Understanding Student Loan Debt

Where do dreams about college lead?

BY MELISSA BURNS

Life in a college is a passport to the new unique world full of dreams, ideas, possibilities, along with limitations and responsibility for your actions. One can say that a new life begins there: new acquaintances, friendship, first love. Everything glows in iridescent colors. It helps to remember that the first serious disappointments are present in college life. In fact college is a just little drama practice before a serious performance.

How to fight down the first disappointments?

Here psychological stability of every separate student acts as the key and overriding factor. One should be ready to through the mill and move on; on this account skills of getting over a crisis that were trained earlier can help. It should be remembered that college is a simple training of your calmness under pressure. Truly adult life lies in store.

Do not lose trust in people.

Your acquaintances in a college will show all advantages of complicated human relations. In years to come one part of them will become lifelong friends, another part will teach you a few vital lessons and farther will chart their own course that probably will never meet your one. Place confidence in people with carefulness, in fact they will not be responsible for your decisions and acts even for those you would be stirred into. Liability is all yours.

Remember that you are a unique person.

There is no point to be tied to the chariot of your acquaintances because of the fear to differ from others and strike somebody as funny peculiar. Blending into the crowd does not make sense; in fact you will lose your time that can be spent with a profit to you. Latter search for personal fulfillment will not be a simple task. It may result in depression. Unfortunately a lot of young people confront such problem. You can avoid jumping into this bandwagon.

What path should be avoided?

It is not infrequent that the college students choose the way of quirky habits to combat disappointments and depressions. A slight possibility to relax becomes an alcohol or drugs abuse. Consolidation of information on college drinking and drug use clears up the reasons that explain what spurs college students on to come under dependences influence. For example, basic motivation of narcotic substances application is a misleading belief that it will help to increase concentration and stay focused. However it does not evolve the powers of one’s mind.

Who said it would be easy?

Undoubtedly, college study puts pressure upon students. Be realistic while assessing your possibilities. Brain-tire did no power of good yet. One successfully written test is not a guarantee of your successful graduation from college and not a further perspective of future employment. Every person has unique features. Do not bite off more than you can chew. At the same time play your cards right, as college will give you a lot of possibilities. Their proper use entirely depends upon your imagination and ambitions.

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

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Gaps in Alumni Earnings Stand Out in Release of College Data

From the New York Times

Kevin Carey

Colleges give prospective students very little information about how much money they can expect to earn in the job market. In part that’s because colleges may not want people to know, and in part it’s because such information is difficult and expensive to gather. Colleges are good at tracking down rich alumni to hit up for donations, but people who make little or no money are harder and less lucrative to find.

On Saturday, the federal government solved that problem by releasing a huge set of new data detailing the earnings of people who attended nearly every college and university in America. Although it abandonded efforts to rate the quality of colleges, the federal government matched data from the federal student financial aid system to federal tax returns. The Department of Education was thus able to calculate how much money people who enrolled in individual colleges in 2001 and 2002 were earning 10 years later.

On the surface, the trends aren’t surprising — students who enroll in wealthy, elite colleges earn more than those who do not. But the deeper that you delve into the data, the more clear it becomes how perilous the higher education market can be for students making expensive, important choices that don’t always pay

The Department of Education calculated the percentage of students at each college who earned more than $25,000 per year, which is about what high school graduates earn. At hundreds of colleges, less than half of students met this threshold 10 years after enrolling. The list includes a raft of barber academies, cosmetology schools and for-profit colleges that often leave students with few job prospects and mountains of debt.

But some more well-known institutions weren’t far behind. At Bennington College in Vermont, over 48 percent of former students were earning less than $25,000 per year. A quarter were earning less than $10,600 per year. At Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, the median annual earnings were only $35,700. Results at the University of New Mexico were almost exactly the same.

The data reveals how much money students are borrowing in exchange for earnings after graduation. While U.C.L.A. and Penn State are both prestigious public research universities, recent U.C.L.A. grads leave with about 30 percent less debt, even as their predecessors are earning about 30 percent more money than counterparts at Penn State. Harvard students borrow barely a quarter of what Brandeis students take on, and earn nearly twice as much.

The return is unequal in other ways. There is an earnings gender gap at every top university. The size of the difference varies a great deal. At Duke, for example, women earned $93,100 per year on average, compared with $123,000 for men, a difference of $29,900. At Princeton, men earned more and women earned less, for a difference of $47,700. Women who enrolled at Cornell earned more than women who enrolled at Yale.

Defining higher education in purely economic terms risks exacerbating what some have described as the corporatization of the modern university. People get a lot more out of college than earnings potential. They learn to be better citizens and better human beings. The world needs dancers and poets along with the future investment bankers and tech entrepreneurs streaming out of elite schools.

The problem is that the dancers and poets are paying the same, ever-rising tuition, even though the necessary cost of running a good poetry program is probably not much more than it was in earlier times when college tuition was much less expensive than it is today. And you can’t pay your student loans back with citizenship — only dollars will do.

Colleges can ameliorate this problem by providing need-based financial aid to low-income students, reducing their debt burden and likelihood of loan default. The new data indicates that some colleges are more successful with this strategy than others.

At the University of Cincinnati, a third of low-income students (from households earning less than $30,000 per year) had failed to pay back any of their student loans five years after graduation. At the University of Alabama, the number was roughly a quarter; at Wayne State University in Detroit, over 40 percent. At the for-profit University of Phoenix, nearly two-thirds of poor students are in these dire straits.

It will take time for the raft of new federal earnings data to seep into the complex reputational ecosystem that continues to govern the higher education market. But this new bottom line will eventually become a permanent aspect of how colleges of all kinds are understood.

 Kevin Carey directs the education policy program at New America. You can follow him on Twitter at @kevincarey1

Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success

From Teachers College Record

reviewed by Thomas D. Cox & Laurie O. Campbell — September 08, 2015

Title: Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success
Author(s): Thomas R. Bailey, Shanna Smith Jaggars, & Davis Jenkins
Publisher: Harvard University Press, Cambridge
ISBN: 0674368282, Pages: 304, Year: 2015
Search for book at Amazon.com

Community Colleges enroll approximately eight million students annually. Yet, the academic success of these students as determined by the completion of a four year degree is limited. A longitudinal examination of data beginning with students’ initial enrollment demonstrated that of the 7.2 million students who first indicated their goal was to earn a four year bachelor’s degree, six years later, less than three million students did. According to the research and experience of Thomas R. Bailey, Shanna Smith Jaggars and Davis Jenkins, authors of the book Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success, this lack of student success may be attributed to the organizational structure of traditional community colleges.

Throughout the book, the authors compare and contrast two community college models: the cafeteria model (status quo) and guided pathways model. First, within the cafeteria model, students are left to navigate which classes to take and when with minimal guidance or guidelines. Often the consequences of students’ decisions contribute to delays in completing a degree due to missed classes as a result of their self-service career guidance and planning. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges’ premise states that the current cafeteria-style community college model needs a redesign in order for students to finish community college quickly and efficiently. The authors’ proposed overhaul would encompass student registration through graduation for the purpose of providing students not only access to higher learning but ensuring completion and academic success.

Redesigning America’s Community Colleges provides a framework and strategies for reforming cafeteria model community colleges to guided pathways colleges. The introductory chapter establishes the history of community colleges and includes information related to funding and legislation. Chapter One establishes the need for the guided pathways model and introduces the concept of program mapping. Chapter Two discusses the cafeteria and guided pathways models in light of student services, registration, and progress monitoring. Chapter Three considers instruction and plans for providing content that is coherent and relevant to the course of study.  Chapters Four and Five focus on stakeholders including underserved students and the role of college faculty and staff in providing support.  Chapter Six includes the cost and economic considerations of the guided pathways model as well as financial projections. The concluding chapter provides concrete example of students’ viewpoints and experiences in both of these models.

The blend of research and practical application, the depth and breadth of the authors’ experience, and their passion for community college reform are foundational aspects that contribute to the significance of the book. The authors’ 60 years of collective experience teaching and researching community colleges contributes to the rich descriptions, observations and examples throughout the book. The authors’ assert that current initiatives, innovations, and programs at community colleges do not yield the desired outcomes of more students graduating in shorter periods of time. These outcome deficits seem to influence the sense of urgency indicated by the authors to consider adopting the guided pathways model for long term reform in community colleges.

Not only does the authors’ experience contribute to the text but their candor and straightforward approach adds credibility to the book’s message. For instance, in Chapter Six, the authors acknowledge that the guided pathways plan may increase the per-student-cost for education. Knowing that some may discount an idea that requires added cost, the authors present information and explain the rationale informing their predictions for the long-term consequences of not redesigning community colleges. The authors challenge policymakers to not only raise tuition to cover these increases but also consider other options.

The authors’ message is clear throughout the book beginning with the names of the two major models discussed. The words “guided pathways” evokes views of walking down a path with arms of encouragement and support upholding the learner. In contrast, the cafeteria model may conjure images of gray beans (no longer green), long lines, and no concept of what is ahead or how to craft a nutritious meal of what can be seen. In this view, self-service and choice do not contribute to an efficient or adequate community college experience.

One criticism of the text includes presenting only two community college models. The authors compel readers to consider their colleges solely in terms of the two models. The classification of community colleges into two broad categories without mentioning other possibilities may cause some readers not to consider the strategies and tips shared throughout the book applicable. Another criticism involves the writing. Sweeping comments are made throughout the book. Observations are generalized to all institutions, yet in reality the comments are only applicable to some. Even though the authors’ candor adds strength to the text it can be viewed as a weakness relative to some general and sweeping comments that may be too broad.

The authors acknowledge that research for the guided pathways model is limited and in its infancy. However, preliminary analysis of data from colleges that have adopted aspects of the guided pathways model holds promise for success. Several of these exemplars are highlighted in the book. The authors recognize the need for rigorous research to determine success, barriers, and provide evidence that would help more community colleges decide to adopt the guided pathways model.

Finally, while most readers of the book will be community college educators and administrators, similar personnel at four-year institutions as well as policymakers would benefit from reading this book to learn more tips and strategies to promote student success. The guided pathways model complemented by high quality curriculum maps, greater course structure, fewer degree choices, and more student support has the potential to reform community colleges while staying true to the commitment of educating all students in the local community at a reasonable cost. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success is a timely, well-researched book that should be read and discussed in light of the national call for community college reform. The goal of providing students direction and support to efficiently complete community college in a timely and cost effective manner is admirable and evident throughout the book.

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