Posts published in November, 2011

Website Helps Students Transfer Between Colleges

  One of most complex parts of college completion is the complex, confusing, and multiple barriers to transfering credits and satisfying requirements for majors. Often transfer agreements only pertain to a specific community college and a specific four year college major. Julia Murphy has compiled websites that will help students understand and navigate the transfer process.

   Murphy posted ( http://onlineuniversityrankings.org/2011/25-incredible-sites-to-learn-how-to-transfer-college-credits/ ). It’s called 25 Incredible Sites to Learn How to Transfer College Credits

No Difference In Earnings Between A Bachelors Or Technical Degree?

Guet Blogger: Sander Daniels

Today we released new data showing that service professionals with a bachelor’s degree earn no more than those with a technical college degree.

 We were really surprised when we saw this data – the graphs in our report should illustrate the findings pretty well.

We surveyed 12,000 entrepreneurs listed on our site. These are carpenters, wedding photographers, Hindi tutors, and all other kinds of local service professionals nationwide.

 As expected, the average hourly rate earned by these individuals rises with increasing educational achievement – except that those with an undergraduate degree earn exactly the same amount as those with just a technical college degree.

We’ve also included our estimates of the minimum amount spent by the current service sector workforce on undergraduate degrees potentially worth no more than technical college degrees.

8 Private Colleges Collect A Billion Dollars In Veterans’ Education Benefits

Eight for-profit
colleges collected a combined $1.02-billion in veterans’ education benefits
last year, about 23% of all of those benefits disbursed, according to a U.S.
Senate report. For those eight colleges, that’s a 159% increase
from the previous year. The report is part of an investigation of for-profit
higher-education companies by a Senate committee

California Community College Task Force Recommends Overhaul Of Enrollment And Student Services

A taskforce reporting
to the California Community Colleges’ Board of Governors has recommended
measures that will be a “move toward rationing access to community colleges,”
encouraging students to “take more responsibility for their education” and
community colleges to “prioritize the types of classes being offered.”

latimes.com

Colleges Need To Give High Schools Feedback On College Readiness

Anne Hyslop :Education Sector

Today, there is a growing agreement that students should leave high school “college- and career-ready.” But what does that mean? And how can high schools tell if they are meeting the goal? Data That Matters: Giving High Schools Useful Feedback on Grads’ Outcomes offers new research on states’ efforts to use career and college outcomes data.

First, the paper makes an important distinction between indicators of college readiness and actual evidence of readiness. High school data should include both. Indicators of college readiness are things that are measured while students are in high school, such as ACT or SAT scores, completion of AP or International Baccalaureate programs, completion of dual enrollment courses, graduation rates, and the like. These indicators are the ones most often reported as measures of college readiness because they are generally controlled by high schools and don’t require linking to postsecondary data. Evidence of college readiness, on the other hand, is taken from data collected after the student has left secondary education; it covers things like college enrollment, remediation, and persistence into a second year of college.

While states are getting better at collecting this vital information, they are not yet using the information in ways that could materially improve college preparation. Although 44 states report having systems with the potential to produce outcomes data from post-secondary, only 8 (Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wyoming) have taken the next step to provide high schools with feedback that allows them to make meaningful interventions.

Hyslop identifies four characteristics—the 4Ts—of the most successful college readiness reports. They must be:

• Transparent. When data is open and accessible, Hyslop says, “school officials can use it to build internal pressure, and parents, legislators, and others can use it to generate external pressure on high schools to improve.”
• Thorough. Reports should include multiple measures from all high schools in the state, and from all graduating classes.
• Timely. Information needs to be received quickly enough for schools to make needed changes.
• Tailored. “The more user-friendly the data is, the more likely it is to be tapped to improve instruction,” Hyslop points out.

Finally, career-related outcomes are even harder to track. Only 10 states report participation in career or technical education on their high school feedback reports—even though participation does not directly capture career readiness. High schools can get more meaningful and measurable information by collecting data on completion of vocational training, participation in apprenticeship programs, military enlistment, attainment of professional licenses or certifications, and future earnings by occupation. But only 10 states publicly report any of these outcomes at the school level, and just half of them report the outcomes directly on high school feedback reports.

Future Of Postsecondary Is Mobile And In Clouds

Speakers at the recent EduCause conference, an event dedicated to “the intelligent use of information technology” in education, put a spotlight on mobile, social, and cloud-based learning technologies. These offerings address the desire for “convenience, affordability, 24/7 access, and flexibility” that is driving the 21% growth in online post-secondary enrollment.
forbes.com

Students As Customers Policy Shows Promise

Treating students as “valued customers” helps to improves outcomes
A new report from the Center For American Progress outlines a process for “service blueprinting” in higher education, a process that will facilitate collaboration between key university administrators in order to create a “customer experience” for students that meets their needs for flexible schedules, offers marketable skills, and helps them complete their degrees quickly and cost-effectively.  
americanprogress.org

CUNY Provides Analysis Of Effective College Remediation

The Opposing Forces that Shape Developmental Education: Assessment, Placement, and Progression at CUNY Community Colleges
The developmental education process, as it is typically implemented in colleges across the country, seems straightforward: underprepared students are assessed and placed into an appropriate developmental course sequence designed to prepare them for college-level work; once finished with the sequence, these students presumably then move on to success in college. Analyses of student progression through developmental education reveal, however, that this seemingly straightforward process is rife with complexity and confusion, and results in poor outcomes for the majority of developmental students.

Report Finds Colleges Fail To Disclose Vital Information

Recognizing that higher education is a market driven by consumer choice and reluctant to regulate college behavior directly, state and federal policymakers have created a host of college information disclosure and reporting requirements. Armed with better data, the theory goes, students and parents will vote with their wallets, putting pressure on low-performing colleges to improve while avoiding direct government intervention.
The problem, according to Education Sector’s Kevin Carey and Andrew P. Kelly, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is that the reporting requirement provisions are not working nearly as well as intended. In The Truth Behind Higher Education Disclosure Laws, Carey and Kelly investigate scores of four-year colleges and universities to gauge their compliance with the information requirements of the Higher Education Opportunity Act.

The researchers examined five areas of strong interest to policymakers and the general public:

• Pell Grant graduation rates;
• Credit transfer and articulation agreements;
• Employment and graduate school placement;
• Textbook prices; and
• Private student loans.

Researchers  first looked at each school’s website for the elements of the disclosure provisions. For those elements that were not publicly available, researchers contacted the colleges via phone or email.

Carey and Kelly found that compliance rates vary widely.  There is nearly universal compliance on the requirement that schools post their credit transfer criteria (99 percent). But just 25 percent of institutions meet the requirement that schools disclose the six-year graduation rate for students who receive a Pell Grant.

The authors propose policy solutions to some of the biggest issues raised by their survey. Then they ask the broader question: is it enough to provide students and parents with information? “Clearly, information matters,” the authors say. “But mere availability isn’t enough.” They go on to outline a number of recommendations that will both increase transparency and also make it easier for students and families to act on the information.

Read TheTruth Behind Higher Education Disclosure Laws.

Education Sector is an independent think tank that challenges conventional thinking in education policy.

An Overview Of Progress For Hispanic College Completion

One year later, education leaders and philanthropists take stock of movement to improve Latino college completion
By Hispanic-Today
65 national partner organizations reconvene to chart future course of initiative to make America world leader in college degrees by focusing on Latinos. WASHINGTON, October 21, 2011 — One year ago, 50 national organizations came together under the leadership of Excellence in Education to embark on a groundbreaking collaboration to make America the world leader in college degrees by specifically focusing on Latinos. That initiative, Ensuring America’s Future by Increasing Latino College Completion, has since grown to include additional partners, whose engagement has given federal, state, institutional, and community leaders specific tools and information to accelerate degree attainment among Latinos.