378. 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. Duncan Calls for Urgency in Lowering College Costs, by Tamar Lewin: http://nyti.ms/thZSu2 - “Three in four Americans now say that college is too expensive for most people to afford,” Mr. Duncan said. “That belief is even stronger among young adults — three-fourths of whom believe that graduates today have more debt than they can manage.” College seniors with loans now graduate with an average debt load of more than $25,000."

3. Committee on Measures of Student Success issues final report, by Libby A. Nelson Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/sOdSKW via AddThis -"One of the recommendations, if endorsed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, would create a combined “graduation and transfer” rate that includes students who graduate from a two-year college as well as those who do not graduate but do go on to a four-year institution. That move would be a victory for community colleges, who have argued that counting only those students who earn degrees makes community colleges appear less successful than they really are."

4. 10 job market trends college grads need to know, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-57332329/10-job-market-trends-college-grads-need-to-know/?tag=mncol;lst;8 - "Hiring of college graduates is expected to increase 4 percent across all degree levels, according to a survey of more than 3,300 employers. The survey, which is the largest of its kind, has been conducted annually for 41 years by Michigan State University. . . . Hiring will be strong for college majors such as computer science, accounting, agriculture sciences and agriculture business. Other in-demand degrees will include communications, public relations, marketing, finance and economics."

5. Experts Say Social Sciences Are 'Left Behind,' by Sarah D. Sparks - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/11/30/13social.h31.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW via @educationweek - "Researchers at an NRC forum on social sciences in Washington this month suggested that the expansion of testing in math and reading under the No Child Left Behind Act has led to a piecemeal approach to social and behavioral science subjects in the states. . . . “No Child Left Behind frankly left us behind, and the common core gave us a footnote,” said S.G. Grant, the education dean at Binghamton University in Binghamton, N.Y. The discussion caps a year of dismal news on the social studies front for U.S. students: National Assessment of Educational Progress reports out this year found mostly mediocre performance for students in geography, civics, and history."

6. Learning the Language: New Study on Hispanic Achievement Paints Stark Picture, by Lesli Maxwell - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2011/11/new_study_on_hispanic_achievem.html via @educationweek - "When it comes to "readiness to learn," Hispanic children face several disadvantages compared with their white peers. Thirty-three percent of Hispanic children in 2008 lived in families where no parent had full-time employment compared with 21 percent of white children. And in 2007, 27 percent of Hispanic children lived in poverty compared with 10 percent of white children. Those factors and others translate to Hispanic children being less likely than their white or black peers to recognize letters of the alphabet, knowing how to write their name, or being able to count to 20 or higher."

7. THE SOCIAL & EDUCATIONAL FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE OUTCOMES OF HISPANICS IN URBAN SCHOOLS- http://www.cgcs.org/cms/lib/DC00001581/Centricity/Domain/4/HispanicStudy2011.pdf -"Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) analyzed for this report show that Hispanic fourth graders read and do math at substantially lower levels than students with greater advantages and students who speak English. The situation is compounded by the fact that large numbers of Hispanic students live below the poverty line, do not have health insurance nor access to pre-school services, are unlikely to have a parent who has graduated from high school, are among the working poor, and face constant suspicions about whether they are in the country legally."

8. Surge in Free School Lunches Reflects Economic Crisis, by Sam Dillon: http://nyti.ms/tmx5jh - "The number of students receiving subsidized lunches rose to 21 million last school year from 18 million in 2006-7, a 17 percent increase, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from the Department of Agriculture, which administers the meals program."

9. ‘Broader, bolder’ strategy to ending poverty’s influence on education, by Pedro Noguera - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/broader-bolder-strategy-to-ending-povertys-influence-on-education/2011/11/29/gIQAtTvaAO_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via Washingtonpost.com - "Over 50 years, numerous studies have documented how poverty and related social conditions — such as lack of access to health care, early childhood education and stable housing — affect child development and student achievement. The research never suggests that poor children are incapable of learning or that poverty itself should be regarded as a learning disability. Rather, research suggests that poor children encounter obstacles that often adversely affect their development and learning outcomes."

10. Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer’s salary: $4 million, by Jenna Johnson - Campus Overload - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/campus-overload/post/ohio-state-football-coach-urban-meyers-salary-4-million/2011/11/29/gIQAup9K9N_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost.com - "Meyer will earn three times more than Ohio State President E. Gordan Gee, the nation’s highest paid university president. On most campuses, coaches top the payroll. And despite the economy, budget cuts and increasing tuition, coach salaries continue to climb."

11. Kevin Carey: The Dissenter The New Republic: http://bit.ly/tyVhGG via AddThis" -"Improbably, at the end of a four-decade-long career as the nation’s most prominent education historian and a vocal advocate for education reform, Ravitch has emerged as reform’s fiercest critic. Her about-face has made her more famous and influential than she has ever been. Now, pundits, scholars, philanthropists, and education leaders are all asking the same question: What happened to Diane Ravitch?"

359. 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. Average student loan debt tops $25,000, by Blake Ellis - http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/03/pf/student_loan_debt/ via CNNMoney.com - "College seniors who took out loans to fund their college education owed an average of $25,250, 5% more than the class of 2009 owed, according to a report from the Institute for College Access & Success' Project on Student Debt."

3. U.S.-born children take fight over tuition to court, by Alan Gomez – http://usat.ly/uj42II via @USATODAY - "Now a Florida lawsuit is highlighting a rare practice of forbidding U.S.-born students — citizens by birth — from getting in-state tuition because their parents are illegal immigrants. Five students, all born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents, sued the state last month for denying them in-state tuition rates even though they'd lived in Florida, graduated from state high schools and were entering state colleges and universities."

4. American Students Gaze Across the Atlantic and See College, by Rebecca R. Ruiz: http://nyti.ms/tcSYKl - "At a time when more international students are choosing to study in the United States, a separate phenomenon is on the rise: that of American students choosing to spend their entire college experience abroad. Some international institutions have noted American students’ increased willingness to travel farther from home, which has prompted the schools to bolster their outreach efforts."

5. Report Finds Colleges Fail to Disclose Information, by Libby A. Nelson Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/uHHnRt via AddThis - "Three years after the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which included new disclosure requirements for institutions, the majority of colleges are failing to provide public information on graduation rates for low-income students, and many do not adequately disclose other required information, according to a study published today by Education Sector and the American Enterprise Institute."

6. Essay: Focus student success efforts on what happens in the classroom, by Vincent Tinto Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/uHOQca via AddThis - "It is one thing to hold high expectations; it is another to provide the support students need to achieve them. At no time is support, in particular academic support, more important than during the critical first year of college when student success is still so much in question and still malleable to institutional intervention."

7. NAEP Scores Flat, Sun Rises Again, by Robert Slavin - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/sputnik/2011/11/naep_scores_flat_sun_rises_again.html - "Recent research from Don Hernandez shows that for students not reading on grade level by 3rd grade, one in six did not graduate from high school on time. This rate is four times greater than that for proficient readers. If this doesn't sound an alarm, I don't know what will. Reading well is a fundamental necessity for learning in all other subjects from math to history, even art. Children who are not reading on grade level simply cannot reach their full potential in any other subject. Economically, this leads to immeasurable loss in untapped potential of our future workforce."

8. College Graduates’ Debt Burden Grew, Yet Again, in 2010, by Tamar Lewin - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/education/average-student-loan-debt-grew-by-5-percent-in-2010.html?_r=1&hpw - “Student debt goes up and it doesn’t ever go down,” said Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of Finaid.org and Fastweb.com, two Web sites that offer advice on paying for college. “We’re clearly heading in the direction of decreased college affordability. Among lower-income students, the canaries in the cage that squawk first, we’re already seeing a decline in enrollment in four-year colleges and an increase in lower-cost two-year institutions,” he said. Mr. Kantrowitz estimated that for the class of 2011, average debt was $27,200 — or, if parent loans were included, $34,000."

9. Is community college the best value in academia? by Daniel de Vise - College, Inc. -http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/is-community-college-the-best-value-in-academia/2011/11/03/gIQA9xabiM_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost -"Have you considered community college as a pathway to a four-year degree?"

10. Grab college major or lose career, by Jay Mathews - Class Struggle - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/grab-college-major-or-lose-career/2011/11/02/gIQARHF5gM_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "Using a sample of 62,218 first-time community college students in Washington state, researchers Davis Jenkins and Madeline Joy Weiss noted that students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, on average less likely to graduate, were also “less likely than higher SES students to enter a concentration, which we define as taking and passing at least three courses in a single field of study.”They were slowed by remedial courses, but even when they had a chance to pick majors, they weren’t quick and often did not see what choices would help them get jobs. The only majors with good career prospects that low-income students chose in large numbers were in nursing and other health fields."

326. 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. Character Transcripts: Application Components of the Future? by Rebecca R. Ruiz - http://nyti.ms/n8kEKR - "Wouldn’t it be cool, he mused, if each student graduated from school with not only a G.P.A. but also a C.P.A., for character-point average? If you were a college-admissions director … wouldn’t you like to know which ones scored highest in grit or optimism or zest?"

2. What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? by Paul Tough: http://nyti.ms/q3WWSC - "People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure."

3. Why We Need For-Profit Colleges, by Joe Nocera: http://nyti.ms/rjHwDU - "All of this obscures what really ought to be the most important fact about the industry: the country can’t afford to put it out of business. On the contrary, America needs it — and needs it to succeed — desperately."

4. How to Stop the Drop in Verbal Scores, by E. D. Hirsch Jr. - http://nyti.ms/peVpj0" - This is very worrisome, because the best single measure of the overall quality of our primary and secondary schools is the average verbal score of 17-year-olds. This score correlates with the ability to learn new things readily, to communicate with others and to hold down a job. It also predicts future income."

5. Hechinger Report Tips for succeeding in your first year of college, by Justin Snider: http://bit.ly/rh3C95 via AddThis - "A little preparation in the summer before school and soon after your arrival on campus can set you on the path to success. Before you start college:"

6. What the Lost Decade of Wages Means for Colleges and Their Graduates, by Jeffrey Selingo - http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2011/09/18/what-the-lost-decade-on-wages-means-for-colleges-and-their-graduates/ - "First for students, the report underscored yet again the lifetime economic benefits of getting a college degree. The poverty rate for Americans in their 20s with a college degree in 2010 was 8 percent, compared to 23 percent for those in the same age group with just a high-school diploma (the poverty line was set at $22,314 for a family of four in 2010). While the poverty rate for those in their 20s with a bachelor’s degree has increased by two percentage points since 2002, it jumped by six points for those with a high-school diploma during the same time period."

7. The Effect of Liquid Housing Wealth on College Enrollment, by Michael F. Lovenheim - http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1086/660775 - "I find that households used their housing wealth to finance postsecondary enrollment in the 2000s when housing wealth was most liquid; each $10,000 in home equity raises college enrollment by 0.7 of a percentage point on average."

8. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ today's top stories about college access and success, via @rottenbornj ▸ http://paper.li/rottenbornj