college – Page 3

December 4, 2013December 4, 2013

Adjuncts are organizing

A movement catching on across American campuses where adjunct faculty members, the working poor of academia, are turning to collective action.

Only a quarter of the academic work force is tenured, or on track for tenure, down from more than a third in 1995, reports today’s New York

Times. ” The majority hold contingent jobs — mostly part-time adjuncts but also graduate assistants and full-time lecturers. And the Service Employees International Union, with members in health care, maintenance and public service, is moving hard and fast to add the adjuncts to their roster, organizing at private colleges in several urban areas.

“In Washington, it has unionized American University, Georgetown, George Washington and Montgomery College. In the Los Angeles area, adjuncts at Whittier College and the University of La Verne just filed with the National Labor Relations Board for a union election. In Boston, Tufts University’s part-time faculty voted to join the service employees’ union in September, and an October vote at Bentley University failed by two votes. Campaigns are underway at Northeastern and Lesley.

“The S.E.I.U. strategy has the momentum right now,” said Adrianna Kezar, director of the University of Southern California’s Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success. “And we know that unionizing leads to pay increases and at least the beginnings of benefits.” Continue reading “Adjuncts are organizing”

December 2, 2013December 2, 2013

Gender diversity growing at colleges

The weekly meetings of Mouthing Off!, a group for students at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, always start the same way, reports a story in today’s Sacramento Bee.

“Members take turns going around the room saying their names and the personal pronouns they want others to use when referring to them — she, he or something else.

“It’s an exercise that might seem superfluous given that Mills, a small and leafy liberal arts school historically referred to as the Vassar of the West, only admits women as undergraduates. Yet increasingly, the “shes” and “hers” that dominate the introductions are keeping third-person company with “they,” “ze” and other neutral alternatives meant to convey a more generous notion of gender.

“Because I go to an all-women’s college, a lot of people are like, ‘If you don’t identify as a woman, how did you get in?'” said sophomore Skylar Crownover, 19, who is president of Mouthing Off! and prefers to be mentioned as a singular they, but also answers to he. “I just tell them the application asks you to mark your sex and I did. It didn’t ask me for my gender.”

“On high school and college campuses and in certain political and social media circles, the growing visibility of a small, but semantically committed cadre of young people who, like Crownover, self-identify as “genderqueer” — neither male nor female but an androgynous hybrid or rejection of both — is challenging anew the limits of Western comprehension and the English language. Continue reading “Gender diversity growing at colleges”

November 22, 2013November 22, 2013

Worries about fed college rating system

As Education Department officials fan out across the country to hear feedback on the administration’s proposed college rating system, the associations that represent colleges are starting to stake out firmer stances against some parts of the plan, reports InsideHigherEd

“After offering a relatively restrained response early on, higher education associations are beginning to more clearly articulate their concerns about the administration’s ratings plan, even

though it’s still not clear what such a ratings system will look like. President Obama in August proposed that colleges be rated based on metrics measuring their affordability, accessibility to low-income students, and student outcomes. The administration plans to publish those college ratings by the 2015 academic year and eventually persuade Congress to allocate federal student aid based on how institutions perform.

“The department holds the last of its four public hearings Thursday at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. But officials have been meeting privately with student advocates, college presidents and other stakeholders.

“The leaders of private nonprofit colleges gathered in here last week, in part, to map out their response to the proposed ratings system and meet with department officials.

“David Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said the college presidents on his board were in agreement in principle with the administration’s goals but took exception to a federal ratings system. Continue reading “Worries about fed college rating system”

November 17, 2013

Community college students and later attrition

Community college students face long odds of eventually earning a bachelor’s degree. And those odds get worse if they leave college more than once along the way, reports Inside Higher Ed

“That is the central finding of a new study that tracked the progress of 38,000 community college students in Texas. Toby J. Park, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at Florida State University, conducted the research. His working paper was presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education in St. Louis.

“The group of students he studied first enrolled in 2000. Among them, fully 94 percent “stopped out” of college at least once, by experiencing a “period of non-enrollment.”

“Most of the students returned to their studies, according to the paper, which is titled “Stop-Out and Time for Work: An Analysis of Degree Trajectories for Community College Students.” More than 20,000, or 72 percent, of the cohort came back to some Texas college in the sample, which used data from the Texas Education Agency, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the state’s comptroller.

“Even students who eventually earned a bachelor’s degree were likely to spend time away from college. Only 13 percent of the 6,200 four-year degree-holders in the sample did not stop out.

“However, the study found that 76 percent of those degree completers took only one break from college. After stopping out after a second time, the percentage of returning students completing a bachelor’s degree decreases substantially.

“If you leave twice,” Park said, “you’re not going to come back.” Continue reading “Community college students and later attrition”

November 11, 2013November 11, 2013

On instructional autonomy

Individual professors largely retain the right to choose what they teach and how, even when they’re teaching sections of the same course as other professors. That’s the American Association of University Professors’ take on individual vs. collective responsibility for course design, as laid out in its new statement on the matter, reports InsidehigherEd.

“The freedom to teach includes the right of the faculty to select the materials, determine the approach to the subject, make the assignments, and assess student academic performance in teaching activities for which faculty members are individually responsible, without having their decisions subject to the veto of a department chair, dean, or other administrative officer,” reads AAUP’s “The Freedom to Teach.”

“It continues: “In a multisection course taught by several faculty members, responsibility is often shared among the instructors for identifying the texts to be assigned to students. Common course syllabi and examinations are also typical but should not be imposed by departmental or administrative fiat.” Essentially, beyond the shared choice of textbook among professors teaching the same course, which may make logistical sense, other pedagogical freedoms remain “undiluted,” AAUP says. Greg Scholtz, director of academic freedom, tenure and governance for AAUP, said no particular incident or institution prompted the statement. Rather, who decides who teaches what was something the organization had been meaning to address, in the same statement, for some time. Previously, different parts had appeared in various AAUP documents — but there is one notable change. The new statement includes entirely new language saying such principles “apply equally” to all faculty — including adjunct faculty, who often feel that course materials are “imposed” on them, Scholtz said.

“The statement comes at a time that technology makes it possible for multisection courses to get quite large, and when an increasing number of instructors may not be teaching such courses in structures that designate someone as the lead professor. Don Eron, a full-time, non-tenure-track professor writing at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is part of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which drafted the statement. In his opinion, he said via email, individual vs. collective responsibility for course design is the “probably the central academic freedom issue” confronting adjuncts — particularly for those teaching core courses, which are more likely to be subject to administrative calls for standardization across sections.”

November 4, 2013November 4, 2013

Fed college rating system due in Spring

Unsatisfied by the college ratings generated by popular news magazines, the Obama administration expects to have a first draft of its college rating system by this spring, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said. As InsideHigherEd reports:

“After soliciting public input at town hall discussions and hearings at college campuses across the country this fall, the department will convene a “technical symposium” early next year to discuss ratings methodology before releasing a preliminary version for public comment at some point in the spring, Duncan said. The administration’s goal is to implement the ratings system in the 2014-15 academic year and eventually persuade Congress to link federal student aid funding to the ratings system.

“It is an ambitious timeframe,” Duncan conceded on a call with reporters on Wednesday, in which he again emphasized that the administration has not yet decided on the metrics that will make up the federal college rating system that the president proposed in August. “We’ve seen some articles [about] people who are already opposed to the ratings plan, which is a little bit funny to me because it literally doesn’t exist,” he said. Many college and university leaders — and the associations that represent them in Washington — have been skeptical, if not critical, of measuring student outcomes based on metrics such as earnings and graduation rates. Some have also decried the availability and quality of data needed to carry out a ratings system.

“Data is always imperfect and we will use the best data we have,” Duncan said, adding that the administration would produce new iterations of the metrics “as better data becomes available.” Education Department officials also said Wednesday that they planned to host, in collaboration with the White House, a “datapalooza” in the early spring that will bring together innovators and app designers to look at better ways to package and provide access to existing federal data on colleges and students, such as the government’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, known as IPEDS. Continue reading “Fed college rating system due in Spring”

November 3, 2013

Raised by robots?

A growing number of select colleges have turned to off-kilter questions like this one, from Brandeis University: “You are required to spend the next year of your life in either the past or the future. What year would you travel to and why?” As the New York times today reports, “this year’s most-discussed question, from Tufts University, was about the meaning of “YOLO,” an acronym for “you only live once,” popularized by the rapper Drake.

“And even those are tame compared with some choices from the last few years, like “If you could choose to be raised by robots, dinosaurs or aliens, who would you pick?” (Brandeis), or “What does Play-Doh have to do with Plato?” (Chicago).

“For the colleges, such questions set them apart, though the applications invariably give a choice of subjects, including some that are closer to traditional. And at a time when some elite colleges worry that high school students are more likely to be high achievers than independent thinkers, oddball essay questions offer a way to determine which of the A-student, high-test-score, multi-extracurricular applicants can also show a spark of originality. Most elite colleges use the Common Application, which contains fairly standard essay questions, and require their own supplemental applications, with more writing exercises.

“In the day of the Common App, there’s such a sense of sameness in applying to the different schools, so we’re trying to communicate what’s distinctive about us and determine what’s distinctive about our applicants,” said Andrew Flagel, the senior vice president for students and enrollment at Brandeis. A quirky essay subject can seem like a burden to students who, already stressed out by the application process, find that being diligent and brilliant is not enough — that colleges also want them to be whimsical and creative. Teenagers pepper social media with complaints about the questions, though they do not want to be interviewed, for fear of alienating their colleges of choice. But others embrace the chance to express themselves, seeing it as a welcome relief from the ordinary applications. Continue reading “Raised by robots?”

October 28, 2013October 28, 2013

Ranking colleges by value

President Obama began promoting a plan in August to rate colleges on their value and affordability and to tie those ratings to the $150 billion in financial aid that the federal government supplies each year.

Should Mr. Obama’s plan come to pass, value would not just be a selling point for colleges, it would be a matter of life and death. But there is no agreement on how to measure the value of a college, and there is no agreement, or anything even close, on what value is in the first place, opines The New York Times:

“It’s a quest for the holy grail,” said Judith Scott-Clayton, a professor of economics and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “It sounds good, it sounds like something we’d love to know, to be able to rank the value of these institutions, but when it comes down to practicalities, it’s very, very difficult.”

“U.S. News and World Report, whose academic rankings have long been derided — and obsessively followed — by college presidents, now publishes “best value” lists as well. Princeton Review, which has advised decades of prospective students on the best party schools, more recently began listing the best value schools, too. Forbes Magazine got in the is-it-worth-the-money game too, as did, among others, The Wall Street Journal, The Alumni Factor, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and Payscale, a company that gathers data about the job market.

“Some of these analyses approach value as largely a function of cost: How much is tuition? What subsidies are available? Others define it as return on investment: How much do graduates earn? Some factor in student satisfaction or academic ranking or graduation rates or economic diversity, all in varying quantities. These widely divergent definitions produce wildly divergent results. Continue reading “Ranking colleges by value”

October 25, 2013

Public university costs leveling off

Tuition and fees at public universities increased less than 3 percent this academic year, the smallest rise in three decades, according to the annual College Board reports on trends in pricing and aid, reports the New York Times today.

“This does not mean that college is suddenly more affordable, but it does mean that the rapid growth of recent years did not represent a ‘new normal’ for annual price increases,” the report on pricing said.

“At the same time, the large increases in grant aid from 2009 to 2011 have slowed and have not kept pace with rising tuition. As a result, the amount students and families actually pay has risen as well. The average published annual tuition and fees for in-state students at public universities total $8,893, up 2.9 percent from last year. But most of these students pay far less: When grants and deductions of tax credits are taken into account, the net amount students pay is about $3,120.

“Only about a third of full-time students pay the full published tuition price with no assistance. And most students from families with income below $30,000 got enough aid to cover their tuition and fees, although they still have costs for room and board, which adds $9,498.

“The news is not as bad as it has been,” said Sandra Baum, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and lead author of the reports. The new data, she said, should calm fears that college costs are spiraling out of reach: “It does seem that the spiral is moderating. Not turning around, not ending, but moderating.” For out-of-state students, tuition and fees averaged $22,203, a 3.1 percent increase from last year. And at private four-year institutions, the average published tuition and fees are $30,094, up 3.8 percent from the year before.

“College prices have risen faster than the prices of other goods and services in recent years, even as family incomes have declined. And the economic recovery has benefited mostly those in the highest income brackets. Jane Wellman, a higher-education policy analyst, said the trend reports showed that many public institutions have made serious efforts to rein in their spending — especially community colleges, whose spending has declined sharply over the last decade. Continue reading “Public university costs leveling off”

October 18, 2013October 18, 2013

College women drinking

Yesterday, Slate writer Emily Yoffe published a story on the importance of teaching college women that binge drinking raises their risk of being raped. It was a story your mom probably would have approved of—prescriptive, groaningly fuddy-duddyish (“it’s possible to have fun without being drunk”), with the cadences of a health education video, writes Emily Matchar in today’s edition of The Atlantic:

“But the basic point seemed to me indisputably sensible: College-aged women should be taught that moderating their alcohol use is an important tool in staying safe from sexual assault. In this age of beer pong and Jäger bombs, when 64 percent of college women drink more than the recommended weekly amount, this seems well worth repeating.

“The Internet, apparently, did not agree. Within hours of publication, the story was generating furious responses. The popular blog Feministing called the piece a “rape denialism manifesto,” and accused Yoffe of “blaming women for their own rapes.” Salon called the piece “rape apologia,” and said Yoffe was helping promote “rape culture.” Writer Jessica Valenti tweeted, “I hope Emily Yoffe can sleep well tonight knowing she made the world a little bit safer for rapists.” These responses are distressing. The link between drinking and the risk of sexual assault is indisputable. And teaching women this fact should be seen as empowering, not victim-blaming.

“As Yoffe wrote, sexual assault is horrifyingly common on college campuses. A full 20 percent of college women will be sexually assaulted before graduation (men are not immune either; 1 in 10 rape victims are male). Eighty percent of the time, alcohol will be involved. “Most sexual assaults occurred after women voluntarily consumed alcohol,” reported a study in theAmerican Journal of College Health. Another study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs showed that colleges with the most drinking had the highest rates of sexual assault. Continue reading “College women drinking”

September 29, 2013September 30, 2013

Not ready for college

The average SAT scores for the high school class of 2013 remained stagnant from the previous year and fewer than half of the students who graduated were prepared for the rigors of college, officials said.

Average SAT scores for high school seniors nationwide stayed steady in reading, math and writing, according to a report released last week by the College Board, the New York-based nonprofit that administers the SAT and Advanced Placement program.

imgres-3 The combined average SAT score of 1498 was the same as last year; a perfect score on the three-section test is 2400. In California, the combined average score of 1505 dropped two points from last year and 12 points from 2010. Perhaps more telling, only 48% of test takers reached the “SAT Benchmark” — a score of 1550 that indicates a 65% likelihood that students will obtain a first-year college grade-point average of B- or higher, according to the College Board. Students who reach that threshold are more likely to enroll in a four-year school and complete their degree, the College Board said. There was, however, the highest representation of minorities among test takers in history.

“In 2013, 46% of those who took the test were minorities, up from 40% in 2009. African American, American Indian and Latino students made up 30% of test takers, up from 27% in 2009. In California, 57% of graduating seniors — 234,767 students — took the exam, the highest number ever for the state. Nationwide, participation has dipped slightly since 2011 for the SAT. Meanwhile, a rival college entrance exam, the ACT, has seen a steady rise in participation since 2003. About 54% of graduating seniors nationwide took the ACT, up from about 40% in 2003. In California, 26% of graduates took the exam, up from 15% in 2003, according to ACT officials.”

More at: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-sat-scores-20130929,0,2158987.story?track=rss

September 12, 2013

Why students cheat

Academic dishonesty is not on the rise, James M. Lang argues, despite periodic media flurries suggesting otherwise in the wake of various high-profile cheating scandals. InsideHigher Ed review’s Lang’s newest book, reporting

“Data on cheating are typically self-reported, and may not be fully reliable, but there is no real reason to think that today’s college students are any less honest than their predecessors.

“Still, evidence indicates that most students cheat at least once over the course of their college careers — a fact that may be most concerning, Lang writes, because it means that many classes are failing to help students really learn.

“In his new book, Cheating Lessons: Learning From Academic Dishonesty (Harvard University Press), Lang reviews research on both academic dishonesty and human learning to build a case that the most effective instructional strategies to minimize cheating are the same ones that will best help students to understand and retain the course material. When students are able to grasp the subject matter, Lang believes, they have little motivation to cheat.

“Lang — who is associate professor of English and director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Assumption College, as well as a longtime columnist for The Chronicle of Higher Education — answered e-mailed questions about his new book, offering advice for both faculty members and administrators on how they can reduce cheating and, better yet, help students get the most out of their classes.

“Q: How would you summarize the relationship between student learning and academic honesty (or dishonesty)? What do you think might explain this relationship?

“A: Cheating is an inappropriate response to a learning environment that’s not working for the student. Both sides of that sentence are important. It’s inappropriate, which means that we have to hold the student accountable for the dishonest action, and ensure that we maintain high standards of academic integrity. But it’s equally true that something in that learning environment doesn’t seem to be working for that student. He might see the course as a curricular requirement that means nothing to him; he might be confused by the assignment or see it as busywork; he might see himself as not having the knowledge or skills he needs to complete the assignment. Continue reading “Why students cheat”

September 10, 2013September 10, 2013

Let us now praise the non-tenured

While many higher education experts — and parents — bemoan the fact that tenured professors are a shrinking presence,now making up less than a quarter of the academic work force, a study released Monday found, surprisingly, that students in introductory classes learned more from outside instructors than from tenured or tenure-track professors, reports today’s New York Times

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“Students taught by untenured faculty were more likely to take a second course in the discipline and more likely to earn a better grade in the next course than those whose first course was taught by a tenured or tenure-track instructor, the report said.

“The study, released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, is based on data from more than 15,000 students who arrived at Northwestern University from 2001 to 2008.

“According to the authors — David N. Figlio, director of Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research; Morton O. Schapiro, the university’s president; and Kevin B. Soter, a consultant — there was “strong and consistent evidence that Northwestern faculty outside of the tenure system outperform tenure track/tenured professors in introductory undergraduate classrooms.” The differences were present across a wide variety of subject areas, the study found, and were especially pronounced for average and less-qualified students.

“Our results provide evidence that the rise of full-time designated teachers at U.S. colleges and universities may be less of a cause for alarm than some people think, and indeed, may actually be educationally beneficial,” the report said. The fact that the study included only one university — and a selective, private research university at that — left its general applicability open to question. And, skeptics point out, there are many reasons a student might take a second class in a discipline apart from the teaching skills of the previous instructor. “I’m kind of dubious,” said Anita Levy, a senior program officer at the American Association of University Professors. “I’m not surprised that introductory classes might be better taught by contingent faculty members simply because most tenured faculty more often teach advanced courses. Continue reading “Let us now praise the non-tenured”

September 8, 2013

High school and the college gender gap

Recent research has suggested various ways in which girls outperform boys in high school, making them more likely to go to college: stronger desire to get good grades, better social skills, greater validation from academic performance.

But as Inside Higher Ed reports, “A new study suggests gender sorting — a boy’s or girl’s decision to attend one school or another – could have its own effect on the college enrollment gap.

“In a study of public school systems in Florida, researchers found that what high school a student attends is “strongly associated” with college enrollment; girls are attending high schools that have higher rates of college-going than one would expect based on the students’ test scores – and boys, vice versa.

“Over all, the high school that boys and girls attended accounts for 10.9 percent of the gender gap in college enrollment – in other words, 11 percent of the approximately 7-percentage-point nationwide gender gap in colleges is attributable to the high school attended — but the figure is significantly higher for black (15.8 percent) and Hispanic students (12.2 percent) than it is for white students (5.2 percent).

“While the paper does not make a causal link – it’s not clear whether the high schools themselves are causing the gaps – if it is the high schools having this effect on the students, one would conclude that equal gender distribution across high schools would close the college gender gap by 11 percent.

“Either girls are choosing to attend high schools that are going to advantage them by making them more likely to go to college, or girls are simply attracted to high schools whose students have higher college-going rates — even if the school does not cause this outcome — while boys are attracted to other features of high schools,” such as facilities or the characteristics of the school’s students, said Mark C. Long, co-author of the paper published in Educational Researcher and associate professor of public affairs at the University of Washington.

“The sample includes nearly 537,000 students who enrolled in a Florida public high school between 2002-6 and graduated within four years. While not every student has the ability to choose which high school to attend — say, private, traditional public, or charter — there is often some element of choice involved, either by the student selecting from a group of residential schools or a parent opting to live in a certain neighborhood.”

August 2, 2013August 2, 2013

University racial inequality grows

The nation’s system of higher education is growing more racially polarized even as it attracts more minorities:

White students increasingly are clustering at selective institutions, while blacks and Hispanics mostly are attending open-access and community colleges, according to a new report discussed in the Washington Pos. “The paths offer widely disparate opportunities and are leading to widely disparate outcomes, said the report released Wednesday by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

“Students at the nation’s top 468 colleges are the beneficiaries of much more spending — anywhere from two to five times as much as what is spent on instruction at community colleges or other schools without admissions requirements. And students at top schools are far more likely to graduate than students at other institutions, even when they are equally prepared, according to the report. In addition, graduates of top schools are far more likely than others to go on to graduate school.

“The financial implications of those differences are huge: A worker with an advanced degree is expected to earn as much as $2.1 million more in his or her lifetime than a college dropout, the report said. Also, the report said graduates of selective colleges earn an average of $67,000 a year 10 years after graduation, about $18,000 a year more than their counterparts who graduate from non-selective schools.“The American postsecondary system increasingly has become a dual system of racially separate pathways, even as overall minority access to the postsecondary system has grown dramatically,” said Jeff Strohl, the Georgetown center’s director of research, who co-authored the report. Continue reading

July 31, 2013

College student poverty

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 29 percent of students nationwide have household incomes below $20,000, 79 percent work full or part time in addition to taking classes, and 35 percent are parents or have dependents (17 percent are single parents). ThinkProgress reports that “These financial burdens can constrain college students’ potential. Many are forced to drop out of school, creating a vicious cycle of poverty because without education, it is increasingly difficult to emerge out of poverty and enter the middle class.

“Overall, more college students are having to work long hours to finance their educations. The American Community Survey found that in 2011, 19.6 of undergraduates nationwide worked a full-time, year-round job. By contrast, in 2005, just under 10 percent of college students were working full time.

“The Census paper also notes that 63.3 percent of college students live with their parents or relatives, suggesting that the sluggish economy is making it difficult for students to attend college further from home and live on their ownPoverty rates in many areas of the country decline significantly when they exclude off-campus college students living on their own, a new Census Bureau working paper finds.The Census Bureau calculated that 15.2 percent of the population officially lives in poverty. But for college students living off-campus and not living with relatives, the poverty rate is 51.8 percent. When eliminating them from the official poverty rate calculation, only 14.5 percent of Americans live below the poverty level.College students who live in dorms are automatically eliminated from calculations of the poverty rate, but students living off-campus are not, so the Census Bureau isolated data for these students recorded by the American Community Survey from 2009 to 2011. Continue reading “College student poverty”

July 27, 2013

College enrollments drop

College enrollment fell 2 percent in 2012-13, the first significant decline since the 1990s, but nearly all of that drop hit for-profit and community colleges; now, signs point to 2013-14 being the year when traditional four-year, nonprofit colleges begin a contraction that will last for several years, reports the New York Times today. “The college-age population is dropping after more than a decade of sharp growth, and many adults who opted out of a forbidding job market and went back to school during the recession have been drawn back to work by the economic recovery.

“Hardest hit are likely to be colleges that do not rank among the wealthiest or most prestigious, and are heavily dependent on tuition revenue, raising questions about their financial health — even their survival.

“There are many institutions that are on the margin, economically, and are very concerned about keeping their doors open if they can’t hit their enrollment numbers,” said David A. Hawkins, the director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, which has more than 1,000 member colleges.

“The most competitive colleges remain unaffected, but gaining admission to middle-tier institutions will most likely get easier.

“Colleges fear that their high prices and the concern over rising student debt are turning people away, and on Wednesday, President Obama again challenged them to rein in tuition increases. Colleges have resorted to deeper discounts and accelerated degree programs. In all, the four-year residential college experience as a presumed rite of passage for middle-class students is coming under scrutiny.”

More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/education/in-a-recovering-economy-a-decline-in-college-enrollment.html?

July 23, 2013July 23, 2013

Humanities career choices and gender

There’s no shortage of explanations for the so-called crisis in the humanities, and more have come to light since the publication of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ recent “Heart of the Matter” report on the topic. A Recent article in Inside Higher Ed reports on a new study on gender and choices of courses of study, academic majors, and implicit career aspirations

The finding is “that the humanities drain is more about women’s equality than a devaluation of the humanities – is gaining particular interest from longtime advocates of the humanities, as well as some criticism.

“Ben Schmidt, a visiting graduate fellow at the Cultural Observatory at Harvard University, argues that the decline in humanities majors since their 1970 peak can be attributed nearly entirely to the changing majors of women.

“Based on data compiled for the academy’s Humanities Indicators Project, he wrote, “I think it’s safe to say that [the] ostensible reason for the long-term collapse in humanities enrollment has to do with the increasing choice of women to enter more pre-professional majors like business, communications, and social work in the aftermath of a) the opening of the workplace and b) universal coeducation suddenly making those degrees relevant.”

“He continued: “You’d have to be pretty tone-deaf to point to their ability to make that choice as a sign of cultural malaise.”

“Looking at the often-cited drop in humanities majors from 14 percent of all degrees granted some 40 years ago to 7 percent today as a whole, commentators such as David Brooks have attributed it to a disconnect with the current pedagogy. Others say that college students are increasingly career-oriented and so are rejecting degrees that don’t promise a job upon graduation.” Continue reading “Humanities career choices and gender”

July 16, 2013

Another reason for smoke-free campuses

Approximately 18.9 percent of young adults in the U.S. between the ages of 18-24 smoke.

And as documented by the 2012 U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, almost no one starts smoking after age 25. Progression from occasional to daily smoking frequently occurs during the first years following high school.

Hence, an article appearing today on the website of the U.S. Department of Education, argues: “Tobacco prevention and cessation efforts should include young adults, making college and university campuses a critical target.

“College and university campuses offer unique opportunities for promoting social norms that support healthy living and lifestyle choices. The Tobacco-Free College Campus Initiative, a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the University of Michigan and the American College Health Association, encourages the voluntary adoption of tobacco-free policies at institutions of higher learning across the nation. These policies not only support the many people on college campuses who are trying to quit but also dissuade young adults from starting.

“Institutions of higher learning around the country are increasingly adopting new policies that reinforce their longstanding commitments to student health while strengthening and protecting their communities against tobacco addiction. When the initiative launched in September 2012, 774 colleges and universities were tobacco- or smoke-free, according to the Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. Today more than 1,159 university and college campuses have implemented tobacco- or smoke-free policies, reflecting exponential growth.

All are welcome to participate in the Tobacco-Free College Campus Initiative – university and college leaders, administrators, faculty members, students and student groups. For more information or to get started, please visit www.tobaccofreecampus.org.”

More at: http://www.ed.gov/blog/2013/07/tobacco-free-college-campuses/

June 29, 2013

The price of knowledge

The Education Department has updated its annual list of the country’s most expensive colleges (by net price and by list price), and, as always, this year’s list contains familiar names. The below story excerpt comes from today’s Inside Higher ed about the report:

“Columbia University narrowly edged out Sarah Lawrence College — a perpetual contender on the list, and one that has defended its high tuition — for the most expensive tuition list price, at $45,290 in the 2011-12 academic year. Among four-year public colleges, the University of Pittsburgh surpassed Pennsylvania State University for the most expensive list price, at $16,132. And the most expensive net price (based on what students actually pay after financial aid) was the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, at $42,882, on a list dominated by colleges specializing in music and visual arts. These figures do not include room and board, books, or various fees, which at the most expensive private colleges can push a full year’s sticker price above $60,000.

“The lists, posted on the Education Department’s College Affordability and Transparency Center, are a sort of “hall of shame” intended to force colleges to be more transparent about both their list prices and the prices students pay after financial aid. The center offers nine lists in all, breaking colleges down by sector and differentiating between net price (the price students pay after grants) and sticker price.

“They debuted in 2011, required by the 2008 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. In the past, they’ve been greeted with some fanfare: press conferences from the Education Department touting increased transparency and objections from the named colleges about the lists’ flaws. Last year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan seized on the release of the list as an opportunity to criticize states for yanking support to higher education.

“Colleges have criticized the lists, arguing that they oversimplify — many factors are driving tuition increases, including shrinking state budgets at public institutions.

“But the lists’ power appears to be fading, released with less fanfare and greeted with less media coverage than in the past. A Columbia University spokesman said the institution had received few media requests about their position on the list.

“In response to the lists, Columbia pointed to its generous financial aid policies. ”A conversation about college costs must also include a conversation about financial aid and net price,” Robert Hornsby, assistant vice president for media relations, said in a statement. “As a result of our full-need financial aid program, Columbia has continued to attract among the most socioeconomically diverse student bodies among peer institutions. The university takes pride in its continued commitment to ensuring that students can attend Columbia regardless of their family’s financial circumstances.”