Posts published in April, 2014

Minority Serving Colleges Have A Vital Role

The Center for American Progress released a new report, “Lessons Learned: Implications from Studying Minority-Serving Institutions,” that examines the role of minority-serving institutions, or MSIs, and offers policy solutions to help these vital institutions. Looking at public colleges, universities, and community colleges with single-minority or combination-minority enrollment of more than 25 percent, the report finds that these more affordable higher-education institutions play an important role in helping reduce income inequality and increasing economic opportunity, particularly for low-income students.

As the United States becomes increasingly diverse, so will the nation’s schools. A majority of babies born in the United States today are children of color, and before the end of this decade, more than half of all youth will be of color. These demographic changes mean that colleges and universities are poised to have increasingly diverse student populations, which will result in the number of MSIs growing significantly in the years ahead.

Among the most challenged institutions in a strained higher-education system, MSIs have still played a key role in increasing the college-going rate among recent high school graduates from underrepresented minority groups. While these schools face fiscal challenges from lower tuition rates, support from the federal government helps bridge funding gaps, particularly if the funding is used strategically to elevate student success in various areas, such as course performance, transition to college-level courses, persistence, degree attainment, and transfer from two- to four-year institutions. The federal government has a long history of providing support to MSIs in recognition of the critical role they play and the difficult challenges they face in expanding opportunities and access to higher education for underrepresented groups.

The report details why higher education should be seen as an investment in the public good, as everyone benefits when one of our citizens obtains a college degree or other postsecondary credential. Putting resources into institutions such as MSIs has multiple benefits, including:

• Growing the economy and increasing incomes
• Reducing poverty
• Closing racial and ethnic social gaps
• Strengthening safety net programs such as Social Security

Drawing from a collaborative report from the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, or CARE; the Partnership for Equity in Education through Research, or PEER; and the Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund, or APIASF, “Measuring the Impact of MSI-Funded Programs on Student Success: Findings From the Evaluation of Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions,” the CAP report highlights several key factors to consider to improve results from MSIs:

• Critical funding
• Taking effective practices to scale
• Supporting MSIs in conducting assessments
• Investing in building structures in which innovation and scaling up of effective practices can take place

Minority-serving institutions play a critical role in our nation’s higher-education system. Too often, they have not received appropriate levels of support for the students they serve. To that end, strategic federal investments are needed. The ultimate results of these investments will include a reduction in the income inequality that we have observed for the groups that benefit from enrollment in MSIs.

Read the full report here.

Some Degrees Lead To High Salaries: Some Do Not

Is college worth it? It depends
There is no simple answer to the question “Is college worth it?” Some degrees pay for themselves; others don’t. American schoolkids pondering whether to take on huge student loans are constantly told that college is the gateway to the middle class. The truth is more nuanced. (The Economist) via ECS.

Students Seek Fewer Degrees And More Skills With Labor Market Demand

By Eddie Small: Hechinger Report

A student at Santa Rosa Junior College in Northern California, Floerke, 26 years old, already graduated in 2010 from UCLA, where he majored in archaeology.

This time, however, he’s not after a degree. He’s just trying to master a set of techniques and technologies that will help him verify the details he finds while doing fieldwork.

“I’m really there to learn the program itself and be able to use it in a professional setting,” he said.

Santa Rosa Junior College. (Photo: Santa Rosa Junior College)

Floerke, who leads tours for the National Geographic Society, is part of a group of students known as “skill builders” who are using conventional colleges in an unconventional way: not to get degrees but simply to learn specific kinds of expertise, without spending time or money on courses they don’t think they need.

It’s a trend being driven by the rising price of higher education and a growing emphasis on paying for training in only the most marketable skills.

“They’re looking for employment,” said Keith Bird, chancellor emeritus ofKentucky’s community college systemand a fellow for the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce, a policy group. “And that’s the bottom line.”

The popularity of seeking a higher education with no intention of graduating is a challenge for institutions that are increasingly focused on improving their graduation rates. Still, some institutions are responding by starting up programs for these students and considering creating new kinds of credentials to recognize the combinations of courses they’re taking.

People who enroll in but do not earn degrees from community colleges mainly gravitate toward courses focused on career and technical education, according to a study of students in the California Community College System, which found that these students typically enroll for no more than four semesters and take six or fewer credits per semester.

Skill builders in California are concentrated in construction, real estate, computers, law enforcement, and early childhood education, according to Kathy Booth, co-author of the study. For most of them, the college credits led to wage increases. Students who took courses in information technology, for instance, saw their pay increase by 5 percent, and skill builders at California community colleges overall saw their median salaries go up from $49,800 in 2008-09 to $54,600 in 2011-12, the system reports.

How Colleges Can Improve Part-time Faculty For Better Student Results

A special report from the Center for Community College Student Engagement, Contingent Commitments: Bringing Part-Time Faculty Into Focus.

The report aims to help college leaders more effectively engage part-time faculty so more students have access to the educational experiences and supports they need to succeed in college.

Contingent Commitments: Bringing Part-Time Faculty Into Focus provides data drawn from more than 70,000 faculty responses to the Community College Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (CCFSSE) between 2009 and 2013. Through more than 30 focus groups, the Center also listened systematically to part-time faculty, full-time faculty, administrators, and staff at community colleges across the country.

Download the report:
http://www.ccsse.org/docs/PTF_Special_Report.pdf

Download the news release:
http://www.ccsse.org/docs/PTF_Special_Report_press_release.pdf

Low Income Top Students Lose Ground In High School

This week, the Ed Trust released a report showing that many black and Latino students and students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds who enter high school as top academic performers lose important ground as they progress toward graduation day. These students start secondary school at similar academic levels as their high-achieving white and more advantaged peers, but leave with lower AP exam passage rates, lower SAT/ACT scores, and lower GPAs, leading to different postsecondary outcomes. The data suggest that schools could benefit from thinking deeply about the instructional quality, support, and culture they provide, all of which influence the experiences of high-achieving students.

The report, “Falling out of the Lead,” is the latest in the Shattering Expectations series, which examines the achievement gap at the higher end of the achievement spectrum. To better understand the data, the Ed Trust also interviewed high-achieving, low-income students to hear about their experiences and their advice for schools on how to help top performers maintain their academic standing. Ed Trust also profiles Ohio’s Columbus Alternative High School — a diverse high school where nearly all students graduate and where 4 out of 10 graduates pass their AP exams — to learn how educators there grow the capacities of all students.

Can We Build A College In The Cloud?

SPARKING CREATIVITY BY BUILDING A SCHOOL IN THE CLOUD
TED Talk winner Sugata Mitra says: From Plato to Aurobindo, from Vygotsky to Montessori, centuries of educational thinkers have vigorously debated a central pedagogical question: How do we spark creativity, curiosity, and wonder in children? But those who philosophized pre-Google were prevented from wondering just how the Internet might influence the contemporary answer to this age-old question. Today, we can and must; a generation that has not known a world without vast global and online connectivity demands it of us.

From Carnegie Foundation

Non Tenure Track Faculty: New Book On This Emerging Majority

reviewed by Iván F. Pacheco — For Teachers College Record

Title: Embracing Non-Tenure Track Faculty: Changing Campuses for the New Faculty MajorityAuthor(s): Adrianna KezarPublisher: Routledge, New York
ISBN: 0415891140, Pages: 256, Year: 2012
Search for book at Amazon.com

It is well known that non-tenure track faculty are a majority in most universities and colleges around the United States today, and that the trend is likely to continue.  As Adrianna Kezar, the editor of Embracing Non-Tenure Track Faculty, explains, most college presidents now prefer to hire non-tenure track faculty.  Two-thirds of the faculty across all institutional types and three out of every four new hires are now off the tenure track (pp. x, 30).  Despite these figures, higher education researchers and the literature in general pay very little attention to this phenomenon.

Embracing Non-Tenure Track Faculty tackles that research gap with a set of strategies that seek to include this “new majority” in the day-to-day life of universities and colleges.  Previous works have addressed this problem and recommended policies and practices for institutions to improve the working conditions of adjuncts and contingent faculty (see, for example, Baldwin & Chronister, 2001, and Gappa & Leslie, 1993).  Recommendations include: regularizing hiring procedures, creating a systematic socialization process and mentoring, providing multi-year renewable contracts, and defining promotion and evaluation processes for non-tenure track faculty, among others.  However, the book goes beyond merely suggesting strategies by providing qualitative empirical research about how some of these suggestions have been implemented in various higher education institutions.

The book consists of three parts. Part I presents historical background illustrating why adjunct positions were created and how the use of contingent, adjunct and non-tenure track faculty became so popular. Based on institutionalization theory and drawing on Curry’s (1992) three-stage model of institutionalization, this section provides the conceptual framework that anchors the subsequent chapters in Part II that describe the change process at eight case study institutions. Finally, Part III consists of two chapters that present general conclusions.

Among the contributors to the book are associate professors, an assistant researcher and doctoral candidate, the Director of the New Majority Foundation, a former Associate Provost, and non-tenure track faculty members, most of whom are also members of teacher unions, teacher associations, or belong to their institution’s teachers’ senate.  Such variety provides insight from different perspectives and is a strength of the book.

Although the book is “based on a national study of campuses implementing policies to include non-tenure-track faculty on campus” (p. xv), the case studies in Part II (Chapters Three to Ten), are a somewhat narrow selection.  Half of the cases are concentrated in California and six out of eight cases are unionized institutions.  However, the institutions are diverse in type, ranging from a two-year technical college to public and private research universities.  Perhaps more important than the variety of case studies, the book presents a wide spectrum of situations and stages of contingent faculty institutionalization.  From this broad sampling of conditions and stages, activists and administrators can learn to improve the working conditions for, and make institutions more responsive to the needs and expectations of, adjunct and contingent faculty.

States Crack Down On For Profit Post Secondary

Oversight of for-profit colleges and universities by the U.S. Department of Education has been mired in political quicksand and thwarted by the colleges’ effective lobbying and legal challenges. But now, states and other federal agencies are stepping in and cracking down. Attorneys general across the country are investigating for-profit colleges accused of leaving students with overwhelming loan debt and without marketable job skills. At least 32 states are working together to investigate the schools, and 14 of those have already filed subpoenas for information, while several more are working independently on similar cases. In cooperation with several of these states, the new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—the agency set up after the financial downturn to regulate financial institutions—has sued ITT Education Services for predatory lending practices, the CFPB’s first such lawsuit. The article is from The Hechinger Report.