Posts published in March, 2015
Gates Foundation Provides Ambitious and Costly Agenda
Gates Foundation pushes next phase of its agenda
After spending roughly half a billion dollars on the college completion agenda, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is ready to be more assertive about what it thinks should happen in four key areas of higher education policy. A new document lays out the focus areas: data and information, finance and financial aid, college readiness, and innovation and scale. (Inside Higher Ed, March 11 )
5 Tips for Improving Your Online Presence for Students
By Melissa Burns
Such things as social networks, personal blogs and websites, accounts on forums and suchlike are no longer your personal business – as recruiters grow more and more tech-savvy the importance of having widespread and professional-looking online presence gets more and more important for every student who thinks about his or her future employment. Online presence can make favorable impression on a potential employer even before he ever sees you. Let’s take a look at how it is done.
1. Establish Accounts in Multiple Places
If your online identity is limited to Facebook, you should reconsider it. It is not a professional network, and if you have an account here and not, let’s say, LinkedIn, it shows that you pay more attention to personal matters than to professional ones. So, think about other social media where you should promote your name. The aforementioned LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr and Behance immediately come to mind.
2. Create a Hub and Interconnect Your Accounts
All your accounts in social media, personal websites and blogs (if you have them) should be carefully interconnected and be consistent enough so that will make it obvious that all of them belong to one and the same person. There should also be a website to serve as a kind of hub – you can give a link to it when you apply for a job so that your potential employer can easily find it. About.me is a good choice – it was created specifically for this purpose, it is widely known and is used by people coming from all walks of life, not only students looking for future employments, but also CEOs, senior partners in firms and well-known businessmen and specialists, like, for example, Doctor Shahram Shirkhani.
3. Google Your Name
It is the first thing a potential employer will do. See what they are going to see. If it is lackluster, do your best to improve it. If there is something outright negative – take it down. You may have forgotten that drunken selfie you’ve posted three years ago, but Google remembers everything. According to Microsoft survey, 79% of employers in the USA check Internet identities of applicants to their jobs, and 70% admit that they refused people jobs based on what they’ve found. And we don’t just mean naked photos, drunken antics and suchlike. Jokes, silly gifs, offensive language – everything that an employer may find inconsistent with an image of their employee is a bad idea to have around.
4. Keep Your Online Presence Consistent with Your Profession
Some social media are more suitable for certain jobs, some are less. If you are a designer, photographer or artist, accounts on Pinterest or Flickr will do just nicely. If you are a lawyer… not very much so. These specialized websites may be used to host not just pretty pictures, but your portfolio – it is much easier to direct people to a well-known website than send it via e-mail or use a website of your own on a free hosting.
5. Start a Blog
Naturally, it should have something to do with your preferred field of work, which means that it should not be an outlet for your rants on personal matters – if you want to write something like this, by all means, do it, but separately from your professional blog and under a pseudonym.
Online presence can do you both a world of good and a world of hurt, depending on how you approach it. Play your cards right, and even without any experience, fresh out of college you will produce a good enough impression for even a large company to consider hiring you.
Author’s bio:
Melissa Burns graduated from the faculty of Journalism of Iowa State University in 2008. Nowadays she
is an entrepreneur and independent journalist. Her sphere of interests includes startups, inf
Colleges Slow To Adapt To Common Core
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But this is the first year of new Common Core Assessments, and I expect the pace of change to pick up after this.
Rising College Costs And How Students Can Cope And Adjust
By David Martin
If you have been enrolled in college consecutively for a couple years you may have noticed tuition has gone up each year. It is not just at your institution either. On the surface it may not be apparent as to why tuition has been increasing. It would seem that the increase would warrant some kind of benefit for students, if a University is charging more, the programs and facilities should be better too then right? While this would seem to the true, it is not the case.
- Tuition has risen on average by 28% across the United States since 2007 and many institutions have had to cut programs.
- About 53% of the revenue public colleges use come from the state. But since the recession began back in 2007 states have cut a lot of funding.
- The majority have reduced spending per-student on average of 25%, some states have reduced funding by more than 40% when compared to pre-recession levels of funding.
So in order to compensate for the loss in revenue universities have no choice but to raise tuition and on top of that cut programs. While it may seem like a greedy move to raise tuition, many universities are struggling to maintain the programs they currently have.
There is a trend that shows state revenue has returned to pre-recession levels and some states are funding more per-student than last year. The amounts the states are funding are on the rise but unfortunately it is still nowhere near enough to compensate for the loss of funding caused by the recession. On average states have increased funding per-student by $449. Considering there has been a loss of over $2000 per-student since 2007 it is a step in the right direction but state funding still has a long way to go in order to make up the years of budget cuts.
While the burden to make up the funding has been placed on the educational institutions it has also placed a large burden on low income families. Not only have they been hit the hardest from the recession, they now need to help students provide for the increased program fees and tuition increases. In order to help with the rising costs students should take advantage of as many grants and scholarships they can. In addition to scholarships there are many potential ways to save money while going to college.
Not only has tuition been increasing but the cost of textbooks have increased as well. Many universities have textbook exchanges located very close to campus. Taking advantage of these shops may save you a lot of money during your academic career. Other options can include checking campus bulletin boards for people trying to sell their books from classes they have already taken. If you are still having trouble finding books for less than new price you can usually find them on amazon as well.
As difficult as it may be to work and go to school full time you can be able to enroll in work study programs. These will typically have you working on campus in exchange for extra financial aid. Another option is an internship and many programs will offer these, they may be highly competitive but in exchange for your time you will learn special skills relevant to your field and most likely they will also satisfy some of the credit requirements for your degree.
The importance of applying for scholarships and grants cannot be stressed enough. Especially now as tuition increases have no real signs of slowing down. Perhaps in a few years after state funding has increased we may see a drop in tuition. Unfortunately that is not the case at this point in time so being able to achieve the scholarships and grants will undoubtedly alleviate some of the financial burden families will face. Options for federal loans are always a choice as well, but those will have to be paid back with interest.
While the amount of debt that can be accumulated through federal loans may seem overwhelming there are options depending on the job field you get into after graduation. Most jobs in the medical field will receive federal loan forgiveness, especially if you are working in rural or impoverished neighborhoods. Federal loan forgiveness may also be available for educators working in these places as well. If your specialization isn’t focused in the medical field or teaching, there are organizations such as AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps that also offer loan forgiveness to those who volunteer.
Besides finding ways to make the financial burden less of an issue something equally important is to work on your own skills to help you be productive. All the funding in the world won’t help unless you are able to put yourself in the right state of mind for academic study. Being able to prioritize yourself will save so much time. Having some kind of calendar or notebook to write important dates for when assignments are due or for upcoming tests will allow you to plan your study time more efficiently.
Learning to work well in groups is a very important skill to acquire. While we may think we know the best way to accomplish something, and in some cases we do, we should never ignore the input of others. This is especially true on group oriented projects which you will come across plenty during your academic career. This is a skill that will prove very valuable after graduation as well.
Many of you may go on to hold management positions and knowing how to take on projects using the strengths of all the members involved will result in increased productivity and increasing the well being of the team by showing them that their input and expertise really matter to you and the other members.
I hope by the end of this article you will have more understanding of the current environment of the academic world and why it is becoming more and more expensive to be a part of it. I also hope that the other topics will have given some insight and how to approach being successful while going to college. It is a big investment of time and money so you may as well give yourself the best chance you can.
David Martin studied Music Composition at Boise State University. He enjoys the outdoors, playing music, and oddly enough doing research. He currently spends his time creating compositions and writing.
America’s Millennials: Overeducated and unprepared
The late Don Meredith, beloved color commentator from the glory days of Monday Night Football, liked to break into song when a game hit garbage time, or a big play put the game out of reach. “Turn out the lights!” he would sing in his folksy Texas twang, channeling Willie Nelson. “The party’s over!” Dandy Don’s voice was ringing in my ears as I read a new report from the Educational Testing Service (ETS), America’s Skills Challenge: Millennials and the Future. The publication dares to ask out loud how much longer we can thrive as a nation when a vast segment of our society—Americans between sixteen and thirty-four who will be in the workforce for up to fifty more years—“lack the skills required for higher-level employment and meaningful engagement in our democracy.” Seldom have I read a more depressing report.
“Despite having the highest levels of educational attainment of any previous American generation,” writes ETS’s Center for Global Assessment Director Irwin S. Kirch in the report’s preface, “these young adults on average demonstrate relatively weak skills in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology rich environments compared to their international peers.”
In literacy, U.S. millennials outscore only their peers in Italy and Spain among the twenty-two countries in the report. In numeracy, they rank last. Our best-educated millennials—those with a master’s or research degree—are outperformed by the same cohort in every nation other than Ireland, Poland, and Spain. And it’s true no matter how you slice it: Our best-performing compared to their best-performing; our wealthiest vs. their wealthiest; our native-born next to their native-born; our immigrants against theirs. The gap between our own best and worst educated, just for bad measure, is the widest it’s ever been and among the most imbalanced of the countries surveyed.
Most troubling is that our faith in more years of schooling, degrees, credentials, and certificates to produce better outcomes is vividly shown to be misplaced. More time in school is not producing Americans with more or better skills. The people who will work, earn, support families, create jobs, make policy, take leadership positions, and be entrusted generally with protecting, defending, and continuing our democracy are less prepared to do so than any generation in American history.
One of the comforting lies we have told ourselves in recent years is that, while we might have problems, our top performers are still the equal of the best in the world. Alas, the score for U.S. millennials at our ninetieth percentile was statistically higher than the best in just a single country: Spain.
So much for that.
“The comparatively low skill level of U.S. millennials,” write report authors Madeline J. Goodman, Anita M. Sands, and Richard J. Coley, “is likely to test our international competitiveness over the coming decades. If our future rests in part on the skills of this cohort—as these individuals represent the workforce, parents, educators, and our political bedrock—then that future looks bleak.” Uh huh.
I was sitting in a coffee shop as I read and reviewed this report on a snowy New York City afternoon. Overwhelmed, dispirited, eager for distraction, I allowed myself to be dragged briefly into a Twitter “debate” about education reform that instantly devolved into familiar rants about who is or is not qualified to set standards or policy, who’s funding whom, and who stands to make a buck. It was impotent rage: tired, bitter, and utterly pointless. A little like players pushing and shoving during garbage time in a meaningless late-season game. Meanwhile the ETS report at my elbow pitilessly reported what looks more and more like it might stand as the final score.
Somewhere, Dandy Don shakes his head and clears his throat.
10 Year Study Shows Community College Student Engagement Is Rising
COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT TRENDS UP AUSTIN, TX – The Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) was created in 2001 to provide colleges with information about student engagement and to guide efforts in improving student learning and retention. The Center for Community College Student Engagement released a report today, Engagement Rising: A Decade of CCSSE Data Shows Improvements Across the Board, which highlights trends in over ten years of CCSSE data. From 2004-2014, for every engagement item, positive responses increased or stayed constant for all students. Student demographics have remained relatively stable during this time period, so the rise in engagement is not likely the result of who is attending college, but instead the result of intentional change in policy and practice at colleges across the country. The CCSSE data used in the report analysis were collected from nearly two million student respondents across almost 900 community colleges. Engagement Rising highlights the areas in which engagement has increased the most, paying special attention to full- and part-time students and non-developmental and developmental students. Among the data highlighted in the report are these findings: The percentage of part-time students who reported making a class presentation rose seven percentage points, and the percentage of full-time students who reported coming to class unprepared dropped ten percentage points.
Both developmental and non-developmental students reported discussing their career plans with an instructor or advisor more frequently over the last decade, and both groups also reported working with instructors on out-of-class activities more often. All four student groups reported that the amount of financial support their college offered had increased quite a bit, with part-time students reporting a 12 percentage point increase. Findings in the report indicate that when colleges use data to inform policy and practice, student behavior changes and engagement improves. According to Center Director Evelyn Waiwaiole, “Colleges can design the student experience to require actions that improve engagement. In 2004, 38% of full-time students said they never skipped class; by 2014, that had changed to 50%. That’s not accidental.” The Center is a research and service initiative of the Program in Higher Education Leadership in the College of Education at The University of Texas at Austin. – 30- Engagement Rising: A Decade of CCSSE Data Shows Improvements Across the Board is available online at www.ccsse.org/docs/Engagement_Rising.pdf.
5 Ways to Earn an Extra Buck without Taking a Break from Studies
By Melissa Burns
Even if your parents support you while you are at college, learning to fend for yourself and make money on your own as early as possible is always a good idea. And if you have to pay for your education in part or in its entirety, finding ways to do so turns into an issue of life and death. However, working while you are at college requires a lot of effort and self-discipline. But, as they say, when given lemons, make lemonade – why not turn your student status from a liability to an asset? There are dozens of creative ways to make money without straying too far away from scholarly activities.
1. Grant Hunting
There are lots and lots of grants and scholarships that can considerably ease your financial burden; there may be less of them than it used to be, but still. Some students think that you can only get a scholarship when you apply for college – it is not true. There are grants for senior years, for students occupied in certain activities, for students in specific positions – all you need is to find them and be eligible. There are even apps like Scholly that are specifically aimed at finding scholarships.
2. Tutoring
If your main goal of staying in college is to gain knowledge (we hope so), then you have probably heard that the best way to learn something is to teach somebody else. And it is true – when you explain a difficult point to somebody who doesn’t understand it, you improve your own understanding of it. If you don’t charge as a professional tutor students will be more likely to come to you – after all, you understand them and their situation better than anybody else, being a student yourself. Moreover – in some cases you can do it with the approval of your college and get officially paid for it – usually for tutoring other students in classes you’ve already passed.
3. Join an Essay Writing Service
As a student, you are likely to write essays at least from time to time – more or less often depending on your subject. If you are reasonably good at it, why not use it to an advantage? You can offer your services to an essay writing service and get paid for very same activity you have to do for free at college. And it doesn’t just help you pay the bills – by writing some additional essays you will be able to hone your writing skills and do better at college later on; in other words, it is a win-win situation.
4. Proofreading
If your writing and editing skills are good enough, you may try your hand at proofreading the essays of your fellow students for an affordable fee. This, again, helps to improve your own writing skills (you get to see how others write their essays, what mistakes they make, what they do better and what worse than you) while allowing you to have a modest, but still an income. International students should get a special notion – their grasp of English may be rather tentative, which means that they are more likely to look for proofreading services and pay higher for them.
5. Grading
If you think that professors really grade all the tests, papers and homework of their students, learn this: they usually work together with graders, i.e. students, sometimes their teaching assistants, sometimes not, who do most of the work. This job is generally paid $7.50-$10 per hour, depending on the college and course, and allows you to earn a little extra without leaving your school.
As you see, there are a lot more opportunities for improving your financial situation as a student than waiting tables. Do a little research and you will be able to kill two birds with one stone: hone your skills and fill your wallet.
Author’s bio:
Melissa Burns graduated from the faculty of Journalism of Iowa State University in 2008. Nowadays she
is an entrepreneur and independent journalist. Her sphere of interests includes startups, information
technologies and how these ones may be implemented in the sphere of education. You may contact
Melissa via e-mail: burns.melissaa@gmail.com
After Big Surge Community College Completion Goes Flat
By Caralee Adams , Education Week
On the heels of President Obama’s proposal to provide free community college tuition, a new report shows that while degree and certificate productivity has increased among community colleges in the past decade, there was a drop in completion last year in most states.
Of the 42 state directors of community colleges who responded to a survey by the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama, 22 reported flat to declining rates of degree completion between the academic years 2012-13 and 2013-14.
Looking back at results of the annual survey, there has been a 75 percent increase in associate degrees and a 122 percent increase in certificates awarded by community colleges between 2000-01 and 2012-13.
The report, by lead author and center director Stephen Katsinas, explains the recent drop is linked to reductions in 2012 Pell Grant funding, improvements in the economy that lured some students away from campuses before finishing, and cuts in state appropriations for community college.
Leaders are growing more pessimistic about future funding. Last year’s survey showed 14 state community college leaders predicted state appropriations would not cover inflation; this year 31 did so.
Three out of four respondents in the University of Alabama survey said their states had no long-term plans to fund operating or capital budget increases in three or the four states necessary to boost completion rates.
“The increases in state-level, long-term planning for the operating and capital budgets needed to expand the number of adults with degrees and first-certificates are so small as to make the achievement of the national objective of making America first in the world again in adult baccalaureate degree attainment a pipe dream,” the report says.
Researchers conclude by calling for a new direction that will jump-start completion and recommending federal policymakers consider President Obama’s proposal for free community college tuition, which could create incentives for states to maintain funding.
The University of Alabama is co-hosting a conference today at Mississippi State University today discuss the future of community colleges and the administration’s America’s College Promise initiative.
Top 10 Sites to Boost Student Productivity
By Jane Hurst
As a college student, there is so much going on in your life that sometimes it can be difficult to maintain a good level of productivity. But, there are a number of ways that you can boost your productivity, and get a lot more done. Here are some of the best websites that will help anyone, including students, learn how to relax, get their lives uncluttered, and be more productive.
- Rescue Time – This is a package that lets you know how long your computer sessions are, and how productive you are while you are spending time on your computer. You can also use it to track specific activities, as well as block sites that keep distracting you from what you are supposed to be doing.
- Unroll – This is really going to help unclutter your life. It will see all of your email subscriptions, and gives you the option to unsubscribe to any that you no longer want. This is a great way to see how many subscriptions you have that you don’t really need, and clean out your inbox.
- Nature Sounds for Me – You need to take time out to relax and recharge, and what better way than to listen to the peaceful sounds of nature. You can choose from all kinds of sounds, from waves to thunder to birds chirping and more. Getting into a more relaxed state is going to help boost your productivity.
- Mind Bloom – This is another relaxation app that will give you the musical sound of birds singing, but it offers so much more. You will enjoy an interactive experience that allows you to consider the things that matter the most to you, so you can figure out what actions you need to take in order to achieve all of your goals.
- Custom Button Co. – If you are involved in fundraising activities for your college, team, etc., buttons are a great way to let people know what you are doing. Let Custom Button Co. create buttons for fundraising and other events.
- Pocket – This is the best tool you can use to get information, links, images, and more from the Internet. You can store everything you find, and search for it when you need it. There is a browser plugin, as well as more than 300 supported apps that will help to increase your productivity.
- Calm – Did you know that you can actually meditate while you are working? Check out calm.com to learn how. This website offers a completely guided meditation session that you can do online, any place and at any time. It only takes two minutes of meditating to change the way you look at what you are doing.
- Cold Turkey – This is an app that is going to help you to kick the habit of surfing when you should be studying. With Cold Turkey, you can set controls that will keep you from accessing non-productive sites at certain times of the day. Simply download the app, and then start adding websites to the block list and the times when you shouldn’t be looking at them. This is going to help create more discipline in your life.
- Away Find – One of the biggest time-wasters in a student’s day is checking their email all the time. Away Find will alert you when you receive emails that are important, so you don’t have to keep checking. If you add a contact to the alert list, you will be notified each time that contact sends an email.
- Simple Note – This app syncs up with Notational Velcity to give you a great way to keep all of your daily tasks organized. The more organized you are, the more productive you will be. This is extremely popular with Mac users.
Byline:
Jane Hurst has been working in education for over 5 years as a teacher. She loves sharing her knowledge with students, is fascinated about edtech and loves reading, a lot.
Thank you!
Indiana Financial Incentive Spurs Increased Course Taking
More Hoosier college students on track to graduate following recent state financial aid reforms Hoosiers are responding to recent state financial aid reforms with double-digit improvements in the percentage of college students taking—and completing—the minimum number of courses needed to graduate on time. A new report released by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education spotlights early progress and lessons learned following sweeping state financial aid reform adopted in 2013 under House Enrolled Act 1348. “Indiana lawmakers took bold action with student-friendly legislation that promotes college completion and rewards students for staying on track to graduate on time,” said Lubbers. “We are encouraged that students are responding to these incentives that promise to increase graduation rates and lower college debt.” Indiana has one of the most generous need-based college financial aid systems in the U.S. with more than $300 million in state aid awarded to Hoosier students annually. The majority of this aid is distributed through the state’s two largest programs: the Frank O’Bannon grant and the 21st Century Scholars program. The key provision of HEA 1348 requires students to complete at least 30 credits each calendar year—the minimum amount required to graduate on time—in order to renew their aid for the following year at the same level. Both the O’Bannon and 21st Century Scholars programs have seen significant gains in the percentage of students taking and completing 30 credits since HEA 1348 took effect. More students are enrolling in 30 or more credit hours: 21st Century Scholars’ course-taking improved by 55% over the prior year Frank O’Bannon recipients’ course-taking improved by 19% over the prior year More students are completing 30 or more credit hours: 21st Century Scholars’ course-completion improved by 56% over the prior year Frank O’Bannon recipients’ course-completion improved by 21% over the prior year “This law is a significant step toward better graduation rates, more affordable college degrees and a stronger Hoosier workforce,” said Governor Mike Pence who has championed efforts to decrease the cost of college and reward students for graduating early or on time. Since the legislation’s passage, the Commission and Indiana colleges have been working to increase student awareness of the new requirements, ramp up academic advising efforts and provide new resources to keep students on track. Though it is too early to predict the long-term impact of these reforms, the dramatic progress to date suggests further improvement as ongoing awareness and intervention efforts take hold.
