Posts published in September, 2014

Promising Programs To Reduce Accepted Students From Not Entering College

Programs target crucial summer before college

Posted: 01 Sep 2014 10:00 PM PDT

Summer programs target the phenomenon known as “summer melt,” in which high school seniors who graduate and are accepted to college never show up. Low-income or first-generation college students are the most likely to melt away.

College Is Not The Only Gateway To The Middle Class

BY Robert Reich , Professor Of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. Reprinted from his website

This week, millions of young people head to college and universities, aiming for a four-year liberal arts degree. They assume that degree is the only gateway to the American middle class.

It shouldn’t be.

For one thing, a four-year liberal arts degree is hugely expensive. Too many young people graduate laden with debts that take years if not decades to pay off.

And too many of them can’t find good jobs when they graduate, in any event. So they have to settle for jobs that don’t require four years of college. They end up overqualified for the work they do, and underwhelmed by it.

Others drop out of college because they’re either unprepared or unsuited for a four-year liberal arts curriculum. When they leave, they feel like failures.

We need to open other gateways to the middle class.

Consider, for example, technician jobs. They don’t require a four-year degree. But they do require mastery over a domain of technical knowledge, which can usually be obtained in two years.

Technician jobs are growing in importance. As digital equipment replaces the jobs of routine workers and lower-level professionals, technicians are needed to install, monitor, repair, test, and upgrade all the equipment.

Hospital technicians are needed to monitor ever more complex equipment that now fills medical centers; office technicians, to fix the hardware and software responsible for much of the work that used to be done by secretaries and clerks.

Automobile technicians are in demand to repair the software that now powers our cars; manufacturing technicians, to upgrade the numerically controlled machines and 3-D printers that have replaced assembly lines; laboratory technicians, to install and test complex equipment for measuring results; telecommunications technicians, to install, upgrade, and repair the digital systems linking us to one another.

Technology is changing so fast that knowledge about specifics can quickly become obsolete. That’s why so much of what technicians learn is on the job.

But to be an effective on-the-job learner, technicians need basic knowledge of software and engineering, along the domain where the technology is applied – hospitals, offices, automobiles, manufacturing, laboratories, telecommunications, and so forth.

Yet America isn’t educating the technicians we need. As our aspirations increasingly focus on four-year college degrees, we’ve allowed vocational and technical education to be downgraded and denigrated.

Still, we have a foundation to build on. Community colleges offering two-year degree programs today enroll more than half of all college and university undergraduates. Many students are in full-time jobs, taking courses at night and on weekends. Many are adults.

Community colleges are great bargains. They avoid the fancy amenities four-year liberal arts colleges need in order to lure the children of the middle class.

Even so, community colleges are being systematically starved of funds. On a per-student basis, state legislatures direct most higher-education funding to four-year colleges and universities because that’s what their middle-class constituents want for their kids.

American businesses, for their part, aren’t sufficiently involved in designing community college curricula and hiring their graduates, because their executives are usually the products of four-year liberal arts institutions and don’t know the value of community colleges.

By contrast, Germany provides its students the alternative of a world-class technical education that’s kept the German economy at the forefront of precision manufacturing and applied technology.

The skills taught are based on industry standards, and courses are designed by businesses that need the graduates. So when young Germans get their degrees, jobs are waiting for them.

We shouldn’t replicate the German system in full. It usually requires students and their families to choose a technical track by age 14. “Late bloomers” can’t get back on an academic track.

But we can do far better than we’re doing now. One option: Combine the last year of high school with the first year of community college into a curriculum to train technicians for the new economy.

Affected industries would help design the courses and promise jobs to students who finish successfully. Late bloomers can go on to get their associate degrees and even transfer to four-year liberal arts universities.

This way we’d provide many young people who cannot or don’t want to pursue a four-year degree with the fundamentals they need to succeed, creating another gateway to the middle class.

Too often in modern America, we equate “equal opportunity” with an opportunity to get a four-year liberal arts degree. It should mean an opportunity to learn what’s necessary to get a good job.

http://robertreich.org/post/96377869820

Tuition Rises Quicker Than Student Financial Discounts

State Lottery-Funded Scholarships Are a Gamble

A Gamble with Consequences: State Lottery-Funded Scholarship
Programs as a Strategy for Boosting College Affordability

Several states utilize lottery-funded scholarship programs with a chief objective to improve college affordability. With strong bipartisan legislative support, these programs have grown in popularity and are touted as an ideal means for earmarking revenues to advance state higher education priorities.
This policy brief discusses the evolution of state lottery-funded scholarship programs and provides a critical look at both the benefits and drawbacks in the programs’ design and outcomes. The paper reveals that, when examining these programs through the frameworks of finance, college access and affordability, and issues of politics and philosophy, many unintended and detrimental consequences may arise. The paper includes observations on the recently announced Tennessee Promise scholarship program, and concludes with a set of recommendations for enhancing state lottery-funded scholarship programs aimed at more equitably enhancing college affordability.

Authored by Kati Lebodia, Contributing Policy Analyst, AASCU

California Higher Education Systems Pledge Common Core Support

By Catherine Gewertz

The leaders of the four branches of California’s public and private higher education establishment have proclaimed their support of the Common Core State Standards and Smarter Balanced tests, saying that they are adjusting admission requirements and teacher-preparation programs to line up with the new expectations.

The announcement came in a letter signed by University of California President Janet Napolitano; California State University Chancellor Timothy P. White; Brice W. Harris, the chancellor of California’s community college system; and Kristen F. Soares, the president of the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities.
“We believe California’s implementation of the Common Core standards and aligned assessments has the potential to dramatically improve college readiness and help close the preparation gap that exists for California students,” they said in their Aug. 29 letter to the state board of education.

Education Week

14 Online Resources For Business Administration And Entreprenuership Students

BY Jessica Millis

So you’re attending college to get that business degree and launch yourself into the corporate world. Congratulations! Welcome to the bottom of the barrel, or field, where each crab or otherwise known as student, perpetually claws its way to the top yet rarely ever makes it. “But my focus is in entrepreneurship. I’ll run my own business so that way I’ll be at the top of the food chain,” you say. Any and every one with internet access can run their own business from home.

Here are 14 Online Business Resources for College Students to help you not only land the job you want, or run your startup business to the best of your ability, but also some resources that will help you excel in your business and entrepreneurship courses.

1. Noobpreneur

Noobpreneur, the featured, spotlight here today was voted one of Forbes ‘100 Best Websites for Entrepreneur’ in 2013! Noobpreneur stands for Newbie Entrepreneur, but is best defined as “someone who is not afraid to learn new knowledge and try new things,” right from Founder/CEO Ivan Widajaya’s mouth. The overall aim of Noobpreneur is to offer tips and ideas for small business owners, written by various small business owners and business professionals for small business owners and business professionals.

2. Elite Daily

Elite Daily, ‘The Voice of Generation-Y,’ is a “natural amalgamation of the voices of your millennial peers,” with a mission to dictate a story that will engage its reader and foster a distinctive connection with its readership.  Elite daily is very unique in media publication due to the staff being entirely comprised of millennials. There isn’t any resource quite like Elite Daily that speaks to college students on terms that they can directly relate to and understand.

3. Under30CEO

Under30CEO is the result of two college graduates who put in ungodly hours to turn their basement empire into a five-figure monthly business, and a six figure travel business. They desire nothing more than to provide you with all of the tools and resources that they used so that you can reach the level of success you desire. Instead of being stuck in your mom’s basement, unable to make it in the “real world,” due to your college degree not teaching you what you really need to know or accruing another $100 to $200k in debt for your MBA.

4. Student Competitions

Student Competitions (SC) is an online resource not just for business and entrepreneurship students, but for any student who understands the benefits of student competitions. SC specializes in organizing and marketing global, regional, or local competitions with the sole intended purpose of connecting student talent such as yourself, to “glocal” demand. Winning or competing in student competitions can provide you with the opportunity to travel, network with potential employers and peers, win prizes and most importantly have fun!

5. Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur Media, Inc. is a media publishing company that runs the award winning Entrepreneur website to stand as a resource and provide news about the entrepreneurial world, small business management and business opportunities. Young Entrepreneur is a spinoff from Entrepreneur, and can be found at this web address, which essentially takes you back to entrepreneur.com.
6. Black Enterprise

Black Enterprise focuses on four content channels to help you achieve results. Black Enterprise call “the only yardstick for success that matters,” which include Publishing, Digital, Broadcast and Events. The singular mission of Black Enterprise is to help its readers become full participants in wealth creation within the global economy through education and empowerment.

7. Inc.

Inc.com is the publisher of Inc. magazine, the premier print publication for entrepreneurs and business owners for over 30 years, and the one-stop shop to find everything you need to know to start and grow your business now. In 1982 they started the Inc. 500 to showcase the fastest-growing privately held companies in the United States, then expanded the list to the Inc. 5000 twenty-five years later to provide a more holistic look at the entrepreneurial landscape in the US. Use their wisdom, to grow your business.

8. MarketingProfs

MarketingProfs is trusted by 611,000 professionals globally for their real-world marketing education. You can find training, best practices, research and other content at MarketingProfs, through their Industry Leading Business-to-Business (B2B) Marketing event, 451 different Seminars, 121 Podcasts and over 18,600 articles. Their top topics are usually based on marketing strategies, email marketing, and social media, provided from a union of professors and business professionals who bring together an expertise of publishing, technology, academia and marketing.

9. Open Forum by American Express

Open Forum by American Express is a place where business professionals come to exchange advice and ideas on how to improve products/services, customer relations, tax help, and improve leadership by tackling leadership issues. The driving message behind Open Forum is to help you make smarter decisions. You can start by choosing to use Open Forum as one of your business resources.

10. Small Business Trends

Small Business Trends is another award-winning online publication who prides themselves on being the premier source of information, breaking news and advice covering issues of key importance to small businesses. Business is ever-evolving, so it’s important to stay up with the trends. Do so here with Small Business Trends.

11. Hubspot

Hubspot make their culture code publically available, and have been awarded the Employees’ Choice Best Places to Work award in 2014. Hubspot’s mission and vision is to “make the world more inbound, one business transformation after another.” Inbound marketing, is the proper business terminology for content marketing, by following the process of attracting strangers and turning them into visitors of your website, then converting them into business leads.

12. Social Media Today

Social Media Today is another highly popular independent, online community that is geared towards helping any professional gain a thorough understanding of social media, including but not limited to Public Relations, marketing, and advertising. Social Media Today LLC is focused on not just simply publishing content, but creating community.

13. Small Business Association

Small Business Association offer tools, such as training, local assistance, contracts you can apply for and help creating business plans, amongst their plethora of other services provided to small businesses since July 30th of 1953. Their mission is to help Americans start, build and grow businesses.

14. B2B Marketing Insider

B2B Marketing Insider is led by 20 year marketing veteran Michael Brenner. B2B Marketing insider is dedicated to providing the information necessary to drive the results in business that people care the most about: sales, leads, and customer loyalty. You won’t go wrong, learning from a pro, like Michael Brenner.

Navigate to the site that fits your style the best, and provides you with resources you’ll utilize the most. Save them into your favorites today!

Jessica Millis, aspiring writer and editor. Her dream is to publish her first novel.

Political Origins Of State Performance Funding

Accounting For Higher Education Accountability: Political Origins of State Performance Funding for Higher Education

by Kevin J. Dougherty, Rebecca S. Natow, Rachel Hare Bork, Sosanya M. Jones & Blanca E. Vega
Examination of the political origins of state performance funding for higher education in six states (Florida, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington) and the lack of its development in another two states (California and Nevada).

Teachers College Record

Transforming College Learning: A Book Review

excerpt from review by Edward J. Brantmeier & Emily L. Kohl — August 21, 2014 in Teachers College Review on line

Title: Transforming Students: Fulfilling the Promise of Higher Education
Author(s): Charity Johansson
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore
ISBN: 1421414376, Pages: 128, Year: 2014
Search for book at Amazon.com

Transforming Students unpacks the process of engaging undergraduates in transformative learning, that is, learning which fundamentally changes the way individuals think, perceive their role in the world, and dedicate themselves to a “lifetime of purposeful action” (p. 79). This kind of deep learning aligns with visionary university mission statements. So what is the measure of a successful college career? How does an institution of higher learning ensure its students are emerging as dynamic thinkers and agents of transformative change? These are the sorts of questions Johansson and Felten explore in this engaging little text. Drawing from student interviews and the success of various educational programs around the country, they present six essential elements that must be present for transformative learning to take place. Overall, these experts make an impressive evidence-based argument for more intentional engagement at an institutional level. The reader, whether a university faculty member, administrator, staff, or even student, is challenged to become cognizant of his or her own role in fostering a campus-wide environment conducive to transformative learning.

The book provides a solid introduction to transformative learning without overwhelming those unfamiliar with the literature on engagement theory and high impact educational practices.  Essentially, each chapter explores a key component to promoting transformative learning across campus beginning with disruption, reflection, action, and integration. In this accessible read that moves with great speed, each chapter builds upon the next in a logical and narrative way—quite engaging and effortless to read.

In the first chapter, Johansson & Felten emphasize the importance of creating a welcoming, safe environment for new students that still manages to promote change and growth. While seemingly paradoxical, they find successful campuses are those that balance a sense of home with a healthy dose of inviting challenge—a blend of the familiar and foreign. Students engage with varied opportunities for self-exploration while ensuring they know they can retreat to more familiar territory if need be—this is the groundwork for breakthrough, transformative learning. Moving between one’s comfort zone and zone of disruption is an integral part of the journey of transformation.