203. Unstack the Odds--Set at Birth? Part 2

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

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Are the odds being stacked at birth against some kids going to college and graduating?

According to the American Council on Education (ACE), the rates of degree attainment vary widely according to the racial and ethnic category of students. As stated in its Minorities in Higher Education: 2009 Supplement:
“As of 2007, 27.4 percent of young Americans aged 25 to 29 had obtained at least a bachelor’s degree, and an additional 8.1 percent had earned an associate degree. . . . These average rates conceal large disparities among subgroups. Asian Americans aged 25 to 29 are at the top, with 58 percent holding a bachelor’s degree, followed by whites (33 percent), African Americans (17 percent), Hispanics (11 percent) and finally, American Indians (9 percent). These large gaps are unlikely to change without reducing disparities at each transition point in the educational pipeline.” (Mikyung Ryu, Minorities in Higher Education: 2009 Supplement--Twenty-Third Status Report, American Council on Education, September 2009, p. 1.) http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=CAREE&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=34214

Furthermore, a gender gap is also evident in the matriculation data; simply put, women are more likely to enroll in college than are men. And this gender gap varies by racial and ethnic classification. Per the ACE 2009 Supplement, “As with high school completion, gender gaps widened in college enrollment rates. The proportion of young women enrolled in college
increased from 30 percent to 45 percent between 1988 and 2007, an increase twice as large as for young men (30 percent to 37 percent). Of all racial/ethnic groups, African Americans and Hispanics showed the largest gender gap in college enrollment rates.” (Ibid., p. 2.)

As Kevin Carey, policy director of the nonprofit Education Sector, stated in a recent posting, "All in all, this confirms what we already knew: College works well for the kind of student who has been going to college for a long time: white middle- and upper-class children of college graduates who enroll full-time directly after leaving high school." (“College Grad Rates Stay Exactly the Same,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 2, 2010.) http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/college-grad-rates-stay-exactly-the-same/29394)

By contrast, data on underrepresented U.S. students—including those of low income and minorities—continue to demonstrate their difficulty in going to college and in graduating. Indeed, Martin Haberman quoted Loeb (1999) as stating “If you’re in the top economic quarter of the population, your children have a 76% chance of getting through college and graduating by age 24. . . . If you’re in the bottom quarter, however, the figure is 4%.” (“Urban Education: The State of Urban Schooling at the Start of 21st Century,” 7/12/2010.) http://www.educationnews.org/ed_reports/104105.html).

As for minorities, in the state of California among community college matriculants, Joanne Jacobs posted that “only 26% of black students and 22% of Latino students had completed a degree or certificate or transferred after six years, compared to 37% of whites and 35% of Asian Pacific Islanders.” In her view, “Students fail because they're not prepared for college-level reading, writing and math. Many are juggling jobs and family responsibilities too, of course, but college readiness is the make-or-break issue." (“Unready and Unsuccessful,” The Huffington Post, October 29, 2010.) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanne-jacobs/unready-and-unsuccessful_b_775668.html)

Even among matriculants to colleges and universities, a graduation gap exists by race. In a posting on The Hechinger Report, Sarah Butrymowicz pointed out this information:
“But a study released last summer by the Washington D.C.-based Education Trust, which analyzed data from 456 colleges and universities, found a disturbing gap in graduation rates when disaggregated by race. At private institutions, 73.4 percent of white students earned their degrees within six years, while only 54.7 percent of black students and 62.9 percent of Hispanic students made it through the schools they started.” (“Can universities keep the minority students they woo? The Hechinger Report, February 23, 2011.) http://hechingerreport.org/content/can-universities-keep-the-minority-students-they-woo_5239/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HechingerReport+%28Hechinger+Report%29

160. MVCAP fyi: 10 in 2010

While the MVCAP blog resets over the holidays, 10 of the most important articles highlighted in 2010 are featured below.

1. Proficiency of Black Students is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected, by Trip Gabriel -http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html?_r=2&hpw

“What this clearly shows is that black males who are not eligible for free and reduced-price lunch are doing no better than white males who are poor,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the council. The report shows that black boys on average fall behind from their earliest years. Black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate and black children are twice as likely as whites to live in a home where no parent has a job. In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower. In college, black men represented just 5 percent of students in 2008."

2. Black Male Achievement in a 'State of Crisis,' Study Says, by Dakarai Aarons - http://t.co/1wmZtp2 via @educationweek

"As a study this summer by the Schott Foundation for Public Education pointed out, fewer than half of black males graduate from high school on time. "At almost every juncture, the odds are stacked against these young men in ways that result in too much unfulfilled potential and too many fractured lives," writes Michael Casserly, the council's executive director. The council's report suggests that the underperformance of black male youths is nothing short of a national emergency, and it calls for the convening of a White House conference."The previous efforts to ring the alarm bell have too often fallen on deaf ears, and we thought that a White House conference would help both raise the visibility of the issues and aide in attempting to martial the public will to tackle it," Casserly said in an interview."

3. This Raging Fire, by Bob Herbert, The New York Times, November 15, 2010 - http://nyti.ms/9Jjsc2

"The first and most important step would be a major effort to begin knitting the black family back together. There is no way to overstate the myriad risks faced by children whose parents have effectively abandoned them. It’s the family that protects the child against ignorance and physical harm, that offers emotional security and the foundation for a strong sense of self, that enables a child to believe — truly — that wonderful things are possible.
All of that is missing in the lives of too many black children."

4. Urban Education: The State of Urban Schooling at the Start of 21st Century, by Martin Haberman - http://www.educationnews.org/ed_reports/104105.html

"Since 1962 the achievement gap between disadvantaged populations and more affluent ones has widened. At one extreme urban school districts graduate half or fewer of their students. (Arbanas, 2001) At the other extreme 11% of American students are now among the top 10 percent of world achievers. “If you’re in the top economic quarter of the population, your children have a 76% chance of getting through college and graduating by age 24. . . . If you’re in the bottom quarter, however, the figure is 4 %.” (Loeb, 1999) White students’ achievement in reading, math and science ranks 2nd, 7th and 4th when compared with students worldwide. Black and Hispanic students however rank 26, 27th and 27th on these basic skills. (Bracey, 2002)

5. Even with free tuition, hurdles remain for raising number of college graduates, by David Jesse - Hechinger Report: http://t.co/ctzrZe1

"Just 54 percent of the first recipients are either still in college or have graduated, a stark reminder that it will take more than money to achieve the president’s ambitious goal of leading the world in college attainment by 2020. Nationally, getting students through college has long been a challenge: only half of those who start certificate or degree programs at two- and four-year institutions finish within six years, U.S. Education Department data show.

“We took the first hurdle down [not having money for college] and now can see all the hurdles behind it,” said Michelle Miller-Adams, a visiting scholar at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo and author of the first comprehensive study of the initiative."

6. Financial Aid: A Broken Bridge to College Access? by Bridget Terry Long and Erin Riley - http://www.hepg.org/document/19/

"Although there are many barriers to college access and success for low-income and minority students, most can be grouped into three major categories. The first set of major barriers relates to cost. . . . A second major set of barriers to college enrollment and persistence is academic preparation. . . . The third major impediment to higher education for many students, particularly those from low-income families, is the complexity of the college admissions process and financial aid systems, as well as a lack of accurate information about higher education costs. College attendance is the culmination of a series of steps and benchmarks, and this current landscape is too complex and difficult for many families to decipher and navigate."

7. From Access to Success: Funders Guide to More Americans Earning Degrees - http://edfunders.org/downloads/GFEReports/GFE_FromAccessToSuccess_FundersGuide.pdf
"A large proportion of students are underprepared—academically, financially and in terms of their own assumptions and expectations—for college. As a result, only about
57 percent of students who enroll in a bachelor’s degree program graduate within six years, and only one-fifth of students who begin at a community college graduate within three years.
The disparities for students of color and students from lower-income households are even starker."

8. In families, numbers work out, by George Will - http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2010/aug/29/in-families-the-numbers-work-out/?partner=yahoo_feeds#

"Two decades have passed since Barton wrote “America’s Smallest School: The Family.” He has estimated that about 90 percent of the difference in schools’ proficiencies can be explained by five factors: the number of days students are absent from school, the number of hours students spend watching television, the number of pages read for homework, the quantity and quality of reading material in the students’ homes — and, much the most important, the presence of two parents in the home."

9. For-Profit Colleges Change Higher Education's Landscape, by Robin Wilson - http://chronicle.com/article/For-Profit-Colleges-Change/64012/

"Proprietary schools charge a lot more than public colleges—an average of $14,174 this year, compared with $2,544 at public two-year institutions and $7,020 for in-state tuition at public four-year institutions, according to the College Board. But students frequently choose proprietary schools over public colleges because for-profits do so much to limit the hassle of enrolling and applying for aid, and because students can take the classes they need quickly and get on with their lives."

10. Experts Begin to Identify Nonacademic Skills Key to Success, by Sarah D. Sparks - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/12/23/15aera.h30.html?tkn=TOOFSR%2B4810CTp1N9ef4pgxwBLgqJMYV0Ew0&cmp=clp-edweek&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EducationWeekAmericanEducationNewsTopStories+%28Education+Week%3A+Free+Daily+Stories%29 via @educationweek

"Across education and industry, research by Mr. Sackett; Neal Schmitt, a psychology professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing; and others shows the biggest predictor of success is a student’s conscientiousness, as measured by such traits as dependability, perseverance through tasks, and work ethic. Agreeableness, including teamwork, and emotional stability were the next-best predictors of college achievement, followed by variations on extroversion and openness to new experiences, Mr. Sackett found."

• 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


• Follow the most important stories on college admissions and financial aid on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rottenbornj


• For links to articles on college admissions and financial aid, you can "friend" Joe Rottenborn at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=23325544


• "Like" the MVCAP fan page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=23325544#!/pages/Mahoning-Valley-College-Access-Program-MVCAP/284002915922


• You can join the group MVCAP Financial-Aid Friends at this page: http://www.facebook.com/?sk=2361831622#!/group.php?gid=126580419181


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

150. 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. Gunfight at the For-Profit Corral, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/ghlBJV

"The damaging information in the GAO report knocked career college officials back on their heels, giving credence to Democratic politicians' assertions that "bad actors" in the sector needed significantly more regulation, and implying (because the inquiry uncovered problems at all 15 of the colleges visited) that there might actually be a lot of tainted players. The report's release also, not unimportantly to some observers, drove down the companies' stock prices sharply."

2. An Unequal Burden, by Dan Berrett - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/hd06eL

“Divorced or separated parents contributed significantly less than married parents -- in absolute dollars, as a proportion of their income, and as a proportion of their children’s financial need,” Ruth N. López Turley, associate professor of sociology at Rice University, and Matthew Desmond, a junior fellow at Harvard University, say in their article, “Contributions to College Costs by Married, Divorced, and Remarried Parents.”

3. Unconventional Wisdom, by Jack Stripling - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/fzbfFE

"The paper lays out in stark detail one of higher education’s most vexing questions: How is it that a nation can spend more than it did 20 years ago on postsecondary education, admit more students to college, and still have stagnant if not worsening completion rates? Perhaps, the authors argue, it’s because colleges invest in what sounds good instead of figuring out what works well."

4. For-Profit Colleges Cash In On Veterans, by Chris Kirkham - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/09/vets-enrollment-in-forpro_n_794555.html?ir=College

"A report released today by the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has been examining aggressive recruitment practices and high student loan default rates in the burgeoning for-profit education industry over the past several months, shows the share of their revenue coming from veterans has increased fivefold from 2008 to 2010."

5. Public Blames Graduation Rates On College Students: Poll - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/09/public-blames-grad-rates-_n_794255.html

"The AP-Stanford University poll also shows that people mostly blame students and their parents for poor college graduation rates. And they give high marks to all sectors of American higher education including for-profit colleges, despite recent criticism of dubious recruiting tactics, high student loan default rates and other problems at some schools. Asked where the blame lies for graduation rates at public four-year -year colleges, 7 in 10 said students shouldered either a great deal or a lot of it, and 45 percent felt that way about parents. Between about a quarter and a third blamed college administrators, professors, teachers, unions, state education officials and federal education officials."

6. The Highest-Paid College Football Coaches - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/09/the-highest-paid-college-football-coaches_n_794387.html#s202436

"Below, see the 13 highest-paid football coaches based on their total compensation (some coaches are afforded lucrative maximum bonuses, which can increase their salary package by hundreds of thousands of dollars.) Check out USA Today for the full list."

7. Virginia Tech Violated Clery Act In 2007 Mass Shooting, by Dena Potter - http://huff.to/i6f6fn Huffpost

"Virginia Tech's failure to issue timely warnings about the serious and ongoing threat deprived its students and employees of vital, time-sensitive information and denied them the opportunity to take adequate steps to provide for their own safety," the report stated."

8. Poverty affected U.S. PISA scores, by Stephen Krashen - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/research/how-poverty-affected-us-pisa-s.html

"But data available now tells us that poverty, as usual, had a huge impact on PISA reading test scores for American students. American students in schools with less than 10% of students on free and reduced lunch averaged 551, higher than the overall average of any OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] country. Those in schools with 10% to 25% of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch averaged 527, which was behind only Korea and Finland. In contrast, American students in schools with 75% or more of children in poverty averaged 446, second to last among the 34 OECD countries."

9. Key Senator Raises Concerns on Veterans' Benefits to For-Profit Colleges, by Kelly Field -http://chronicle.com/article/Harkin-Questions-Flow-of/125677/

"According to the report, one reason for-profit colleges focus on veterans and service members is because their tuition benefits can count as a nonfederal source of money, helping the colleges remain eligible for other sources of student aid. Over the past five years, veteran and military tuition benefits flowing to 20 of the largest for-profit colleges grew about 700 percent, from $66.6-million in 2006 to a projected $521.2-million in 2010, says the report.
In the conference call, Mr. Harkin said it "makes no sense" that tuition benefits aren't counted toward the federal share of the 90-10 formula."

10. U. of Phoenix Gives Students’ Academic Progress - http://chronicle.com/blogs/measuring/u-of-phoenix-reports-on-students-academic-progress/27584

"In 2009, the proportion of Phoenix students completing an associate degree within three years of enrolling was 23 percent, down from 26 percent the year before. Among bachelor’s degree students, the six-year completion rate was 34 percent, versus 36 percent the previous year."

11. Jonathan Curtiss, Boise State U., as told to Beckie Supiano - http://chronicle.com/article/Say-Something-A-Students/125656/

In this video, hear from a student about his decision--including the role his church played--to leave South Central L.A. to attend Boise State U.

12. Urban Education: The State of Urban Schooling at the Start of 21st Century, by Martin Haberman - http://www.educationnews.org/ed_reports/104105.html

"Since 1962 the achievement gap between disadvantaged populations and more affluent ones has widened. At one extreme urban school districts graduate half or fewer of their students. (Arbanas, 2001) At the other extreme 11% of American students are now among the top 10 percent of world achievers. “If you’re in the top economic quarter of the population, your children have a 76% chance of getting through college and graduating by age 24. . . . If you’re in the bottom quarter, however, the figure is 4 %.” (Loeb, 1999) White students’ achievement in reading, math and science ranks 2nd, 7th and 4th when compared with students worldwide. Black and Hispanic students however rank 26, 27th and 27th on these basic skills. (Bracey, 2002)

13. Half of pupils on free school meals can't read, by Richard Garner - Education News, Education - The Independent http://ind.pn/hDuf6u

"These figures reveal that our education system is letting down half of all 10 and 11-year-old boys who qualify for free school meals," said Schools minister Nick Gibb."

• Follow the most important stories on college admissions and financial aid on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rottenbornj


• For links to articles on college admissions and financial aid, you can "friend" Joe Rottenborn at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=23325544


• "Like" the MVCAP fan page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=23325544#!/pages/Mahoning-Valley-College-Access-Program-MVCAP/284002915922


• You can join the group MVCAP Financial-Aid Friends at this page: http://www.facebook.com/?sk=2361831622#!/group.php?gid=126580419181


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