Alternative income ideas for college students

By Sylvia Kohl

If you are a college student, you are probably not satisfied with your budget. There are so many things that you need for college, but you likely lack the money to buy most of them. The good news is that there are alternative sources of income that can help you improve your purchasing power. According to many experts, the best idea is to find a part-time job on campus so that you won’t spend much time and money traveling and you will have a chance to organize your time as efficiently as possible. We all know how difficult it is to establish work-study-life balance, so finding a job like this should be your priority. Now let’s highlight some of the jobs you can find in most colleges.

First of all, the vast majority of colleges have gyms and health clubs and this may be a great place to find a job. These fitness centers need employees who will work at the counter or take care of the gym equipment and machines and little (or no) experience is necessary to succeed at these tasks. In case you are a fit person with experience in the fitness world you may be able to earn even more. Many college gyms and fitness centers accept students who want to work as trainers/instructors and provide aerobics classes or one-on-one training sessions.

Another interesting job that can improve your income is computer system assistance or a tech support job. Universities and colleges will be glad employ students that have experience in the field of information technology and modern technology in general. Of course, you should not expect to get a regular salary, but this is a great way to earn some money and improve your experience and knowledge. This is also a great job for anyone studying IT.

Those interested in more quiet and relaxed jobs can try some of the many available library jobs. Even though these jobs are relaxed this doesn’t mean that you will spend the entire day hanging out, checking and gathering books.

There are many college students who are not aware of the benefits of the dormitory desk attendant job. This high paying job takes place in an environment that you already now and helps you bond with your colleagues which will certainly pay off in the future.

Finally, there is another option for earning money that doesn’t require traveling. Of course, we are talking about making money online. There are many ways in which college students can make money. For instance, some of them experiments with foreign exchange trading over the internet – for that you’ll need to find a reliable forex broker first, others create blogs and websites and make money as affiliates or from the ads they post while some of them work as freelancers.

As you can see, there are many alternative income ideas for college students and most of them don’t require much time and effort.

Author’s bio:

Sylvia Kohl is IT teacher with more than 7 years of professional experience. Her main spheres of interest are e-education and beta-testing. This writer chose news about the increasing role of IT usage in colleges and schools as the most common topic for her articles.

Remedial Reforms Not Scaled Up By Colleges

Experiencing Developmental Education

Colleges are working to improve remedial education — and have found success in doing so — but have yet to introduce promising reforms at a large scale, finds new report.

10 Cool Stuff Every College Student Must Have

By Jane Hurst

When it comes to going off to college, there are certain things that you are going to need to buy. Then, there are cool stuff that you will really want to buy. As long as you keep your budget in check, there is really no reason for you to not get these cool things. You can either buy them yourself, or put them on your wish lists for future birthday and Christmas gifts. Here are 10 of the coolest things that every college student must have.
1. Portable Scanner – Sometimes, you will need to scan documents for your research. Do it anywhere with the Iriscan Executive Book 3. It can slide over any page and digitize it, sending it to your SD card. There is also WiFi support, so you can send documents to other devices.
2. Keyless Bluetooth Padlock – Never worry about misplacing padlock keys ever again. This lock uses your Bluetooth mobile device instead of keys, and it is easy to use. It is compatible with Android and iOS, and offers sharing and tracking technology.
3. Portable Door Lock – This keeps nosy landlords and neighbors out, and it can be installed in most doors in just a few seconds. Have privacy without changing locks, which most landlords won’t allow in the first place. This is great for traveling to use on hotel rooms.
4. Flash Drive Pack – The Gigs 2 Go Flash Drive Pack should also be on your list of cool things to buy. It is durable, shockproof, waterproof, and you don’t need to cap it for protection. This is awesome for sharing large files.
5. Foldable Whiteboard – Create presentations, sketch, and write on a whiteboard that can be folded down to the size of a note pad. It even comes with a travel bag, and a built-in eraser. This is great for artists, mathematicians and even for professors.
6. Flexible Lunch Bag – Sometimes you want to carry a lunch that won’t fit inside a traditional lunch bag. A Compleat FoodSkin Flexible Lunchbox is the solution. You can pack different types of foods, while not looking like an idiot with a lunchbox.
7. 5-Way Headphone Splitter – You and four friends can listen to your favorite tunes when you use the Rockstar 5-Way Headphone Splitter. You won’t need to use tiny, raspy speakers to listen to great music. You can even use this to listen to class presentations for study sessions if you are so inclined (this is a cool gadget that will help you do better in class if you use it for more than just listening to tunes).
8. Collapsible Storage Container – There are going to be times when you need to move stuff, but don’t know what to do with the crates when you are done. Save those crates. Use Clever Crates Collapsible Grated Storage Containers that fold to a small size for easy storage. These are great for doing laundry, shopping for groceries, etc.
9. Cordless Jumping Rope – If you don’t have a lot of time to exercise but still want a complete workout, jumping rope is the best way to get it. Instead of carrying around a bulky jumping rope, check out the Digital Cordless Jumping Rope. You can use it anywhere without worrying about knocking anything over with a rope and it will track the number of jumps based on your weight and height.
10. LG Rolly Bluetooth Keyboard – Finally, check out the keyboard that you can roll up and put in your bag. There are no wires, looks very stylish and you can take it anywhere. It uses Bluetooth to connect to whatever device you are working from, and is super-easy to store.

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. Follow Jane on Twitter!

5 Must-Have Academic Apps for Students

By Melissa Burns

Today it sometimes feels weird how people in general and students in particular managed to lead their everyday lives without the assistance of all the apps that are now accompanying them every minute of their existence. However, no matter how useful they are, their proliferation leads to certain problems – first of them being that there are so many of them it is often hard to choose anything in particular. This article aims to help you out in this respect.

1.    Scribd

For a humble fee of $8.99 a month Scribd gives you access to millions documents, papers and books on all topics and disciplines – effectively, the largest library in the world becomes, quite literally, at hand. This treasure-trove of information can be easily organized and classified according to your needs, and you can create your libraries with all the books, articles, publications and notes you need.

2.    SHAREit

This one is indispensable for students working on projects in groups and may be useful in a number of other situations – for example, when you have certain materials and need to share them with your entire class without sending them individually to each and every one of them. SHAREit will help you do it quickly, easily and comfortably, as it is probably the fastest and certainly the most convenient file-sharing app currently on the market. Although originally an Android app, it has versions for iOS, Windows Phone and Windows PC, so you may be sure nobody is going to be left out.

3.    CliffsNotes

CliffsNotes has been created specifically for students who have to read and analyze a great deal of literature. It contains information on every character, plot arc and underlying theme of a vast number of books, guaranteeing that you will never forget how that particular character was named and what exactly the author meant in this particular fragment.

4.    EasyBib

Perhaps organizing citation pages is not the most challenging and difficult task in academic writing, but it certainly is the most annoying, time-consuming and boring one. You have to gather information on every source you used, write it down in a very specific way (and don’t forget that there are multiple citation formats, each with its own idiosyncrasies) and make sure it is correct up to the last comma. EasyBib takes most of this work off your hands – simply enter the book’s name, and it will provide a citation in the right format.

5.    Self Control

If you absolutely must maintain concentration on your studies for a while but don’t trust yourself not to start playing with your phone and surfing through social networks, then Self Control is for you. Select apps and websites to ban, set the amount of time you are going to be working, and go ahead – Self Control will block all the distractions for the period you’ve specified.

It is true that students face new challenges every day; but it is equally true that modern technology makes them more palatable. We hope these apps are going to help you out.

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. – See more at: https://collegepuzzle.stanford.edu/?p=4955#sthash.Unf28FUO.dpuf

   

– See more at: https://collegepuzzle.stanford.edu/?p=5066#sthash.18vnRJBv.dpuf

My Nomination For Best Paper Defining College Readiness

pearsoned.com/readiness-paper

On Track: Redefining Readiness in Education and the Workplace

A paper on the convergence of three readiness paradigms. Readiness tools and strategies have become so abundant that school systems, higher education institutions, and employers may find it difficult to determine which metrics provide the biggest upside, and which will be less useful. This paper cuts through the noise by contrasting three readiness paradigms that not only assess strengths and weaknesses at multiple stages in learners’ lives, but also generate actionable interventions to help learners progress toward their goAuthors:

 

MATTHEW N. GAERTNER, PH.D.

College Readiness Index for Middle School Students

Center for College & Career Success

Pearson

 

DAVID T. CONLEY, PH.D.

Conley Readiness Index

EdImagine

University of Oregon

 

PAUL G. STOLTZ, PH.D.

GRIT Framework

PEAK Learning, Inc.

 

 

 

Living Far Away From Colleges Hurts Students Opportunities

College Enrollment
Geography matters when picking a college
Most public college students enroll within 50 miles of home, so location is more influential than policymakers think, a new study finds. And the farther students live from any particular college, the less likely they are to enroll.

College Data Systems Cannot Answer Crucial Questions

Statement By Gates Foundation

In an era of escalating costs and uncertain outcomes, it is imperative that prospective students, policymakers, and the public have answers to commonsense questions about whether and which colleges and programs offer a quality education at an affordable price. At present, we still lack answers to critical questions, including: ·

How many “post-traditional” students—the low-income, first-generation, adult, transfer, and part-time students who make up the new majority on today’s campuses—attend college? Do they reach graduation and how long does it take them? · Are students making sufficient progress toward timely completion, particularly students who enter with less academic preparation or fewer financial resources? · Do the students who don’t graduate transfer to other colleges and earn credentials, or do they drop out completely? · How much debt are students accumulating from the college(s) they attend—and can they repay their loans? · Are students gaining employment in their chosen field after attending college, and how much do they earn? · How much are students learning from their college experience, and how are they using their knowledge and skills to contribute to their communities? 1

The metrics published today often only include “traditional” students and ignore the new normal in higher education: “post-traditional” students attending college—or colleges—in new ways en route to their credentials. Colleges and universities, and the data systems that support them, must adjust to and reflect the experiences and outcomes of all students, not just the outdated “traditional” student profile. It’s time for a system reboot. And we need only look to leading institutions and states for the operating manual.

In Defense Of College Humanities

By Danika McClure

Last month, Kentucky governor, Matt Bevin, told reporters that he wants to reprogram the state’s higher education funds, offering more money to public universities which produce higher numbers of STEM graduates, and less to schools who produce liberal arts graduates. With this shift, the newly elected governor hopes to solve the state’s notable workforce problem.

“There will be more incentives to electrical engineers than French literature majors,” Bevin told the Associated Press, when announcing his state spending proposal. “All the people in the world that want to study French literature can do so, they are just not going to be subsidized by the taxpayer.”

His proposal has come across to many as hypocritical, given that Bevin received an undergraduate degree in Japanese and East Asian studies from Washington and Lee University, a private, liberal arts institution. But beyond that obvious hypocrisy, there are many that believe that Governor Bevin has a brash misunderstanding of what makes a college education valuable.

At the center of the debate is the question of whether subsidized higher education benefits society solely for its vocational outcomes, as opposed to a less tangible, but potentially just as important factor of a well-rounded education that creates broad thinkers rather than simply preparing them for a specific job.

The escalating cost of education has led many to question whether or not they should attend college in the first place. As such, Americans are looking at their individual tuition ROI, and questioning the purpose of non-career oriented learning. As such, liberal arts education has been branded as a waste of time and money.

In an interview with EvoLLution, Boston University professor Jay Halfond speaks to the dangers of this line of thinking, stating, “In my view, it is dangerous and even corrupting to proceed down a path that shows that higher education ensures lucrative jobs soon after graduation. But we need to do a far better job demonstrating the relevance of a broad, general education, while linking what we teach to what is critical in the professional world.”

Education that is rooted in the liberal arts teaches students a variety of marketable skills, chief among them precise communication skills, appreciation of creative expression, the ability to think critically and consider historical and cultural perspectives.. By focusing on excluding funding for academic studies which don’t directly enhance workforce development, many believe Bevin shows a lack of understanding of the role of higher education in the American workforce.

“The objective of public universities should not be to produce predetermined numbers of particular types of majors but, rather, to focus on how to produce individuals who are capable of learning anything over the course of their lifetimes” Arizona State University President Michael Crow writes in an article on Slate. “Every college student should acquire thorough literacy in science and technology as well as the humanities and social sciences.  “

Through a liberal arts education, students become literate in a variety of different disciplines, which prepares them not only for a lifetime of learning, but additionally gives them the skills necessary to adapt in any given career path. Crow notes later that with the professional sector being so interconnected, students will need to learn a variety of skill sets in order to be able to adapt in a rapidly changing world.

The governor is correct in one matter: America is facing a STEM crisis, and the need to advance STEM education ought not be understated. Continued scientific discovery and technological advancement is imperative to America’s position in the global economy, and educators should emphasize the importance of increasing students’ literacy in these areas.

That said, there are other complex issues which confront our country, issues which will require expertise in more than just technology and science. America’s future also relies on people who are capable of engaging in civil discourse with world leaders, people who are able influence public policy, and people who create innovative art. These are skills which won’t necessarily be obtained by taking a course load full of only science and math classes.

“At the end of the day the objective of our universities, both public and private, should be to create teaching, learning, and discovery environments capable of producing learners of the highest caliber,” Crow added, emphasizing the importance of students learning the skills necessary to adapt to a variety of work environments, where they can “unleash and utilize their innate capacities and creative potential.”

Students who learn these skill sets will be able to apply them not only to careers in science and technology, but will allow them to establish new business enterprises, create social change, and stimulate creative innovation in a variety of sectors of our economy.

If universities stick to the mission of creating “learners of the highest caliber”, the next wave of economic innovation might come from a French literature major.

Danika McClure is a writer and musician from the northwest who sometimes takes a 30 minute break from feminism to enjoy a tv show. You can follow her on twitter @sadwhitegrrl

 

10 Tools for Writing a College Application Essay

 

 

By Anna Olinger

Your college application essay is one of the most important essays you will ever write. Not only will it determine whether or not you are accepted into your choice college, but it also might affect scholarships and financial aid. It’s essential that you put a lot of time into the process. These websites will help you write a killer admissions essay!

1. Shmoop: College 101

This collection of well-written college admissions essays is divided into categories like “emotional hardship,” “no one special,” and “Minority.” You can read through the essays to get an idea of how to structure your ideas or to gain inspiration.

2. NY Times Admission Letter Advice

In this article, Martha C. Merrill, the dean of admissions and financial aid at Connecticut College, offers her professional insight to help you write a winning application and admission essay. Among her pieces of advice, she recommends that students write about themselves and focus on a mundane activity or event.

3. Essays Capital

Essays Capital is a custom writing service that can help you write a great admissions essay. There are a lot of essay writing services to choose from. Essays Capital differentiates itself by incorporating your preferences and ideas into the text. They also take the time to get to know your writing style and tone, so the finished product sounds like you wrote it.

4. The Writing Center

The Writing Center offers a step-by-step guide to writing a great college application. The site is broken into categories, beginning with how to select a thesis and basic research principles, and culminating in a conclusion that will leave an impact on the reader.

5. Essays That Worked

John Hopkins University put out this list of the best admissions essays from the class of 2019. The eight essays vary widely by topic, but they are all engaging, interesting, and well-crafted.

6. Writing.com

Writing.com is a community for writers of all types. Create a profile, and upload your essay to get feedback from other members. You can also use the site to enter contests, and access writing tools and resources.

7. College Papers For Sale

Are you stressing about writing your admissions essay? Would you like some assistance from a professional writing service? College Papers for Sale might be the answer. The service can provide a high-quality admissions essay based on the message you would like to share with the reader. Prices start at $19.99 for a one-page essay.

8. Top 141 Successful College Essays

This comprehensive list of college admissions essays is a wonderful resource for anyone looking for inspiration or guidance. Each essay includes the school for which it was written. You could honestly spend hours on this site, captivated with the compelling stories contained within the essays. You’re bound to find something similar to your own story; you can start there and see where your imagination takes you.

9. Spark Notes Sample Essays

In case you haven’t yet had your fill of winning college essays, you can find more of them here! These have the added benefit of including the original essay prompt as provided by the school.

10. Writing The College Application Essay

This is an excellent guide to writing the perfect college admission essay. It divides the writing process into four steps: brainstorming, writing, revising for style, and revising for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. It further expounds on each step to walk you through the process in a simple and easy to understand manner.

Now that you have the tools to help you succeed, it’s time to get started. Find a great study space, set aside a few hours, and get started on your outline. Your future is waiting!

Anna Olinger is a freelance content manager from Washington, DC. To learn more tips on content marketing, writing and social media follow Anna on Twitter and Linkedin.

 

 

High School Diplomas and Career and College Readiness: Time to Get Serious

By Marc Tucker, education week

In my last blog, I said that I would begin a series of blogs intended for states that decide they want an education system second to none in the world. This blog lays out a proposal for a high school diploma that really means something, one that signifies that the graduate who holds that diploma is ready to succeed in the first year of most state two-year and four-year colleges, and is therefore ready for both college and career, since most serious career education these days takes place in our community colleges. I will also show how once this new high school diploma is in place, it can be used to build an accountability system that holds our schools accountable for student performance, holds our students accountable for taking tough courses and working hard in school, and includes features designed expressly to improve student performance across the board.

These two key policies embedded within my proposal, one dealing with what it takes to graduate from high school and the other with the accountability of both students and their teachers for their performance, are two sides of one coin.  One defines what adequate performance means in very clear terms and the other provides strong incentives for both faculty and students to perform at the required levels.  In my mind, the drive to create an education system set to global standards begins right here. You cannot design a high-performance system unless you know what it is intended to achieve.  Nor can any student reach the standard or any teacher help the student get there unless they know what the standard is. Get the standards and the incentives for reaching them right and you are halfway there.

This sounds simple enough, but it is exactly opposite of how our system functions now.  Everyone, apparently, agrees that all students should leave high school ready for work and college.  But what does that mean?  Does “work” mean flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s or doing specialty welding?  Does “college” mean the local diploma mill, which will take the federal money of any student who brings it in or the state’s flagship university?  Did you know that many states leave it up to the local district to decide what criteria to use for granting a high school diploma?  Or that most require a certain number of years of math in high school, but that a high school course in algebra often has no algebra in it?  Or that few if any states require their students to have more than an 8th grade level of literacy to graduate?

College and work ready ought to mean leaving high school with at least the literacy levels needed to be successful in the first year of a community college program.  That’s because about half the students in our community colleges seeking some sort of degree or certificate are in programs designed to prepare them for the last two years of a four-year college program and the other half are there to get a two-year degree or certificate in a vocational area.  Our community colleges are the nation’s gateway to both college and work.

Here are some facts I would have you consider when thinking about what it might mean to be college and work ready.  The typical community college first year course text is written at the 12th-grade level, but the students cannot read it because the typical high school text is written at the 7th- or 8th-grade level.  Community college instructors report that they have to prepare PowerPoint summaries of the texts because their first year students cannot comprehend what they are reading.  They do not ask their students to write very much because they write very poorly and the community college instructors do not see themselves as teachers of beginning writing.  Very little knowledge of high school math is required to be successful in our community colleges, but the majority of incoming high school graduates cannot do the math that is taught in the first-year community college program, because they have a very poor command of middle school math.  We conclude that our high schools are graduating students in very large numbers who are not ready for a high school curriculum, never mind a college curriculum.

States need to create a new, performance-based, high school diploma that signifies that the holder is ready to be successful in the first year of a typical state two-year or four-year program.  That is admittedly a low standard, but it is a far higher standard than most high school diplomas are set to currently.  That standard should be expressed as the grades a student would have to get in their high school courses, the syllabi for which are issued by the state.  Those grades should be based on exams the state also sets, which should be based on the required courses.  These exams would be externally graded by teachers, but not by the student’s teachers.  The course sequences should be designed so that all the required coursework could be completed by students who were ready to take the exams by the end of their sophomore year, but all students in the high school would be expected to complete these courses with passing grades by the end of their senior year.

Students completing and passing the courses in the core curriculum would be well-prepared to take a very demanding academic program preparing them for admission to a selective college, like the International Baccalaureate, the Advanced Placement Diploma Program or the University of Cambridge “A” Level program.  Or the student could take a demanding vocational program after completing the core curriculum, either one offered in their high school or one offered by their community college in collaboration with their high school.  These vocational programs, unlike many now offered by our high schools, would not be for students with low academic skills, because these students’ academic skills would be much higher than those of today’s typical high school graduate, but for students who wanted an applied, hands-on kind of program that conveys high technical skills, the kind of program we see in the world’s top-performing vocational education systems such as Singapore and Switzerland.

In this system, a student could meet the college- and-work-ready standard at any time between the end of their sophomore year and the end of their senior year, depending mainly on how well prepared the student is coming into high school.  The standard is fixed and the time a student takes to reach it varies, the opposite of today’s system. High schools would be obligated to assess the skills of their entering first-year students and create programs for them designed to take them from wherever they start to the standard just described.  Some students who start out behind will need more time during the day and week than others to catch up.  Others might enter high school so far behind that it takes them three or even four years to get to the new diploma standard.  Either way, they would be leaving high school having met a standard far higher than the one they are expected to meet now, a standard that will open many doors now closed to them.

In this system, there would be no question about what it means to be college and work ready. All the evidence shows that when students know what they have to do to realize their own dream they will put in the effort needed to get there.  Many more students would be ready for selective colleges, but many more would also be ready for success in the state’s open admissions colleges and first-rate technical education programs.  We would be doing high school in high school, not in college, and therefore saving enormous amounts of money for both states and families.  We would have more brain surgeons and more specialty welders.  The middle class would swell and stop shrinking.  Employers would be much more likely to find the skilled labor they need.  Young people who now leave school with very bleak prospects would leave high ready for a full and rewarding life.

We should build a new accountability system around the new diploma.  High schools would be held accountable for the proportion of students who get the new diploma and how long it takes to get it; the proportion of students from protected populations who get it and how long it takes them to do so; the proportion of students who leave high school to go to community colleges who complete two-year degrees in four years and four-year degrees in six years; and the proportion of students who enroll in college prep programs and their success rate, as well as the proportion that actually get into college. All of these metrics would be reported in absolute terms, in terms that show year-to-year growth for students and for the school and in terms that allow the observer to compare the school to schools with similar student populations.  If you are a state that is serious about getting your students ready for careers and college, these are the things you should be measuring.

Many states are now considering using the SAT or ACT as their state test to determine college and work readiness. Such a system is no substitute for the kind of system I have just described.  One of the powerful features of this system is the way it is based on specific course designs.  Students know just what they have to study to succeed.  If the exams are essay-based, as they should be, the state should release the test questions every year as well as examples of student responses that earned high marks.  The real standard is not just the statement about what the student is expected to learn that appears in the course syllabus, but also the vivid examples of what good student work looks like.  In this system, students know what they have to do to get high grades, their teachers know where they are strong and weak and can help the students improve where they have to improve.  When you get SAT and ACT scores, they tell you nothing about the kind of work that gets high marks, what good work looks like, where the student did well and where she did badly.  It is all a mystery.  The best accountability systems are not designed primarily to administer punishments.  They are designed to improve student performance.  That is exactly what this one is designed to do.