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

HOW TO GET IN WRITING MODE AFTER SUMMER: TIPS FOR STUDENTS

BY JANICE KERSH

As we all know, summer is the time to relax. For many students, this means turning off our brains completely and only writing tweets and Instagram captions. Even if you planned to have an extremely productive summer, reading books relevant to your education, you probably ended up by the pool somewhere, reading a blog post.

Well, the new semester is only a few weeks away, and nothing is as important as impressing your new professors early on. Here’s how you reset your beach brain and kick your writing into gear so you can dazzle everyone with the very first thing you write this year:

Start with the basics. Remember all that stuff that you learned in school about essay composition and mapping it out before you put pen to paper? Time to brush up on it. If you’ve forgotten everything you’ve ever been taught, a good rule of thumb is to divide your essay into thirds, each with a singular mission: describing a phenomenon, dissecting it from your perspective and discerning what the implications of it are.

Review what you’ve written before. Hopefully, you’re not one of those people who delete everything they’ve written during the semester once finals are over. Read the work you’ve submitted in the past and look at the feedback you got on it. What do you want to change? If you were writing the same thing now, what would you do differently? Look at the feedback you received once more and note what issues keep coming up again and again.

Remind yourself what proper sourcing means. When you’re making a point, which is essential in a college essay, always remember to have at least one significant source. A great way to please your professor is having one of each: an expert opinion, a reputable study, and a historical example or analogy. And try to avoid the common mistake of just following your sources’ outline. This usually results in something that reads as a list of things tied together by “and then…”.

Remember the motive. In college, you’re probably writing because it’s your homework assignment, but that’s not where good writing comes from. Before starting your outline and even before you start compiling sources, think about the things you want to accomplish, what point of view you want to show and how you want to show it. A good essay is someone’s original thought framed by some expertise in the subject, backed up by good sources and framed by strong argumentation. Some jokes wouldn’t hurt, either, but use them sparringly.

Learn how to read something closely. The best writers are attentive readers, so commit some time to learning how to read in a way that would be productive to your work. Take out a book, pick up a pencil and underline everything that strikes you as interesting, surprising or useful. Look for useful patterns like repetitions, contradictions or similarities and see if their combination tells you anything.

Get inspired. Even motivated writers need to look for something to drive them from time to time. Pick out a few authors whose work you are fond of and mine the Interned for previously undiscovered work of theirs (trust me, there’s always something). I guarantee that, after reading the work of someone you admire, your motivation will revitalize.

Write a practice essay. No doubt, there’s a story in the news right now that’s getting your attention. After brushing up on everything you’re supposed to remember before college starts, put it to good use and solidify your knowledge by writing a practice essay. Look at how writing without all that pressure treats you and you might even enjoy writing, who knows? Maybe it won’t be such a labor now that you don’t have to write for a grade. And if it doesn’t go so well, just remember the advice most professional writers give to people who are just starting out: the only way to become a good writer is to write more bad stuff.

Hopefully, this guide will be helpful to all you students getting ready to start the semester in a productive way. In any case, nothing you do will be better for your writing than reading constantly and thinking about what you read. Ask any professional writer and they’d tell you the same thing.

Janice Kersh is a blogger, writing expert at http://essaywriter.pro/ and freelance writer with 4+ years of experience. She helps students and young authors to develop their writing skills and provides tips for editing and thorough research. Follow her on Twitter.

Things every new student entrepreneur should pay attention to

By Melissa Burns
College students of 2015 can obviously be named the generation Z. It is a completely new generation of people born and raised in the era of rapid development of technology and the “business out of the air.” Generation Z fundamentally differs from students who were before them. However, there is still something in common between them. So as college students before 2000, the college students after 2000 dream of success in their lives. However, if previously success could be marked by a degree, well paid job in a company and full social package, nowadays all of this is just a bonus to real success. Young people no longer dream to work for Coca-Cola or on Wall Street. Now they want to have their own business. Despite the fact that huge corporations don’t lose their positions we can watch the booming of small business, too. The main axiom of a young small business in 2015 is “do something small, but be the best in it!”

This explains the huge number of startups, which is growing rapidly every year. It will not be a mistake if we say that almost every third student wants to start a small business. Is there any universal advice that will help them with this difficult matter in 2015?

So, to navigate your future career, students need to know about:

Ability to use free Internet tools

Indeed, it can be very useful. After starting business while in college, it is very unlikely that a student will posses enough money to pay for customized web design, promotion, advertising and other costs. A little time spent on the internet will help you to find for example websitebuilder.com that is a free website builder service, or a platform for online marketing. Another great way to claim yourself is to write a guest post in the quality authoritative blog. The ability to search for free options will help to save money, and that is always useful.

Motivation

In order to start a business and achieve some success in it, you will need a powerful motivation. And this motivation should concern not only the desire to make money. It should encourage you to assess your business skills correctly, find out the niche in which your idea will be best implemented. It is necessary to develop a stellar business plan, and even if it is perfect at a first glance, you must not shun and do amendments if it is necessary. Flexibility and the ability to evolve helped people to survive in wild nature, and the same happens to businessmen in business.

Continuous self-development

Efforts should be made to engage in competitors’ research, so that no area would be left unknown. Adequate assessment of your competitors success can bring fresh ideas to your own business. Also try not to miss any trading shows personally. Another good advice is not to reject the help of a mentor. Even if you think that you have made a perfect business plan and started to implement it, it does not mean that the advice of an experienced person in this field will not make your plan better. Learn to listen.

Conclusion: believe in your success and do not give up at the first fall. Most of all, you’ll learn about business only by being involved in it, not sitting at a lecture by Professor with a textbook on economics. Trial and error has always been the best teacher.

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

Pell Grants Go To Dropouts, Over 850 Colleges Drop SAT/ACT

Let the Best Assignment Writing Tools Make You a Better Student!

BY ROBERT MORRIS

Can you think of a student who loves writing assignments for college? If some of your classmates are enthusiastic about different projects, they have probably found the right online tools and apps that help them research and write with no obstacles. Fortunately, you can do the same!

This list of the 8 effective assignment writing tools will help you cover all stages of the writing process with ease.

Assignment Survival Kit

This tool has a noble goal: enabling freshmen to complete their first assignments with success. Staffordshire University tries to develop digitally and technologically literate graduates, and the Assignment Survival Kit contributes towards that mission. The software helps you plan your time and tackle the assignment step by step. You enter the date when you start working on the project, as well as the deadline, and you get an assignment schedule for the steps you need to cover.

Creating Successful Research Skills Assignments – Penn Libraries

This online resource offers detailed explanations about a particular type of assignments: research papers. You will understand the purpose of these projects, you’ll get example assignments, and tips for creating your own content.

Assignment Help

You need something more than advice and tips when you’re working on a particularly challenging assignment? You can hire professional Aussie writers at this website. When you submit an order, you’ll start collaborating with an expert from the appropriate field of study. The direct messaging system enables you to monitor the progress of your assignment and see how a talented author crafts content from scratch. The customer support agents are available 24/7, so you can get all needed information before placing the order.

Writing – Study Guides and Strategies

Many students don’t like reading essay writing guides; they think they will develop these skills intuitively. That won’t happen. You need to know which stages to cover before you get to the flawless paper. At this website, you’ll find a detailed explanation of the process and types of writing. In addition, you’ll also get links to helpful guides that can help you write better.

Time4Writing

Your teachers are not explaining the essay writing process well? Maybe you need to learn from someone who is more interested in helping you become a successful academic writer. This online service enables you to learn from a certified teacher for a really affordable price. You’ll get quick and honest feedback that will enable you to write better assignments in a shorter period of time.

Encyclopedia

This is the perfect website to rely on when searching for trusted reference information. The search engine launches information from trusted sources, such as encyclopedias, thesauruses and dictionaries. When you locate materials you can use, Encyclopedia will enable you to get an instant citation in MLA, Chicago, and APA style.

Simplenote

Every great assignment starts with detailed planning. This note-taking app will help you track your thoughts and ideas on the go. You cannot plan when to get ideas, so this smartphone app is very useful for every student. You’ll be able to find notes by the tags you attached to them. The best part is that Simplenote is a collaborative tool – it enables you to publish your thoughts and get feedback.

iA Writer

This iPad app enables you to write on a distraction-free screen. Your attention won’t be consumed by unnecessary features, so the writing and editing processes will be much more focused and effective. Your content will be automatically synced to Dropbox and iCloud, so you won’t have to worry about losing your work.

The most important thing you need to remember is that assignment writing is not as difficult as it seems. Your professors are not trying to make your life miserable with these project; they are teaching you how to become more focused, attentive to details, and able to express your ideas with authoritative arguments. Now that you found the right tools, you can finally meet their expectations.

Author bio:

Robert Morris has worked in education for over 7 years as a teacher, school newspaper adviser, literacy consultant, curriculum writer. He provides teaching and learning materials

Regulation For An Unbundled World: Nano, Stackable Degrees

Moving beyond college: Rethinking higher education regulation for an unbundled world

Michael B. Horn and Andrew P. Kelly

Key points

• New “unbundled” higher education providers with modular, low-cost offerings powered by technology have begun to emerge, but they are constrained by the higher education regulatory system’s reliance on the traditional bundled model.
• Policymakers could set up a path for these providers to receive federal aid in exchange for enhanced transparency on outcomes and cost, use independent authorizers to approve new providers and hold them accountable, or establish a market-entry regime based on labor-market outcomes and student satisfaction relative to an institution’s total expenditures.
• Policymakers could also develop new financing approaches that may reduce taxpayer risk. They could require new providers to put up private capital to become eligible for federal aid and reimburse them if they exceed agreed-upon outcome targets or utilize tools like need-based grants and income-share agreements to spread risk across students and investors.
• Policymakers may also simply wait for this emerging market to mature on its own and let consumer demand and competition drive innovation, though this pathway is slow and uncertain.

Read this publication online.

View a printable copy.

Few Parents Know About Substantial Changes In The SAT

New York, NY (August 24, 2015)—A Kaplan Test Prep survey finds that 85% of parents of college-bound students are still unaware that the SAT is changing, even after two years since the change was announced and less than seven months before the new SAT launches in March 2016.* When provided more details about the proposed changes to the SAT, the surveyed parents’ opinions about the new format were divided: 30% say they viewed the changes as something negative or think the exam will be harder; 30% view the changes as something positive; 20% are indifferent; and 15% still don’t know enough to form an opinion. However, views on specific changes reveal that a majority of parents believe the new SAT will be harder:

• Math: The current SAT focuses on computational skills and allows students to use a calculator during all sections. The new SAT will focus on advanced algebra, data analysis, and real-world problem solving and calculators will only be permitted for one of two math sections. Fifty-six (56%) percent of parents say these changes make the Math portion of the new SAT harder; 18% say it will become easier; and 26% say it makes no difference.
• Reading: The current SAT Reading section includes three 20-25 minute sections of sentence completions, and long- and short-passage reading questions. The new SAT Reading section will last 65 minutes and be made up of long passages followed by reading comprehension questions and will also test understanding of passages from U.S. and World Literature, History/Social Science and Science. Fifty-three (53%) percent of parents say the redesigned SAT Reading section will be harder than the current one; 12% say it will become easier; and 36% say it makes no difference.
• Writing and Language/Grammar: The current SAT tests grammar in the form of individual sentence correction. The new SAT will test grammar in the form of passages and will also include questions about structure and reading comprehension. Fifty-three (53%) percent of parents say the Writing and Language/Grammar portion of the new SAT will become harder; 13% say it becomes easier; and 34% say it makes no difference.
• Essay: The current SAT essay is required, and asks students to develop a persuasive essay about an issue; facts and grammar have little bearing on the overall score. The new SAT essay is optional, and asks students to read a 650-750 word passage and then prepare a facts-based essay analyzing how the author builds her/his argument. Sixty (60%) percent of parents say the SAT essay will become harder; 15% say the essay will become easier; and 25% say it makes no difference.

No Wrong Answer Penalty: The current SAT includes a ¼ point penalty for wrong answers. The new SAT eliminates the wrong answer point penalty. Fifty-six (56%) percent of parents say this change will make the new SAT easier; 22% say the change will make it harder; and 23% say it makes no difference