Group items tagged

" Preview: Obama's 2013 Budget February 13, 2012 - 3:00am By Libby A. Nelson WASHINGTON -- President Obama today will propose spending $8 billion on job training programs at community colleges over the next three years, part of a budget for the 2013 fiscal year that also would increase spending on Education Department programs and some scientific research. The president will outline the job-training proposal in more detail in a speech at Northern Virginia Community College this morning. But unlike past calls to spend more on community colleges, this plan is aimed squarely at an election-year message of "jobs, jobs, jobs" rather than the administration's goal of increasing the number of Americans with college degrees. The proposal, as outlined by Education Department officials Sunday evening, builds on job training programs already in existence -- especially the Trade Act Assistance Community College Career Training Program, which began making grants to community colleges in September. If approved by Congress, the president's proposal would provide $1.3 billion each per year to the Education and Labor Departments, on top of the trade act grants. While it's unclear whether the money would create new federal programs or build up existing ones, the funds would be spent at community colleges that train workers for jobs in high-demand fields, according to materials released by the Education Department. Programs that are especially successful at finding jobs for their graduates, or at placing those who traditionally have difficulty finding work, would be eligible for additional money. The grants would also be used to encourage partnerships between businesses, states, local governments and community colleges, and to create an online course to encourage entrepreneurs. The money would also support paid internships for low-income college students. But the plan would shut out for-profit colleges, which would not be eligible for the additional funds -- a move alm

"When college presidents and other higher education leaders talk about federal policy these days, the most common theme is dismay at proposed new regulations from the Department of Education. But a close second is the inadequacy of data from the Education Department's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) for evaluating anything. "

"Invisible Transfer Students February 28, 2012 - 3:00am By Mitch Smith Enrollment managers have long spoken about the mobility of students, citing the high number of credits transferred in and out of their colleges and grumbling that federal graduation rate calculations fail to account for those transient degree-seekers. Data released today by the National Student Clearinghouse back those assertions, showing that a third of those who were first-time college students in 2006 had attended at least one other institution by summer 2011. The study followed 2.8 million full- and part-time students of all ages at every type of institution. Students were counted as transfers if they enrolled at a second institution before earning a degree. Thus, students who moved to a four-year institution after earning an associate degree were not counted, but university students who took a community college class over the summer were. High school students who enrolled in concurrent enrollment courses were not counted as transfers. The Clearinghouse researchers found that a quarter of those who transferred did so more than once and that the greatest number of moves, 37 percent, took place in a student's second year. It also found that 43 percent of transfers were to public two-year institutions, making them the most common transfer destination for students from every type of institution except other public two-year colleges. This study, unique in including part-time students and in following students who might transfer several times, joins a small but growing body of research on the mobility of students. The findings don't surprise Clifford Adelman, a senior associate with the Institute for Higher Education Policy whose research agenda includes national transfer patterns. Loyalties to a particular institution or location, which can discourage transferring, have long been eroding, Adelman said. He calls the phenomenon "geomobility" and said it has called attention to ineffi

"I met Dorothy Walker in my first year of Shades Valley High School, one of several schools in the Birmingham, Ala., area. Confident of little and terrified of much, I entered the honors section of her 10th-grade English class. Known to us simply as Mrs. Walker, she began by using the prescribed curriculum to shape and mold us as her students. Without my realizing it, she began teaching me a lesson that took me three graduate degrees, 24 years of service in higher education, and countless life experiences to understand: the enormous impact educators can have on their students."

What are Diigo Educator Accounts? These are special premium accounts provided specifically to K-12 & higher-ed educators. Once your Diigo Educator application is approved, your account will be upgraded to have these additional features:

"Good teaching and exposure to students from diverse backgrounds are some of the strongest predictors of whether freshmen return for a second year of college and improve their critical-thinking skills, say two prominent researchers."

"Community colleges, long regarded as the most accessible realm of higher education, are becoming more difficult to access thanks to record enrollments combined with belt-tightening by state legislatures."

The last 40 years have seen dramatic changes in the hours worked at jobs by full-time undergraduates -- with notable increases until 2000, and then a period of relative stability until a sharp drop in 2009, according to research (abstract available here) released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/17/study-explores-increases-and-declines-student-work-hours#ixzz1jjSJWQB8 Inside Higher Ed

"For years, higher education was touted as a safe path to professional and financial success. Easy money, in the form of student loans, flowed to help parents and students finance degrees, with the implication that in the long run, a bachelor's degree was a good bet. Graduates, it has long been argued, would be able to build solid careers that would earn them far more than their high-school educated counterparts."

"The economic and educational disadvantages of low-income black students who struggle to complete college are well-documented. While black students at elite universities don't necessarily fit into that category, a new book says they face social and institutional obstacles of their own - obstacles that ultimately drive them away from the high-status, high-paying jobs that they're qualified for in fields such as engineering, science, finance and information technology. And while the reasons are complex, universities are partly at fault, the book argues."

"The committee charged with designing a new core curriculum for the City University of New York released on Thursday its final recommendations, and faculty leaders quickly faulted both the substance of the proposal and the process used to produce it."

College students work for different reasons. Many take jobs to pay tuition and related educational expenses. Others work to afford electronic gadgets (often ones that we, their professors, don't yet know exist). Regardless of the reasons, many professors and administrators consider students' working during college to be an unfortunate distraction from what should be their primary focus: their academic studies.

"In the U.S. higher education system, students are challenged to declare a major or choose an occupation in their sophomore year in college, sometimes even before starting college. That's an onerous task, especially if done without sufficient self-knowledge or guidance. Perhaps that is why at least 60% of college students change their major at least once before graduating and, on average, students change their major three times during their college career. Many graduate, even begin work, and find that they have made a poor vocational choice. That's discouraging and costly for both students and their parents. Such a situation is less likely to occur at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where career counseling, using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Step II combined with the Strong Interest Inventory, provides students with effective, empowering guidance."

"Community colleges get their few moments in the White House limelight next week when President Barack Obama and the vice president's wife, Jill Biden, convene a community-college summit. It's another step toward giving the institutions, the Rodney Dangerfields of higher education, a bit more of the respect they deserve."

All year long, from every direction, surveys bombard students.

WASHINGTON -- Whether they called them "near-completers" or "ready adults" or "stop-outs," the educators and policy experts gathered here today agreed that people who have earned most but not all of the credits they need for a college degree should receive more attention.

"There are two things Clint McElroy knows about community-college students: A huge number of them don't stay in school. And many of them-who are often the first in their families to go to college, and who must juggle work and parenting-don't understand how to balance all those demands while studying at the college level."

A seven-year project in which dozens of small private colleges used a standardized measure of student learning to gauge and try to improve their performance accomplished many of its goals, increasing the colleges' focus on student learning outcomes and stimulating changes in practices on many campuses, says a report on the effort released today.

Much attention has been directed at college completion rates in the past two years, since President Obama announced his goal that the United States will again lead the world with the highest proportion of college graduates by 2020. The most recent contribution to this dialogue was last month's release of "Time Is the Enemy" by Complete College America.