How College Students Can Get Creative to Earn Money

BY JANE HURST

Often, the term “starving college student” isn’t that far off from the truth. Jobs aren’t always easy to come by, and you can only sell so much blood before you are too weak to attend classes. So, how can you make extra money to help with expenses while you are in college? You need to get creative. Here are some great ways to earn a few extra bucks here and there, and you may even be able to turn some of these ideas into a lucrative business.

• Start a YouTube Channel – This is a great way to make extra money, and if you are a communications or a film student, you may even earn extra credits. Many people earn a very comfortable living just by making videos and putting them on their own YouTube channels. All you have to do is plan a channel, make videos, and partner with YouTube. Then, you will get paid for revenue from advertising.
• Sell Your Photos – If you take good photos, you may want to turn them into extra cash. There are all kinds of websites that are looking to buy quality photographs, and you don’t need to be a professional photographer to make money. Stock photography is a great way to make extra money. Simply upload your photos to sites such as istockphoto.com, and each time it is downloaded, you will make money. Release forms are needed for photos including people.
• Sell Your iPhone – One way to make money is to sell off those old gadgets that you are no longer using. For instance, if you have an old iPhone, if it is in decent condition, you may get a pretty good price. Rather than listing it for sale on Craig’s List or other want ad sites where you may not get the best price, check out GadgetSalvation, where you will always get the top price.
• Write an E-Book – Put your creative writing skills to good use and create an e-book to sell online. For the best results, create a how-to book of some sort, as these seem to be the best-selling e-books. If you are a good creative writer, you may want to consider writing a fiction novel. This may actually be the way that you get discovered as a great writer, and your writing career may be launched here. Sites to publish through include Amazon, LuLu, and Clickbank.
• Sell Crafts – If you are the crafty type, but you can’t afford craft supplies, try selling your work on websites such as Etsy. This will give you extra cash, and you can buy more supplies and make more stuff. Eventually, you will be making a pretty good profit. There is an added benefit to this. Doing crafts is a great way to relax after a stressful day in classes.
• Create a Blog – You can make money with your blog. You may already be blogging, so why not make it more worth your while? All you have to do is get into affiliate marketing. You let advertisers put their ads on your blog page. Each time someone clicks on one of those ads and buys something, you receive a percentage of the sale. You don’t have to do any work except write your blog, and if you are already doing that, there really is no work at all.
• Create T-Shirts – Artistic types may be interested in designing and selling t-shirts. There are various sites you can use to have your shirts printed, and then you can sell them around campus, to friends, in stores, etc. Look for ways to sell your shirts. For instance, if there is an event going on, contact organizers to offer them a great deal on custom shirts for their event.

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.

What Is the Point of College?

By KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH for the New York Times

SEPT. 8, 2015

I gave my first university lecture in philosophy at the University of Ghana, Legon, when I was a freshly credentialed 21-year-old. My audience was a couple of hundred students gathered in a vast hall, with ceiling fans to move the hot and humid air. Above the murmur of the fans and the muttering of students, I tried to explain why Descartes thought the mere possibility that there was an Evil Demon deceiving their senses meant they couldn’t know for sure that I was really there. Ah, Cartesian skepticism! I remember diagraming the structure of the argument in huge chalk letters on an enormous blackboard.

After the class, a group of students, many of them older than I, followed me home across campus. Was I really worried, they wanted to know, that there might be such a powerful Evil Demon? What they didn’t ask was why they had to listen to this bizarre argument made by a Frenchman three and a half centuries earlier. Yes, the material would be on the exam every student had to pass at the end of the first year. But why?

The answer used to be easy: College is a place where you come to learn such things. But as higher education expands its reach, it’s increasingly hard to say what college is like and what college is for. In the United States, where I now teach, more than 17 million undergraduates will be enrolling in classes this fall. They will be passing through institutions small and large, public and private, two-year and four-year, online and on campus. Some of them will be doing vocational courses — in accounting or nursing or web design — at for-profit institutions like DeVry University and the University of Phoenix. Many will be entering community colleges hoping to gain a useful qualification or to prepare themselves for a transfer to a four-year college. Others will be entering liberal-arts colleges without plans for a major, let alone a profession. On whatever track, quite a few will encounter Descartes as part of their undergraduate requirements. Why should that be? You’ll be hard-pressed to find a consensus on such things. That’s because two distinct visions of higher education contend throughout our classrooms and campuses.

One vision focuses on how college can be useful — to its graduates, to employers and to a globally competitive America. When presidential candidates talk about making college more affordable, they often mention those benefits, and they measure them largely in dollars and cents. How is it helping postgraduate earnings, or increasing G.D.P.? As college grows more expensive, plenty of people want to know whether they’re getting a good return on their investment. They believe in Utility U.

Another vision of college centers on what John Stuart Mill called ‘‘experiments in living,’’ aimed at getting students ready for life as free men and women. (This was not an entirely new thought: the ‘‘liberal’’ in ‘‘liberal education’’ comes from the Latin liberalis, which means ‘‘befitting a free person.’’) Here, college is about building your soul as much as your skills. Students want to think critically about the values that guide them, and they will inevitably want to test out their ideas and ideals in the campus community. (Though more and more students are taking degrees online, most undergraduates will be on campus a lot of the time.) College, in this view, is where you hone the tools for the foundational American project, the pursuit of happiness. Welcome to Utopia U.

Together, these visions — Utility and Utopia — explain a great deal about modern colleges and universities. But taken singly, they lead to very different metrics for success.

Consider the declining proportion of fac­ulty with tenure. Tenured faculty are defined by more than the fact that they are hard to fire. Tenure allows professors to pursue intellectual projects without regard for what the trustees or the governor or the community care about. It gives them the kind of intellectual freedom that has helped make our universities the research powerhouses of the world. Adjunct faculty, on the other hand, are a lot less expensive — they’re paid less and typically lack health and other benefits — and you can easily expand or contract their ranks as demand fluctuates. In the Utility vision, students are consumers; they have needs and desires to be met, at a price they’ll pay. If pleasing the customer is the goal, a tenured faculty member who wants to teach what he or she considers worth teaching can be an inconvenience. Plus, at Utility U., one obvious way to better your ‘‘value proposition’’ is to cut costs. These days, three-quarters of the teaching faculty at America’s nonprofit colleges and universities are hired as adjuncts with no tenure and no research support. A few decades ago, only a quarter were.

At Utility U., the search for efficiency requires tools for evaluating teachers. Management, as the old saw has it, is measurement. Years ago, I was on a committee at a great university that looked into the system by which students evaluated courses. The most reliable predictor of whether students liked a course, it turned out, was their answer to the question ‘‘Did the professor respect you?’’ Customers like to be loved; attentive service makes for good Yelp reviews. But that’s a very different question from, say: How, if at all, did you change through the class? What good, if any, did those changes do you? Did you learn to uncover the ideological or conceptual demons that may be flummoxing your good sense? Mr. Chips’s encouraging smile has pedagogical value, but so, perhaps, does Professor Kingsfield’s basilisk stare.

If Utility U. is concerned with value, Utopia U. is concerned with values. The values agenda can involve the content of classes, the nature of campus communities or both. When I teach a seminar that deals with theories of identity and social justice, my aim is to provide tools of analysis so that students — men and women of various ethnic, religious and sexual descriptions — can sort through such issues by themselves. But class discussions aren’t always abstract and impersonal: Everyone has identity allegiances and intuitions about justice. And the same is true for discussions elsewhere on campus. At Utopia U., the aim is to create a safe space, to check your privilege and suspend the prejudices of the larger world, to promote human development and advance moral progress.

And so ‘‘civility’’ is on the agenda, ‘‘safe’’ spaces are spreading and microaggressions — possibly unintentional slights that stem from racial, ethnic or sexual difference — are to be scrutinized, sometimes through a jeweler’s loupe. It’s easy to roll your eyes at ‘‘social justice warriors,’’ but there’s a perfectly good idea here: People don’t think well when they feel personally insulted or aggrieved. And in classes, thinking well is the main objective. Buzzwords aside, a lot of this is just courtesy — Emily Post by way of Foucault. Still, the Utopians can be reluctant to admit that there may be conflicts between expanding civility and deepening understanding, between the safe-space ideal and the free-speech ideal. (Not a few campus quarrels come down to: Who’s silencing whom?) A culture of civility sometimes does make evasion easier. Students arrive from Cincinnati and Singapore and — finally! — discover a cohort of like-minded souls. That can be a thrill. Confine yourself to their company, though, and you’ve invented a new parochialism.

Neither Utility U. nor Utopia U. has the full run of any one campus. In the familiar caricature, there’s the performance-studies major who is putting up fliers for the Naomi Klein talk, collecting signatures for the fossil-free petition and wondering whether the student alliance for gender equity is as racially inclusive as it claims. Then there’s the engineering major, first in the family to go to college, traipsing across the quad with a discounted, two-editions-out-of-date version of the material-science textbook. All that identity stuff is a dimly perceived distraction in this student’s light cone, readily tuned out. One student thinks ‘‘bi-curious’’ is a word; the other doesn’t see why you would use molecular-orbital theory when valence bonding provides answers faster. The two students cross paths only physically. It’s almost as if they’re attending two different colleges.

One reason this is a caricature is that people aren’t always found on the expected side of the disciplinary (and class) divides. At liberal-arts campuses, certainly, almost everyone drinks from the fountain of human betterment, albeit some from a Dixie cup and others from a Big Gulp. And very few are completely unmindful of the getting-a-job thing that’s rumored to follow graduation. But when you superimpose the two visions of college — as a forcing house of virtue and as means for building human capital — you inevitably get interference patterns, ripples and ridges of indignation and disquiet. That’s what you’re seeing when the safe-space ethic runs amok, as with students who claim offense when their ideas are challenged or who want to see ‘‘trigger warnings’’ on even canonical literature, like those cardboard lids on hotel-room glasses. Here, the student is at once the sensitive servant of high causes and a demanding customer.

Nor are these tensions likely to resolve themselves, because higher education has to play so many roles. The truth is that colleges and universities do a tremendous amount that neither of these pictures captures — that just can’t be reduced to the well-being of their graduates. For one thing, the old ideal of knowledge for its own sake hasn’t been extinguished. For another, universities are the homes of all kinds of public goods. They are, for example, the source of much of today’s best research. Without them we would know much less than we do about the nature of the cosmos or the workings of the human brain or the ways of reading a novel. A flourishing literary culture is made possible not because institutions of higher learning create writers but because they prepare readers (and yes, it helps that they provide jobs for plenty of poets and novelists too). There’s even something to be said, especially in a democracy, for an educated citizenry, able to question the creeds of the moment.

Which brings us back to demons and doubt. Was there any point to studying such things? My first class of freshmen, all those years ago, certainly had reservations about Monsieur Descartes’s method of systematic doubt. Once they were reassured about their instructor’s sanity, though, they got into the spirit of things, and some, at least, came to see why epistemology — the study of knowledge — might be worthwhile. Maybe not practical … unless you were looking for a job as a professor. But interesting. Mind-expanding, even. Possibly, there was something to be said for the intellectual discipline of second-guessing what you thought was true. And that wasn’t just good for them. Who would want to live in a nation of people without doubts?

Like most of the students I’ve had since, they learned that what you can do and who you can be — the qualities of your skills and of your soul — are two separate questions that aren’t quite separable. And that college was a pretty good place to work out some answers to both.

Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. and is one of the magazine’s Ethicists columnists <http://www.nytimes.com/column/the-ethicist>. His most recent book is “Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity.”

7 Tips for Freshmen: How to Become a Successful Student

BY ANDREW HOWE

Nowadays the educational process is an important part of every human being life. More and more young people enroll in colleges or universities to obtain strong knowledge. To become a good student, you need to learn how to manage your workload, do assignments, meet deadlines, and communicate with tutors.

There are so many tips, hints, and pieces of advice that freshmen should know; many experienced students can share their own tips how to become a successful student.

We have collected top 7 tips for you to learn.

Make friends. University is your alma mater that can change your life. Here you will find new people who might become your friends in the future. When looking for new friends, try “not to judge a book by its cover”. You never know who is your soulmate until you have a conversation. Don’t hesitate to take the first step and get acquainted with your group mates.

Explore territory. Try to find out where everything is situated (a schedule desk, campus, sports center, library, etc.). Invite your new friends to join you and look around the territory. Don’t waste your time wandering the territory; ask elder students to help you find what you are looking for.

Manage your time. Plan your workflow: do homework, read books and articles, attend electives. If you are short of time, try to use different opportunities to do your tasks. For example, use breaks for reading. Put your education first, but do not forget about your leisure.

Collaborate with other students. Try to find a group of people to cooperate with. It can make your student life easier, as you can share experience, ask for advice, and split up tasks. Of course, it doesn’t mean you can forget about some parts of your homework. It is a key how to optimize your efforts. Plus, teamwork develops communication and cooperation.

Ask for feedback. No matter whether you get an excellent mark or no, you should know what are pros and cons of your work. Ask your tutor to give you feedback. Analyze your mistakes and work hard on its improvement. In addition, asking for the feedback shows that you are not only interested in the process but also want to accumulate knowledge.

Use online tools. There are many useful apps and tools that can help you in the educational process. You can manage your time, keep your notes and drafts, improve skills, and collaborate with other students. Use all advantages of digital communication as it can help you save time and become more productive.

Hint: Here are several useful tools (Grammarly, Hemingway, AdverbLess).

Don’t panic. Of course, you can be nervous, and it is normal. You have changed your life, so be ready to meet new difficulties. However, you should keep calm. Try to be productive, meet your friends, relax, and do your best. Go for it!

If you want to get a good job position, you should be a successful student with strong knowledge in your niche. It means spending time and making efforts, but it’s worth it. Hope, these tips will help you succeed in education.
Do you have your tips for freshmen to share? Leave a comment!

Author’s bio: Andrew Howe is a student at Queens University of Charlotte where he studies language and literature. He has developed a useful tool Adverbless to give students a chance to improve their writing skills.

Contact Andrew via email: andrewhowe306@gmail.com

Must Have iPhone Apps for College Students

by Melissa Burns

Student’s life is hectic and stressful at the best of times; and any tool that can help to ease the workload or save time is always welcome. Here we’ve collected a list of five iPhone apps that may prove indispensable in your studies.

1.     iThoughts Mind Mapping App

Mind mapping is an extremely useful technique that allows you to quickly and efficiently organize your thoughts, revise what you know about a subject, set goals, plan future projects and so on. iThoughts simply makes the entire thing digital, in quite a convenient and easy-to-grasp form. This tool will be of use both to those who already loves mind mapping and want to digitize their experience with them and to those who discover them for the first time.

2.     Filterra Photo Editor

College is a time to meet new people, visit new places, have an excellent time and, of course, make a lot of new photos – and afterwards, one needs an easy-to-use and powerful tool to edit them to one’s heart content. If you’ve often felt the need in a decent app of this kind but was scared off by their pricetags, you should visit Filterra photo editor website. A lot of different filters, cool-looking effects, FX, convenient interface and a lot of advanced option make it one of the best free apps of this kind in the world. In other words – if you love making photos but hate the way they turn out, you simply have to download photo editor by Filterra and whip them into shape.

3.     Mint

One of the hardest things to do as a student is to manage your own finances – for many people it is the first time they are completely financially independent and, what’s worse, they are surrounded by new experience and have to live in a new environment. Mint is a clean and simple app for keeping track of your personal finances – you add your account details and Mint will automatically add and categorize all transactions you make. You may plan ahead how much you want to spend, set reminders for bills and much more – and, appropriately enough, the entire thing is free.

4.     RefME

If you ever had to write an academic paper, you probably hate bibliographies with all your heart. RefME exists for the sole reason of helping you out in this respect – it is a handy app that automatically creates bibliography lists. In order to add the necessary quotation to your paper you simply have to scan the book’s barcode or type in its ISBN, and a correct reference will be created for it automatically.

5.     iStudiez Pro

This app was created specifically for those who have trouble keeping track of all their lectures and studies. It is a scheduler that prevents you from missing your classes. It doesn’t matter if you have a fixed or flexible timetable, iStudies Pro allows you to arrange everything in such a way that you will never mix anything up.

Do you have any other apps on your mind that make your life as a student easier? If so, feel free to mention them in comments!

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: burns.melissaa@gmail.com

New College Ready Common Core Tests Released In California

What Test Scores Show about California’s School System

By Mike Kirst

 Test results released today set a new baseline for students, schools and districts. The tests set standards at readiness for college unlike the old, multiple choice tests they replaced. Results, in combination with new online instructional resources and local accountability tools, give parents, educators and stakeholders much more actionable data than ever before about student and school progress and college preparedness.

Results show that 53 percent of California’s students meet or nearly meet the English Language Arts achievement standards, and 48 percent meet or nearly meet the mathematics achievement standards. One of ten students exceeds the standards for both subjects. At every grade level, English Language Arts results are stronger for girls than for boys. The results for math show much less gender disparity. Results for students from traditionally disadvantaged groups show significant achievement gaps.

These new tests ask a lot more of students than the old, multiple choice exams. The new tests use computer adaptive technology to provide more accurate information about individual student performance. Along with reading to follow a story, students are asked to cite evidence and draw logical conclusions. They are using math to solve real-world problems.

Test results are reported according to four achievement levels: standard not met, standard nearly met, standard met and standard exceeded, with additional information about specific skill areas addressed by the assessment. While these achievement levels can serve as a starting point for discussion about the performance of students and of groups of students, they will be criticized as an oversimplification.

Students also receive scale scores for individual performance in both subjects. Parents, teachers and schools have access to these scale scores on individual student reports mailed home and through an online reporting system created for schools and districts to access results electronically.

Teachers, schools and districts are now taking a deeper look at individual student performance and they are determining the kinds of instructional shifts necessary to improve student outcomes and prepare students for credit-bearing college coursework.

All of California’s state universities and most community colleges are using 11^th grade results as an early signal of readiness to take credit-bearing, college level courses upon enrollment. In English Language Arts, more than half of the class of 2016 is ready or conditionally ready for college work, and in math, 29 percent is ready or conditionally ready. High school juniors and seniors are receiving information about how to prepare for college work and what courses they should take during their senior year.

Improving student achievement and implementing academic standards are well-defined priorities in new state funding and accountability laws. While school districts and charters now have greater discretion to allocate resources according to local needs, they also are required to describe how they are spending resources to improve student outcomes and implement the new standards in their local accountability plans.

In California’s K-12 system, where more than 300,000 educators serve in 11,000 elementary, middle and high schools, including 1125 charter schools, change takes time. It also requires considerable resources and patience. The California State Board of Education estimates that less than half of the state’s teaching force is fully trained to deliver instruction that meets the standards. In addition, instructional resources aligned to standards for teachers and students are just beginning to reach classrooms.

Overall, teachers are highly motivated and they support the instructional changes necessary to improve student outcomes. It’s a matter of giving teachers the time, support and training to make it happen. Society is transforming at an accelerating rate, and the expectations about what our graduates are expected to know and be able to do are substantial.

Mike Kirst is President of the California State Board of Education and Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University.

College Housing Tips For Prospective Students

 Melissa Burns

When you are preparing for college, one of the first questions that you will have to answer is whether you want to stay at the college dorm or to use some off campus solution. This is not a simple decision because there are many health, safety and financial factors that college students should take into consideration. It is important to understand that students are different and they have their own specific needs and requirements. So, before making a final decision, it is a good idea to take a close look at all the advantages and disadvantages of each option.

When it comes to first-year college students, this dilemma may be absent because there are many American colleges that require freshmen to use their campuses for one year. They believe that this is the best way to help students adjust to the changes. Of course, students can choose their housing arrangement starting from the second year on college. Now let’s check the pros and cons of each option by starting with off campus living.

Living off campus is more affordable (in most cases), but the truth is that not every college student can use this option. For example, if the apartment or house is located far from the college and students don’t use cars or the public transportation system is not well-developed, this might be a problem.

Many commercial real estate agents can confirm that living off campus can save up to 50% of the money spent on dorms. In addition, unlike living on campus, most housing solutions outside the campus allow students to use the space during the entire year. This means that they can live their belongings including fridges and other big items there. Moving these items can be very difficult and unpleasant.

What many students find as a con to living off campus is the fact that there is no campus security present. This problem can be solved by choosing a safe neighborhood for example. In addition, the cleanliness of dorms cannot be compared to the cleanliness of any other building (except hospitals). In case you are interested in off campus housing you should start looking for a solution early. You need to sign a contract too.

As previously mentioned, the second option is living on campus or dormitories to be more precise. The vast majority of dormitories are relatively small and don’t have enough storage room. But, what makes them good is the safe and secure environment. In most cases they are more expensive compared to off campus options, but they have much better location which provides access to almost everything a college student needs.

It is also good to mention that most colleges today are offering scholarship and financial aid with an obligation to use on campus housing. It is up to the student to do the math and see if this type of incentive is worthwhile or not.

There is another interesting thing related to using college dormitory – you can become a dormitory supervisor. This is an excellent way to save some money because in this way the cost for the housing will be reduced. Keep in mind that this is a job that requires time and suitable training. You will have to be present in the dorm at certain period of the day and you will have to visit training classes. On the other hand, this activity will help you make new friends.

As you can see, both options have some advantages and disadvantages and the decision you make about the housing should be based on your own requirements. You don’t have to rule out any option before you evaluate each of them. If you still have dilemmas even when you look at all the cons and pros, you should remember that you can switch the housing type in the end of the year.

We hope that these tips will help you make the right decision.

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: burns.melissaa@gmail.com

Money-Saving Tricks for College Students

BY JANE HURST

Now that you’re in college, you are more on your own than at any other time in your life, and you need to start taking on more responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is handling your money so you’re not always broke. This is not nearly as difficult as it sounds. All you need to do is learn a few money-saving tips that you will use for the rest of your life.

1. Create a Budget – One of the first things you need to do is create a budget. List all of your actual expenses that you must pay, as well as any income. Set up dates for bill payments, and budget for these payments. If there is anything left over at the end of the month, you can use it for spending or savings.
2. Visit Charity Thrift Stores – You can get some terrific deals on clothing, small appliances, and more at thrift stores. Not only will you be able to save money, proceeds from your purchases will go to charities.
3. Get a Budgeting App – If you are having difficulties with budgeting, an app such as Level Money, which is free for iOS and Android users, is a great tool to have. It will link your bank accounts with your credit cards, so you will be able to easily track all of your spending.
4. Look for Banking Perks – Banks want your business, so make them work for it. While they will all offer a number of perks to get you as a customer, only choose the bank that offers the best perks for your particular financial needs.
5. Save Money on Clothing – Ordering clothing online is a great way to save money, and you can get even better deals when you order your clothing (and many other things that you need) from China. Visit Taobao to learn more.
6. Get Student Beans – It is time to get the Student Beans ID if you don’t already have it. This is an awesome digital card for students that gives you discounts at loads of awesome stores and restaurants all year long.
7. Make Your Own Coffee – If you add up how much you spend on coffee every day, you may be surprised to learn just how much money you are wasting. It is a lot cheaper to brew your own coffee and fill a travel mug. In fact, you can save $5 or more per day.
8. Get Free Condoms – Safe sex is incredibly important, but condoms aren’t cheap. Luckily, you can get free condoms simply by visiting sexual health clinics and even your family doctor. If they offer you free condoms, take them. If they don’t offer, bring up the topic of safe sex and drop the hint.
9. Save on Groceries – Learn how to eat smart and stock up on inexpensive staples that you can use to create loads of great meals. Don’t forget to look for cheap recipe ideas online.
10. Sell Your Car – If you are living on campus, or live at home and have the use of the family car, do you really need the expense of your own car? You can add to your bank account by selling your car and getting your family or friends to give you a lift when you need it.
11. No More Magazines – If you subscribe to magazines or newspapers, stop. You can follow the same magazines and newspapers online, and often get a lot of what you are looking for at no cost. If you do want a subscription, it is less expensive to get an online subscription.

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!

College may seem like a hectic time, especially in the beginning, but it doesn’t have to be. All you need to do is find the best tools to help get your life organized, and keep it that way. Here are 10 awesome apps that will help you to do just that.

IStudiez Lite – If you find yourself doing other things rather than studying, this app will help to get you back on track. It will help you to map out each semester, assignments, exam schedules, etc. You can manage as many as five courses with 15 classes and exams for each course. You can even set alarms. There is a free version and the pro version costs just $2.99.

inClass – This app lets you set your courses, instructors, assignments, and more. You can even use it to take visual, audio, and text notes that you can sync with your computer and share through iTunes and Facebook. This is a great app to help you stay organized throughout your college life.

Todoist – This app is the best to-do list app you will ever find. You can track assignments, bookmark web pages, set reminders, and so much more. You can combine the mobile app with the web browser plugin to really get the most out of this learning tool. There are Mac and Windows versions, as well as plugins for Outlook, Gmail, Firefox, Chrome, Thunderbird, and Postbox. There is a free and a paid version.

Lifelock Wallet – Never worry about losing your purse or wallet again when you have this app. It is a digital wallet that lets you upload all of your credit card info, coupons, and more so you have everything you need, wherever you are. You can even track all of your credit card transactions, cancel lost or stolen cards, and much more.

Pearls Only – Not only should you be organizing your studies, you need to organize yourself and how you look. What you wear says a lot about you, and you can say a lot when you are wearing pearls. Find a great selection of pearl jewelry at this website.

MyScript Smart Note – This is a great note-taking tool that actually recognizes your handwriting to decipher the notes you take in the classroom (yes, there are still some people who prefer to do things the old-fashioned way and take written notes). There is a free version with limited features for iOS and Android, and a paid version where you can use all of the features.

Exam Vocabulary Builder – More than six million people have used this app to help better their vocabulary. Spaced repetition is used to help you learn how to remember things better, and there are search and organize features along with study, flashcard, and quiz modes. This is a great app for anyone that doesn’t have English as their first language.

XMind – This is a great tool for studying and taking notes. It is a mind mapping app that lets you plan projects, study sessions, and more. The only drawback is that there is no mobile app, and you can only use this with a desktop/laptop. There are so many features in the free version that you may never even have to pay for the other features, unless you feel that you really need them. Just remember, you will have to pay for cloud storage.

Mint – Here is a tool that all college students need: one that will help you stay on a budget. You will be able to track your spending, and everything is divided into categories so you always know exactly where every penny goes. You will even receive alerts if you go over your budget or don’t have much money in your bank account.

Venmo – This tool lets you send money to your friends’ bank accounts, so if you are splitting the check for dinner, you will be able to easily pay your share even if you don’t have any money on you.

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 l

Early College: A Good Public Policy Option?

by Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute

PBS NewsHour ran a story the other night titled “Does early college for high school students pave a path to graduation?” The piece featured Pharr-San Juan-Alamo School district in Pharr, Texas, a suburb of McAllen, and only a few hops and a jump from the Rio Grande River and the US-Mexican border. The high school graduation rate in 2007 was 62 percent.

The school district partnered with South Texas College in McAllen to offer “early college” courses and degree programs to their high school students. This spring, 485 seniors at Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD received their high school diploma plus an associate’s degree or certificate. By 2018, the district hopes to have as many as 50 percent of seniors earn a postsecondary degree.

If you think that is exceptional, also note that Pharr, Texas, has a 99 percent Hispanic student body with 89 percent on free or reduced price lunch. By the way, the high school graduation rate has increased to 90 percent since 2007.[1]

Perhaps the best part is that the program is free to students. Texas is one of the few states that has an agreement that to provide funds to both the school district and the college to cover the cost of tuition and fees for students. So, Early College becomes a complete win-win for students and their families.

Our friend, Joel Vargas, Vice President of Schools and Learning Designs at Jobs of the Future (JFF) in Boston, is featured in the segment. As he put it, the Early College program encourages students to “step up their game.”

The Early College High School Initiative was first funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2002. Since then, the Foundation has provided more than $150 million to more than 230 early colleges in 28 states.[2]

These programs beg a few important policy questions. First, if students can earn college-level programs in high school, and especially in very needy school districts, what was happening in these high schools before, and what are still doing in other high schools? Sure, we have Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and Dual Enrollment programs (ultimately, early college is a dual enrollment program). But data clearly illustrate the lack of equity among schools and districts with regard to where these programs are offered and who is appropriate prepared to take these courses as well as their tests. Like Larry Gladieux and I said back in the late 1990s, access to special educational program offerings is akin to a wheel of fortune. Some win and many loose by being in “the right city, the right school, and the right classroom at the right time.”[3] This still rings true today.

Second, does this not point to the fairly obvious programmatic question that what we do from ninth grade through to college is discombobulated? We “do” high school very poorly. At least we do for those who are historically underrepresented in postsecondary education. NAEP data clearly tell us that the academic wherewithal of students is cast by the eighth grade. Any gap in learning by that point fails to change by the 12^th grade. One could take that information and suggest that high school is a waste of time. But done properly, it would seem that the gap in learning could be ameliorated, at least to a degree, by prudent programming and motivation. It seems that early college schools like those in Pharr, Texas, are finding a way.

And finally, if Early College is so successful, why hasn’t it massively expanded to other states and schools? Early College is expanding, but seemingly only in schools that receive outside funding (e.g., Gates-like philanthropy). Why haven’t other districts seen the light and moved forward? The reality is that large-scale change takes time. The biggest challenge of school reform is and will remain the sheer mass of the current system. From a public policy perspective, a system that is uniquely defined by state jurisdictional issues, with some pressure and support from a federal Department of Education, with the politics of local education agencies (i.e., school districts), and even site-based management at the school level, combine to make change extraordinarily difficult. Add a layer on top of that of education “experts” not agreeing on how best to educate students, and even more political fallout, and we seemly make little progress improving K-12 education.

In the end, change must come. If not for the future well-being of the nation as a whole, certainly for current and future students who see zero future. They don’t see the connection between their education and their future. What’s the point? Just think. If most high school students graduated with a skill, a trade, and/or a college degree, wouldn’t that negate the current political dialogue about offering free tuition to community college? Or at least change the foundation for the discussion.

Just think.

[1] http://www.heraldandnews.com/news/local_news/local-officials-hope-to-bring-texas-success-to-oregon-schools/article_a4c8a088-8a4e-11e4-b098-5b91f0295709.html.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_college_high_school.

[3] http://educationalpolicy.org/pdf/Financial%20Aid%20is%20Not%20Enough.pdf

Fafsa Follies: To Gain a Student, Eliminate a Form

By SUSAN DYNARSKI

Many smart students forgo college in the mistaken belief that they cannot afford it. The financial aid system, which is intended to increase opportunities for low-income students, is largely to blame.

Students must fight through thickets of paperwork and endure long delays to obtain definitive information about the aid for which they qualify. Many give up before they learn that college is affordable.

But there is hope on the horizon. In a rare case of cross-aisle cooperation, congressional Democrats and Republicans are working on legislation that could simplify and speed the aid process. One bill, sponsored in the Senate by Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, and Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, would cut the lengthy federal aid application, now longer than the typical 1040 Internal Revenue Service form, to just two questions.

We could go even further and eliminate the aid application altogether. That may sound radical, but it’s not.

The widely despised form known as the Fafsa (which stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is unnecessary. The Fafsa is required of all students seeking federal aid, but the information needed to calculate eligibility for that aid is already collected by the I.R.S. In a simplified aid system, tax filers could just check a box on the 1040 to learn immediately about eligibility for federal grants, loans and tax credits.

The distinction between having no Fafsa or the two-question Fafsa proposed in the Alexander-Bennet bill may appear minor. How much effort is there, after all, in answering two questions? But a large body of evidence from economics and psychology shows that even minor bureaucratic hurdles can keep people from making smart investments in their futures.

Nudges matter. One influential study examined a financial firm where new employees opted in to the retirement-savings plan by completing a short form. The company adjusted the process, instead allowing new employees to opt out of the savings plan by completing the form. This tiny change increased the share of employees saving for retirement by 50 percentage points.

When adult professionals working in the financial sector are put off by minor paperwork, it’s no surprise if adolescents are similarly affected. Saving for retirement and preparing for college are similar: They both impose costs in the present in exchange for benefits in the future. Research shows that in these situations people deviate systematically from rational behavior, often to their own detriment.

To quantify just how much the aid bureaucracy discourages college attendance, a team of economists ran a randomized trial in which families applied for aid in a radically simplified process. The results were striking: The streamlined process increased the share of low-income young people who attended college for two years by eight percentage points (to 36 percent from 28 percent).

History suggests that if we try to shorten the Fafsa, rather than get rid of it, complexity will creep back in. In 2008, Congress directed the Department of Education to allow homeless applicants to complete a shortened Fafsa. The department responded by adding to the Fafsa three questions that ask whether an applicant qualifies as homeless. That’s right: When directed to simplify the application, the Department of Education lengthened it. Congress made a big push to simplify the Fafsa in 2009, removing two dozen questions, but with the same legislation, it added a dozen questions.

The Fafsa seems to be where everyone’s pet idea about targeting aid goes to roost, producing a stubbornly long form. Eliminating the Fafsa and relying on tax data to calculate aid eligibility is the clearest route to permanent simplification.

We have a precedent for using tax data to calculate college aid. Eligibility for college tax credits, including the federal American Opportunity Tax Credit, is calculated solely from tax data. These credits go to families with incomes as high as $180,000. Why do these high-income families qualify for aid by simply filing their taxes, while low-income families must fill out the Fafsa to qualify for a Pell Grant? We have created an aid system that is most complicated for the low-income families who are its target.

Some argue that the complexity of the Fafsa is a necessary evil, without which we could not precisely measure who most needs aid. In this view, the many questions on the Fafsa allow us to target aid to the needy. To address this concern, along with Judith Scott-Clayton of Columbia and Mark Wiederspan, then of the University of Michigan, I examined detailed data from thousands of aid applications and aid packages, testing how aid would change if questions were eliminated from the Fafsa.

We found that dozens of questions on the Fafsa contribute virtually nothing to the determination of grant aid. Why do so many questions matter so little? If a family has very low income, say $15,000, then the student is eligible for the maximum Pell Grant. We don’t need to ask whether the family receives food stamps. Similarly, if a family has a high income, say $100,000, then the student is not eligible for any Pell Grant, and we don’t need to ask about investments.

The Fafsa burdens families and prevents students from attending college, while doing little to target federal aid. Getting rid of the Fafsa could narrow the large gaps in college attendance that persist between the rich and poor in the United States.

Susan M. Dynarski is a professor of education, public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. Follow her on Twitter at @dynarski.

The Top 10 Apps to Help Organize Your College Life

BY JANE HURST

College may seem like a hectic time, especially in the beginning, but it doesn’t have to be. All you need to do is find the best tools to help get your life organized, and keep it that way. Here are 10 awesome apps that will help you to do just that.

IStudiez Lite – If you find yourself doing other things rather than studying, this app will help to get you back on track. It will help you to map out each semester, assignments, exam schedules, etc. You can manage as many as five courses with 15 classes and exams for each course. You can even set alarms. There is a free version and the pro version costs just $2.99.

inClass – This app lets you set your courses, instructors, assignments, and more. You can even use it to take visual, audio, and text notes that you can sync with your computer and share through iTunes and Facebook. This is a great app to help you stay organized throughout your college life.

Todoist – This app is the best to-do list app you will ever find. You can track assignments, bookmark web pages, set reminders, and so much more. You can combine the mobile app with the web browser plugin to really get the most out of this learning tool. There are Mac and Windows versions, as well as plugins for Outlook, Gmail, Firefox, Chrome, Thunderbird, and Postbox. There is a free and a paid version.

Lifelock Wallet – Never worry about losing your purse or wallet again when you have this app. It is a digital wallet that lets you upload all of your credit card info, coupons, and more so you have everything you need, wherever you are. You can even track all of your credit card transactions, cancel lost or stolen cards, and much more.

Pearls Only – Not only should you be organizing your studies, you need to organize yourself and how you look. What you wear says a lot about you, and you can say a lot when you are wearing pearls. Find a great selection of pearl jewelry at this website.

MyScript Smart Note – This is a great note-taking tool that actually recognizes your handwriting to decipher the notes you take in the classroom (yes, there are still some people who prefer to do things the old-fashioned way and take written notes). There is a free version with limited features for iOS and Android, and a paid version where you can use all of the features.

Exam Vocabulary Builder – More than six million people have used this app to help better their vocabulary. Spaced repetition is used to help you learn how to remember things better, and there are search and organize features along with study, flashcard, and quiz modes. This is a great app for anyone that doesn’t have English as their first language.

XMind – This is a great tool for studying and taking notes. It is a mind mapping app that lets you plan projects, study sessions, and more. The only drawback is that there is no mobile app, and you can only use this with a desktop/laptop. There are so many features in the free version that you may never even have to pay for the other features, unless you feel that you really need them. Just remember, you will have to pay for cloud storage.

Mint – Here is a tool that all college students need: one that will help you stay on a budget. You will be able to track your spending, and everything is divided into categories so you always know exactly where every penny goes. You will even receive alerts if you go over your budget or don’t have much money in your bank account.

Venmo – This tool lets you send money to your friends’ bank accounts, so if you are splitting the check for dinner, you will be able to easily pay your share even if you don’t have any money on you.

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