proportion since 1996 (29 percent) reported decreases. The process is becoming electronic. About 80 percent of four-year colleges and universities received applications online for the fall 2009 admission cycle, up from 72 percent in 2008, 68 percent in 2007, and 58 percent in 2006."

9. Curious Case of ‘Catnip’ & the Common App http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/the-curious-case-of-‘catnip’-and-the-common-application/27589

"At the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s annual conference last month, several counselors discussed what they described as an increasingly common scenario: students using a fast-track application to apply to a college that’s a member of the Common Application. In such cases, high schools cannot electronically submit students’ supporting documents—transcripts, secondary-school reports, and letters of recommendation—to colleges. Why not? Because a member college isn’t able to download those documents until (or unless) a student submits his or her application through the Common Application’s Web site. In other words, a student can bypass the Common Application’s system by submitting a fast-track app, but that student’s counselor cannot do the same. In those instances, counselors say they must send supporting documents through the mail— and they must rely on students to tell them that they’ve filed a fast-track app in the first place."

10. When Choosing A College, What Really Matters? by Abby McCartney Choosing a College Unigo http://t.co/tXRts1I

"The process of matching yourself to a school is different for everyone, and I’m no expert. But I’ve been through it a few times now, with myself, my friends, my sister, and her friends, and we all made a lot of the same mistakes. So, whether you’re compiling an initial list or making a final choice, here are some tips from someone who’s been there before. Three things that do not matter as much as I once thought:"

112. 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. Proofread That Application, Unless You Want to be ‘Excepted’ - http://nyti.ms/9IajET

‎"Take a few minutes to proofread. Applications that are sent electronically don’t permit students to unseal the envelope and take one last look on the way to the post office. Admissions offices see files littered with misspellings, grammatical mistakes and poor word choice. Students rely too much on programs that purport to check spelling and sentence structure."

2. Revolving Door - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/crJO31

“For a while now there has been a trend of hires by for-profit providers in regulatory affairs roles with significant public sector experience -- whether it is working for the Department of Education, an accrediting body or outside counsel,” he said in an e-mail. “Given that these positions have only become more crucial to ensure future growth (or in some cases, survival), it makes sense to hire these type of people who ‘speak the same language’ and know many of the players they need to deal with.” In late September, Career Education hired Walter Pryor, who worked as a principal and general counsel at the Podesta Group, a powerhouse lobbying firm, to be vice president of government affairs. The hires at for-profit institutions reach beyond the realm of lobbying. Two academic leaders just hired at career colleges have deep roots in nonprofit higher education."

3. The Real Cost Equation - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/bFzBI4

"Since 1981, the list price tuition and fees charged by American four-year colleges and universities (public and private together) has risen at an annual rate of 7.1 percent. Room and board has gone up 5.3 percent per year. Overall inflation has averaged only 3.2 percent. These differences have fueled an increasingly acrimonious public debate over the causes and consequences of the rising cost of college attendance. At some risk of oversimplification, most of those who write on higher education start from the proposition that the causes of rising college cost are to be found by examining higher education with a fine-toothed comb. What they find isn’t pretty. They see dysfunctional universities in an increasingly dysfunctional higher education system. From there, the descent into apocalyptic rhetoric is easy. As a recent editorial in the Economist says, “America’s universities lost their way badly in the era of easy money. If they do not find it again, they may go the way of GM.”

4. The Making of Corporate U.: How we got here http://chronicle.com/article/The-Making-of-Corporate-U/124913/

"By the last decades of the 20th century, colleges had achieved a monopoly as the licensing agencies for Americans who wanted to improve their employment prospects. Every occupation sought to raise its prestige and income by making a college degree (and beyond) the requirement for entry. As the job market for those without college deteriorated into dead-end work at fast-food franchises, continuing one's education became a necessity. The seemingly insatiable demand to attend college, the availability of government and private money with which to do so, and the desire of every state and local community to have its own college or university made it easy for higher education to charge what the traffic would bear. In the 1980s, tuition so substantially outpaced inflation and the growth rate of median family income that higher education looked like yet another greedy industry."

5. The Future of Wannabe U.: How the accountability regime leads us astray http://chronicle.com/article/The-Future-of-Wannabe-U/124917/

‎"Here's how one Wan U. professor explained it to me: "It's like the students are being processed the way you process hot dogs. You take raw material, and you put it on an assembly line. You check for defective hot dogs. Almost all the hot dogs are good. When one is defective, you ask how to change the process. You don't try to figure out what went wrong with the raw materials you were assembling. Not with this kind of continuous quality control." That kind of evaluation does not even pretend to ask questions about a student's preparation, class attendance, or study habits—in short, what the student is like as a student. The analogy to the processing of hot dogs (or TV's or cars) also reminds us that administrators are assuming control of the curriculum, for managers set the standards for the assembly line. They decide how work is to be done. Student-outcomes assessment announces the existence of an audit culture that has run amok and become an accountability regime."

6. The Corporate Analogy Unravels http://chronicle.com/article/Farewell-to-the-Corporate/124919/

‎"Admittedly, there is a pile of evidence to support the idea that universities have gone corporate. The casualization of the academic work force is the most obvious—arguably, the loss of professional job security has occurred at a rate faster than in any other occupational sector. The polarization in salaries is another example of marketization: The ratio of executive compensation to the pay of the average adjunct instructor bears comparison with that in most top-down corporations. So too have universities, like corporations, gone offshore, cutting costs, spreading assets, and polishing their brands in "emerging markets." The shift in attention and funds toward commercially relevant fields has also been quite pronounced, and the production of a jumbo pool of student debt has made universities into vehicles, if not instruments, for bankers' profits. Some of the most delicious water-cooler tales emphasize how our administrators are adopting managerial techniques from corporate America."

7. State Financial Aid & Ohio Student Financial Literacy http://www.ohiocan.org/RenderMedia.axd?i=po07DIuq0RXS4LHQu5cNriC99n1KNdWkIUy67ciFGDEujWlwuTGYOg--

"According to the Ohio Board of Regents, the average tuition at Ohio public universities rose by 76 percent between 1993 and 2002. At the same time, the average Pell Grant and average Ohio Instructional Grant awards rose by 43 percent and 76 percent, respectively. However, at Ohio’s main university campuses, less than 50 percent of students on each campus receive state financial aid. At these campuses, 57 percent of students, on average, must still borrow federal funds. What is also important to keep in mind in terms of financial aid for students and families is that Ohio per capita income only rose by approximately41 percent during while the average tuition rose almost twofold. With this in mind, it is not surprising that the most recent “Measuring Up” report by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education gave Ohio an “F” in affordability."

53. Proprietary Educational Institutions

For information on the sector of higher education alternatively referred to as "for-profit/private sector/corporate," access data released by the U.S. Education Department on April 6, 2010, at this link from Inside Higher Ed:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/07/enroll

To access the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) report entitled "FOR-PROFIT COLLEGES:
Undercover Testing Finds Colleges Encouraged
Fraud and Engaged in Deceptive and Questionable Marketing Practices," dated August 4, 2010, click the following link:

http://pervegalit.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/gaomarketing.pdf
According to that GAO report, you can watch video clips of applications by undercover investigators and listen to voicemail messages from proprietary educational institution recruiters at this link:

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-948T

To see the annual revenue and number of students enrolled by some of the largest for-profit companies/universities, click this link to an article in The Wall Street Journal, dated August 30, 2010:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703418004575455773289209384.html?mod=WSJ_article_related

To read the article by Stephanie Chen, "For-profit college risk: Huge debt, questionable degree," posted on 9/2/10, at CNN online, click this link:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/09/02/for.profit.college.debt/index.html?hpt=C2