Massachusetts Foundation Calls For Community College Overhaul

Last Friday at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Boston Foundation released The Case for Community Colleges: Aligning Higher Education and Workforce Needs in Massachusetts, a report offering a comprehensive set of recommendations for strategically revamping the Massachusetts community college system to better align it with the needs of a 21st-century workforce. The recommendations emerged from research by WSC and MassINC that illustrated the challenges facing the Massachusetts community college system and the features of effective community college systems in other states.

Critic Says Collegiate Learning Assessment Will Not Work

Measuring Learning

By Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International

This week’s InsideHigherEd.com article, CLA as ‘Catalyst for Change,’ talks about the seven-year project by the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) to use the CLA, or the Collegiate Learning Assessment, to measure learning in a test-bed of its member institutions. The purpose of the project is to help “propel” reform on campus through its findings and comparisons.

It is a noble idea. But it won’t work.

The CLA, created by contractor RAND Corporation, is a tool designed to measure what students have learned, on average, at institutions of higher education. So, think for a moment—given the grandeur of the American Higher Education System (corp?), the massive variation between colleges and universities, departments, satellites, and more—how can one instrument tell us the “value added” of students in higher education?

It can’t, and that’s the problem.

The CLA was created to measure value added before and after going to college. The problem is, naturally, the variance in institutions and programs is so wide, and the experiences so distant—even within one institution—one measure like the CLA is almost meaningless. There is no “average” learning effect in higher education, because everyone takes a different set of courses, from a different set of instructors, using different sets of resources. There is no “average” learning. And the CLA can’t pretend to be a measure of this learning.

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AEI Forum Provides New Perspectives On Postsecondary Problems And Solutions

From the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC

Participants:

ANDREW P. KELLY, AEI

ANDREW ROSEN, Kaplan

DIANE AUER JONES, Career Education Corporation

JEFF SELINGO, The Chronicle of Higher Education

ZAKIYA SMITH, White House Domestic Policy Council

Andrew Rosen, chairman and chief executive officer of Kaplan Inc. and author of “Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy,” discussed the role of for-profit institutions in higher education at an event at AEI on Wednesday. Rosen examined some misperceptions about for-profits and suggested they can serve a specific niche of students often ignored by traditional higher education institutions: middle-aged students who are often attending school while working full-time and raising children. Discussants Diane Auer Jones from Career Education Cooperation and Jeff Selingo from The Chronicle of Higher Education highlighted problems with the current state of higher education, such as rising costs, a diminished focus on vocational education programs and a failure to acknowledge all possible steps to success for adult learners. Zakiya Smith–a senior adviser for education at the White House–advocated for a more rational system of higher education in which students would be exposed to data to help them assess institutions and make informed decisions on higher education and student debt. Although panelists disagreed about federal control of student loans, they agreed America’s traditional higher education system is not well suited to serve a majority of today’s students. Rosen explained that for-profits have the potential to fill this void and establish themselves as staples of the American higher education landscape.

Secondary School Counselors Say Their Schools Inadequately Support Their Role In College Transition

Counselors say schools’ missions are misguided

By Jason Koebler

Middle and high school guidance counselors say they aren’t utilized effectively in their schools, according to a survey released yesterday by the College Board, the nonprofit organization behind Advanced Placement courses and the SAT college entrance exam.

The “2011 National Survey of School Counselors,” which included 1,327 middle school and 3,981 high school counselors, says that guidance counselors are among the most “highly valuable” professionals working in education, but that they are among the “least strategically deployed.” The survey is believed to be the largest ever of its kind.

Eighty-five percent of counselors said that schools should focus on preparing students to succeed in college and careers, but they believe American schools are failing to make those goals a top priority.

The US News & World Report

Website Helps Students Transfer Between Colleges

  One of most complex parts of college completion is the complex, confusing, and multiple barriers to transfering credits and satisfying requirements for majors. Often transfer agreements only pertain to a specific community college and a specific four year college major. Julia Murphy has compiled websites that will help students understand and navigate the transfer process.

   Murphy posted ( http://onlineuniversityrankings.org/2011/25-incredible-sites-to-learn-how-to-transfer-college-credits/ ). It’s called 25 Incredible Sites to Learn How to Transfer College Credits

No Difference In Earnings Between A Bachelors Or Technical Degree?

Guet Blogger: Sander Daniels

Today we released new data showing that service professionals with a bachelor’s degree earn no more than those with a technical college degree.

 We were really surprised when we saw this data – the graphs in our report should illustrate the findings pretty well.

We surveyed 12,000 entrepreneurs listed on our site. These are carpenters, wedding photographers, Hindi tutors, and all other kinds of local service professionals nationwide.

 As expected, the average hourly rate earned by these individuals rises with increasing educational achievement – except that those with an undergraduate degree earn exactly the same amount as those with just a technical college degree.

We’ve also included our estimates of the minimum amount spent by the current service sector workforce on undergraduate degrees potentially worth no more than technical college degrees.

8 Private Colleges Collect A Billion Dollars In Veterans’ Education Benefits

Eight for-profit
colleges collected a combined $1.02-billion in veterans’ education benefits
last year, about 23% of all of those benefits disbursed, according to a U.S.
Senate report. For those eight colleges, that’s a 159% increase
from the previous year. The report is part of an investigation of for-profit
higher-education companies by a Senate committee

California Community College Task Force Recommends Overhaul Of Enrollment And Student Services

A taskforce reporting
to the California Community Colleges’ Board of Governors has recommended
measures that will be a “move toward rationing access to community colleges,”
encouraging students to “take more responsibility for their education” and
community colleges to “prioritize the types of classes being offered.”

latimes.com

Colleges Need To Give High Schools Feedback On College Readiness

Anne Hyslop :Education Sector

Today, there is a growing agreement that students should leave high school “college- and career-ready.” But what does that mean? And how can high schools tell if they are meeting the goal? Data That Matters: Giving High Schools Useful Feedback on Grads’ Outcomes offers new research on states’ efforts to use career and college outcomes data.

First, the paper makes an important distinction between indicators of college readiness and actual evidence of readiness. High school data should include both. Indicators of college readiness are things that are measured while students are in high school, such as ACT or SAT scores, completion of AP or International Baccalaureate programs, completion of dual enrollment courses, graduation rates, and the like. These indicators are the ones most often reported as measures of college readiness because they are generally controlled by high schools and don’t require linking to postsecondary data. Evidence of college readiness, on the other hand, is taken from data collected after the student has left secondary education; it covers things like college enrollment, remediation, and persistence into a second year of college.

While states are getting better at collecting this vital information, they are not yet using the information in ways that could materially improve college preparation. Although 44 states report having systems with the potential to produce outcomes data from post-secondary, only 8 (Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wyoming) have taken the next step to provide high schools with feedback that allows them to make meaningful interventions.

Hyslop identifies four characteristics—the 4Ts—of the most successful college readiness reports. They must be:

• Transparent. When data is open and accessible, Hyslop says, “school officials can use it to build internal pressure, and parents, legislators, and others can use it to generate external pressure on high schools to improve.”
• Thorough. Reports should include multiple measures from all high schools in the state, and from all graduating classes.
• Timely. Information needs to be received quickly enough for schools to make needed changes.
• Tailored. “The more user-friendly the data is, the more likely it is to be tapped to improve instruction,” Hyslop points out.

Finally, career-related outcomes are even harder to track. Only 10 states report participation in career or technical education on their high school feedback reports—even though participation does not directly capture career readiness. High schools can get more meaningful and measurable information by collecting data on completion of vocational training, participation in apprenticeship programs, military enlistment, attainment of professional licenses or certifications, and future earnings by occupation. But only 10 states publicly report any of these outcomes at the school level, and just half of them report the outcomes directly on high school feedback reports.

Future Of Postsecondary Is Mobile And In Clouds

Speakers at the recent EduCause conference, an event dedicated to “the intelligent use of information technology” in education, put a spotlight on mobile, social, and cloud-based learning technologies. These offerings address the desire for “convenience, affordability, 24/7 access, and flexibility” that is driving the 21% growth in online post-secondary enrollment.
forbes.com