Females Exceed Males In College Success

Female high-school students are more likely to aspire to attend college than are their male counterparts, and the young women enroll in college, persist, and graduate from it at higher rates as well, according to a report by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Cost Of Postsecondary Student Attrition

New research from the Delta Cost Project at American Institutes for Research (AIR) addresses ways to measure and manage the institutional costs of student attrition. Defining attrition as the failure to obtain a certificate or degree from any type of institution-not just the institution of initial enrollment-the briefs find that roughly 20 percent of education and related spending in higher education results from attrition. Reducing attrition costs is both educationally effective (more students obtain degrees) and cost effective (due to efficiency gains resulting from reduced attrition). Each 20 percent reduction in attrition will increase degree or certificate production by 6 percent-a big step toward meeting national goals to increase educational attainment.  www.deltacostproject.org.

Highlights include:

• Attrition costs are much lower than the overall attrition rate. Roughly one third of all undergraduate students in public and private nonprofit institutions leave college without obtaining a degree or a certificate. However, attrition costs associated with these students amount to just 19 percent of education and related spending in higher education-slightly more than half as much as would be predicted based on the attrition rate alone.
• Most attrition is not caused by academic failure. Over 40 percent of attrition costs nationwide are attributable to students who leave with grade point averages in the A and B range. These are not students who are academic failures. In fact, attrition associated with poor academic performance (i.e., students leaving with C averages or below) accounts for just 15 percent of attrition costs.
• Attrition costs should not be measured at the institutional level, since most students graduate from institutions other than those in which they first enrolled. But institutions should pay attention to attrition and measure changes in student retention and progression to the degree.
• Attrition costs are highest for students who leave after several years. Spending on average for students who leave their institutions after one year is about $8,800 per student, compared to more than $40,000 for students who leave after three or more years of attendance.
• Attrition levels in higher education are similar to attrition levels in other industries. Attrition levels in higher education are not particularly unlike such patterns in other human capital intensive industries, such as the United States Army (about 30 percent of first-time enlistees do not complete their initial terms of service), or clinical research (where 30 percent of people leave before the completion of the research).

More Secondary Students Complete Calculus But Not Much Achievement Gap Closing

A recently-entered research study investigates the consequences of academic intensification for social stratification in American high schools, particularly focusing on inequalities in access to higher-level math courses such as calculus. The authors found that, rather than eliminating the tiered and socially unequal track structure of American high schools, the trend toward academic intensification over the past several decades has reproduced that hierarchy at a more advanced level.

Source:ECS

7 Strategies For Dealing With A Tough Professor

Guest blogger: Florine Church

(http://www.onlineclasses.org/2012/09/17/7-strategies-for-dealing-with-a-tough-professor/).

Note by Michael Kirst- These look sensible to me, but I wonder what your reaction is to the specific ideas.

Academic Coaching Can Improve College Success

ACADEMIC COACHING: SEEKING A WINNING STRATEGY
Academic coaching is becoming an integral formula for recruitment and retention, especially for minority and first-generation students who may need additional support to thrive in a collegiate setting.According to a recent study funded by Stanford University, InsideTrack reportedly has improved retention and graduation rates by 10 to 15 percent and is more cost-effective than previously studied interventions. The study was conducted by Eric Bettinger, an associate professor at Stanford’s School of Education. It compared the academic records of more than 13,500 students, half of whom had received coaching, and half of whom hadn’t. He found that freshmen in the coached group were 15 percent more likely to still be in school 18 to 24 months later. The article is in Diverse: Issues In Higher Education and provide to me by Carnegie Foundation.

Two Thirds Of Secondary School Students Use Social Media To Find Colleges

Social Networks and College Choices
“These days, it’s not uncommon for a university to have at least a Facebook page, a Twitter handle, and a YouTube account – maybe even a Pinterest page and a Tumblr, too. But a recent survey shows that for recruiting purposes, the number of social media accounts might not be nearly as important as what colleges and universities do with the technology. About two-thirds of high school students use social media to research colleges, and more than one-third of those students use social media to help decide where to enroll, according to a survey conducted by Zinch, an online scholarship- and school-matching service run by Chegg, and Inigral, a tech company that focuses on student engagement online.”
insidehighered.com

California Community Colleges Stagger From State Aid Reductions

This is part of the context causing the growth of  California for profit colleges in yesterdays blog-by Carla Rivera/Los Angeles Times

Marianet Tirado returned to Los Angeles Trade Tech community college this fall, optimistic that she would get into the classes she needs to transfer to a four-year university. Of the courses she wanted, only two had space left when she registered in May. She enrolled in those and “crashed” others. In one of those cases, she lucked out when the professor teaching a political science class admitted additional students. But she couldn’t get into a biology class because she was too far down on the waiting list. If the math and English courses she needs aren’t offered next spring, she may have to push back her plans to apply to San Francisco State, UCLA or USC. Her mother is puzzled that Tirado may spend three or four years at what is supposed to be a two-year college. “Because that’s what we think community college is,” said Tirado, 24, a journalism major who lives in Watts. “It’s hard to explain to my mom that I’m trying to go to school but the courses are not there.” This is the new reality for Tirado and about 2.4 million other students in the nation’s largest community college system. The system is the workhorse of California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, which promised affordability, quality and access to all. In reality, the state’s two-year colleges are buckling under the stress of funding cuts, increased demand and a weak record of student success. (more)

For Profit Colleges Grow Significantly In Fiscally Stressed California

Guest Blogger : Su Jin Jez, Professor Of Public Policy, Sacramento State

In a recent article in the California Journal of Politics and Policy, I highlight the prominent role that for-profits play in California higher education.  Enrollments at for-profit institutions in California have grown rapidly over the past ten years.  In 2000, fewer than 100,000 students attended a for-profit, but by their peak in 2009, nearly 400,000 students had enrolled at a for-profit – second to the California Community Colleges in student enrollment, but enrolling more students than the University of California, California State University, or private non-profits.  (However, in 2010, for-profit enrollment dropped to below 300,000 – this may be random shifts in enrollment, or, more likely, decreased demand due to the negative press regarding for-profit institutions).   Not only are for-profits enrolling a large number of students, they’re issuing a large proportion of the state’s undergraduate awards.   They issued about one in five of the state’s long-term certificates, associate’s degrees, and bachelor’s degrees.  These awards represent 56% of the state’s long-term certificates, 17% of the state’s associate’s degrees, and 7% of the bachelor’s degrees.

Given the capacity issues at public colleges and universities, California should rethink the way it views and approaches for-profit institutions.  The current political environment demonizes for-profits.  Not to say that they haven’t done plenty to be demonized for, but it’s time for state policymakers to start thinking about how for-profits can help the state rather than focusing on how to minimize the harm that they can do.

Read the full article here for details on for-profit certificate and degree production and my suggestions for state policy in creating a role for for-profits in California: 

http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/cjpp.2012.4.issue-2/cjpp-2012-0010/cjpp-2012-0010.xml?format=INT

Adjunct College Faculty: An Overview Of Their Status And Uses

From Tim Handorf

Bestcollegesonline.com recently  shared  an article “25 Telling Facts About Adjunct Faculty Today”  that was recently published on their blog at http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2012/09/17/25-telling-facts-about-adjunct-faculty-today/

It is difficult to get an overview of adjunct faculty in one place, and I found this useful.

Redesign Of Remedial Community College Math Yields Impressive Results

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s two newly developed community college mathematics pathways, Quantway™  and Statway™, have demonstrated promising results in their initial implementation during academic year 2011-12. The original goal was to double the proportion of community college students earning college-level math credit within one year, an essential milestone for students who must have that credit to continue to further academic study.  This target was far surpassed in just the first year.

Compared to previous developmental math students from their institutions, the 1,131 students enrolled in Statway™ dramatically increased the success rate of passing a college-level math course (with a grade of C or better). Working with institutional researchers at the colleges, Carnegie established baseline performance network-wide. Typically in the Carnegie network colleges, only 6 percent of developmental math students achieved college math credit within one year and only 16.6 percent of students achieved this goal within three years. In contrast, in the first year of Statway™ implementation, 52 percent achieved this milestone. In other words, Statway™ students more than tripled the success rate in one third of the time.

Quantway™ achieved comparable results. The first semester of Quantway™ was launched this spring serving 573 students in eight colleges. Of those students, 54 percent earned a grade of C or better. Because the first semester of Quantway™ can roughly be thought of as a replacement for the combination of elementary and intermediate algebra, Carnegie compared Quantway™ results to baseline data gathered from the same institutions from those courses. Baseline data indicate that only 8 percent of the developmental math students complete a college-level math class in the first year. Assuming 10 percent attrition between terms and the same pass rate in the second term as in the first term, Quantway™ is on track to achieve a 26 percent success rate, which is more than triple the baseline success rate.