Improving College Teaching and Learning

October 21, 2015 7:45 am

By Tamara Hiler Email Author and Lanae Erickson Hatalsky Email Author

Are your child’s college professors any good at teaching? And if they were (or weren’t), how would you know?

The federal government makes a significant effort to ensure that K-12 students have quality classroom teachers. From No Child Left Behind, which emphasized highly qualified teaching for the first time, to Race to the Top grants that encouraged states to implement new teacher evaluation systems, and the Administration’s newly-formed teacher equity plans, the federal government finds significant value in investing in high quality instruction for all. We may still have a long ways to go on the K-12 front, but we have not even begun the journey when it comes to taxpayer-subsidized colleges and universities. In fact, the federal government spends less than one-tenth of one percent of its higher education budget on teacher quality in our nation’s colleges and universities.1 Ironically, the feds spend $160 billion each year subsidizing tuition alone—more than twice what we spend annually on K-12 programs—but demands little in terms of outcomes and quality.2

Colleges have the main responsibility to oversee the quality of instruction they are providing to students, but as the largest payer of tuition in America and with dropout rates at four-year colleges hovering around 40%, the federal government has a role to play to both encourage institutions of higher education (IHEs) to prioritize better teaching and to increase transparency around the amount of learning students are receiving.3 As the debate around reauthorizing the Higher Education Act (HEA) begins to heat up this fall, Congress has a unique opportunity to better align its emphasis on high-caliber teaching in K-12 with a similar level of commitment to that cause in post-secondary education. Here are ten ways the next HEA bill could help jump start these efforts.

1. Create a national board certification process for professors.

Just like the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) was established in the late 1980s as a way to “strengthen standards in teaching” and provide K-12 teachers with the opportunity to earn a distinguished credential for their teaching expertise, the federal government could help fund the establishment of a similar program in higher education that would create an elite tier of highly recognized and effective professors.4 Colleges and universities could provide nationally board certified professors with additional benefits, such as expedited tenure or salary bonuses, as a way to incentivize professors to further develop their instructional skills. Hopefully, colleges would seize this opportunity to make teaching quality a top tenure consideration. Similar to national boards at the K-12 level, the standards and certification process could be both designed and led by professors, and once established, board certified professors could be the ones to evaluate new applicants, becoming the arbiters of who joins their ranks.

2. Teach Ph.D. students to teach.

The focus for doctoral candidates is research and publication. That should continue. But a new focus must also help them develop the skills to be successful teachers—a large component of many Ph.D. students’ job requirements both during their program and after graduation. Right now, we simply hope that a great researcher will be a great teacher. But beyond expertise in the field, there is no reason to believe this is so. Colleges and universities should create course-level work that explicitly provides Ph.D. students with important pedagogical training. A handful of institutions—such as the University of Southern California—have already begun to integrate this type of focus into their programs.5 This should be universal and the federal government could help scale such efforts by providing funding to institutions to specifically develop teacher training curricula and programs for the Ph.D. students who are already teaching in their classrooms and those they will send out to teach at other institutions post-graduation.

3. Require colleges to design and publish an instructional improvement plan for their schools.

If it’s measured, it matters and it will improve. While the Department of Education has taken action at the K-12 level to ensure that states provide equal access to effective educators through their teacher equity plans, no such initiatives exist that asks colleges and universities to do the same. The Department of Education should require all institutions that receive federal aid to create and publish a plan that assesses the student learning outcomes generated by their instructors and outlines how it will improve instruction going forward. This should include both classroom instruction and online learning. If college presidents know that learning outcomes are measured and that results matter, they will care about the quality of the instruction at their schools to a level far higher than today.

4. Make community colleges a lab for better teaching.

Most community colleges do not require professors to complete research or get published in order to earn tenure, so particular attention should be paid so that community college professors have strong pedagogical and instructional abilities—as teaching should be their sole focus. In particular, community colleges could serve as laboratories for innovation around teaching and learning. In addition, targeting the above ideas specifically at two-year schools would pair well with recent calls for free community college by ensuring that students who participate in taxpayer-subsidized programs are actually learning.

5. Help colleges and universities tap into expertise at their schools of education.

With teacher preparation programs already established at over 600 institutions of higher education, colleges and universities have an abundance of leaders with instructional expertise located in their own backyards.6 Rather than ask colleges and universities to seek out external teacher training, the federal government could establish a demonstration project to tap into the resources that exist within their own schools of education—such as using ed school professors to train incoming professors of other subjects in a summer course or asking them to design pedagogical curriculum for the institution’s Ph.D. students who plan to teach at the college level.

6. Build in students’ rights protections against low-quality instruction.

Students pay tuition with the expectation that the classroom instruction they receive will meet a certain standard of quality. Yet under the current system, almost no recourse exists if such instruction falls short, allowing institutions to collect tuition fees regardless of whether or not they deliver on that promise. Instead, efforts should be made to give students who receive low-quality instruction the same consumer protection rights that exist with other high-stakes and high-cost purchases. This could happen through the creation of a students’ rights provision that would “trigger” a school to review professors who receive numerous complaints for poor instructional quality, or through the development of a new complaint system under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that would allow students to initiate a process to recoup a proportion of their tuition money if basic instructional standards are not met.

7. Institute a TIF-like program to incentivize best practices.

Over the last ­­­­­decade, federal Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grants have helped K-12 school districts around the country invest in efforts to improve educator effectiveness through the redesign of teacher-focused systems like performance-based compensation and leadership tracks.7 A similar competitive grant program could be created at the higher education level to help colleges and universities implement innovative systems to train and develop excellent professors. For example, funds could be awarded to institutions looking to pilot innovative ways to improve the quality of instruction, such as the development of a summer teaching certification program for incoming professors, the establishment of a two-track tenure system that gives professors the opportunity to focus on research or instruction, or the creation of revamped course evaluations that better measure effective teaching and student learning. As we have seen in the K-12 context, these grants can provide out-sized returns by motivating applicants to prioritize great teaching and think creatively about how to incentivize it.

8. Create a new federal teaching grant for higher education.

Each year, the federal government awards over $30 billion in grants to help colleges and universities pay for the equipment, supplies, and salaries of professors to carry out research at the post-secondary level.8 Undoubtedly, these grants provide institutions with a powerful incentive to pursue new research projects—an important and necessary aspect of our higher education system. Yet, at the same time, the federal government invests only $79 million to incentivize quality teaching at these same schools, a funding discrepancy skewed in favor of research by a ratio of nearly 400 to 1.9 While the cost to produce research is indisputably higher than the costs of developing teaching skills, the federal government could do more to emphasize the importance of good instruction through the creation of a new federal teaching grant program designed specifically for the post-secondary level. Such an investment could allow professors to apply directly for additional funding—similar to the way many must apply directly to earn research grants—to allow them to experiment with better assessments, more meaningful course evaluations, and other methods of improving student learning.

9. Require institutions to disclose the number of adjunct professors they hire.

According to a report by the American Association of University Professors, more than three-quarters of all university faculty work as part-time, or adjunct professors.10 While the verdict is still out on whether adjunct faculty are categorically more or less effective at teaching than their tenured counterparts, part-time professors are often paid less and expected to teach a variety of courses across multiple institutions during their classroom stints, leaving colleges and universities with very little incentive to develop their pedagogical abilities due to their often limited and impermanent nature.11 Until further research can conclusively determine that adjunct and tenured faculty provide students with an equal level of instructional quality, lawmakers should make permanent a 2013 House bill provision that would have required the Department of Education to publish “the ratio of the number of course sections taught by part-time instructors to the number of course sections taught by full-time faculty” in order to demonstrate the federal government’s commitment to transparency and instructional quality in higher ed.12 Congress should also require this ratio be added to the new College Scorecard, as students and their families deserve to know this information before they make one of the biggest investments of their lives.

10. Institute a National Professor of the Year award.

Similar to national board certification, the National Teacher of the Year (NTOY) program has played an integral role in increasing the prestige of the teaching profession at the K-12 level. Having a comparable program available for professors would help shine a light on the importance of instructional excellence in higher education, and raise the stature of professors who are making incredible strides with their students year after year. Such national figures could serve to provide instructional leadership with the same gravitas often reserved for those who concentrate on research, helping to bring teaching and learning back to the forefront of the national conversation surrounding the quality of higher

MOOCs: Hopes And Hype Not Met Yet

October 20, 2015 8:04 am

Stanford Report, October 15, 2015

MOOCs haven’t lived up to the hopes and the hype, Stanford participants say

Massive online classes for virtually everyone were supposed to change the world of education, but it hasn’t worked out that way yet, say three Stanford professors who have been involved since the beginning.

BY DAN STOBER

mtkang/ShutterstockKeyboard with Online learning hasn’t lived up to its original billing, Stanford experts say, but it has produced unexpected insights into how people learn.

Three years after a groundswell of online learning swept through higher education, Stanford researchers who were at the forefront of the movement have concluded that online learning has not been the cure-all that many educators had hoped for. Nonetheless, the techniques developed for online learning may lead to great advances in how students learn, both online and in conventional classrooms.

The vision was of unlimited online courses, available to virtually anyone with an Internet connection, that would dramatically reshape the standard classroom while also changing the life paths of students in developing countries, at little or no cost.

But it hasn’t worked out that way, say Stanford professors John Mitchell, Candace Thille and Mitchell Stevens, who have been deeply involved in the effort.

Completion rates remain low. Even offering high-level online classes from major universities doesn’t necessarily work; without a solid academic background, the classes may be too difficult for many students to follow.

As a result, most MOOC (massive open online course) students have been college-educated men from industrialized countries.

The researchers say it is frustrating that MOOCs can provide educators the technical ability to watch as online learners fail. “We see people struggling and there really isn’t any mechanism to help them,” said Mitchell, Stanford’s vice provost for teaching and learning.

Helping people around the world learn is not a simple thing, he said, and getting there “is going to be much harder than simply putting these courses online.”

Thille, an assistant professor of education, agreed. “MOOCs weren’t the solution,” she said.  Nonetheless, she added, MOOCs have prompted a widespread interest into research about how people learn.

This valuable new side effect of MOOCs has provided researchers an ocean of data about how students learn or fail to learn, and that data can be useful in the classroom as well as online.

While protecting the privacy of participants, researchers can monitor the activities of students online, seeing what approaches work, where students stumble, what grabs students’ attention and what style of videos work best in various situations.

However, the insights into student learning that can be gleaned from MOOC data have been limited by the type of interaction that is observable. Most of the student activities in MOOCs are either too passive (watching a lecture) or too simple (multiple choice questions) to be useful to the science of learning, Thille said.

But as MOOCs mature, she said, they will present the complex tasks that are instrumental in collecting fine-grained data on the learner’s intermediate learning process.

The data can be used to reveal the thought processes of the student. Along those lines, Thille is interested in adapting a successful intervention technique for students, one developed in collaboration with Stanford psychology Professor Carol Dweck’s research group, PERTS (Project for Education Research That Scales).

The idea is to embed interventions into online learning environments. The interventions would re-engage disengaged students and encourage them to adopt a growth mindset toward learning. The student becomes a participant in a carefully designed psychological intervention, encouraged to persevere, reassured that he or she belongs in the class and can do well. Similar interventions with students in other situations have had remarkable success.

The action in the MOOC world now, the researchers said, is learning about learning. “I think that’s what the technology is really valuable for,” Thille said.

Despite their limited success, “I’m not disappointed at all with MOOCs,” said Stevens, associate professor of education. “We’re still in the horse-and-buggy stage. The boundaries are blurring between online and face-to-face.”

Some schools, for example, allow students to complete part of their studies online and part on campus.

There are questions about MOOCs that need to be answered, Stevens said, such as “who owns the data?” For now it’s an open question.

Stevens suggested that the economics of MOOCs might make them attractive to California’s financially struggling college system.

Despite the disappointments of MOOCs, Stevens remains optimistic: “We’re looking at a future of lifelong education online. Much of that will come at little or no cost to learners. How can that be a bad thing?”

10 Ways to be a More Creative Student this Year

October 19, 2015 6:38 am

By Jane Hurst

Being a student doesn’t have to be boring, even if sitting in a classroom or lecture hall may seem boring. There are all kinds of ways that you can use your creativity to make being a student a lot more fun, and improve the quality of the work you hand in. The key to being a successful student is creativity, and here are 10 ways that you can boost your own and be a more creative student this year.

  1. Hang Out with Creative People – The more creativity you are around, the more it is bound to rub off onto you. Start hanging around with creative types, such as writers, artists, and musicians. You can get a lot of inspiration by doing this, and it won’t be long before your own creativity is sparked.
  2. Just Do It – You will never get anything done, creative or not, if you don’t start somewhere. Just dive in and start working on something. If you want to write a book, start writing that first chapter. It may be really bad, but you can always tweak it and make improvements later on.
  3. Get Out There – You need to be exposed to new things, particularly art such as books, paintings, music, etc. The more you are exposed to creative things that are completely new to you, the easier it is going to be for you to come up with ideas that are new and creative.
  4. Get Involved – There are plenty of organizations, including many right on campus that can use your creative input. For instance, you can get involved with a group that is organizing an event. You can be the creator of custom-designed patches for everyone who is involved to wear, and that will make a statement about what your group is doing. Learn more at PatchSuperstore.
  5. Get Your Own Morning Ritual – Let’s face it, not many of us really like mornings. But, you can turn your mornings into a time where you can sit and reflect, and come up with new ideas. Enjoy your coffee while watching the morning news, and then go for a walk. The more you repeat these actions on a daily basis, the sooner your mind will be open to doing things when you are in that zone.
  6. Try New Things – Start doing things you have never done before. If you normally watch television in the evening, go for a walk instead. If you like to read, read something that is completely out of the norm for you. Doing new things will get your creative juices flowing.
  7. Ignore the World – Sometimes, you just need to step back from the craziness in the world and retreat into yourself. Take a nap, meditate, go for a walk alone, etc. Just take some time for you so you can clear your mind.
  8. Carry a Camera – Never be without your camera, because you never know when you may see something really interesting. You may notice something different on something that you see every day. Look for new perspectives on things you look at every day.
  9. Question Everything – Don’t just accept things at face value, even from your professors. Question assumptions instead. This is going to help you learn to use your own voice, and have the confidence you need to be more creative and take some risks.
  10. Exercise – Everyone needs exercise, and we should all be getting at least one half hour every day. Not only will it help you physically, it will also help to clear your mind and let you be a lot more creative.

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.

The Evolution of Faculty Roles in Governance of Higher Education

October 16, 2015 9:11 am

reviewed by Rozana Carducci —

coverTitle: Locus of Authority: The Evolution of Faculty Roles in the Governance of Higher Education
Author(s): William G. Bowen & Eugene M. Tobin
Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton
ISBN: 0691166420, Pages: 400,2015

The practice of shared governance is contested terrain in American higher education. Despite consensus that shared governance is a collaborative approach to decision-making characterized by the distribution of authority across various institutional actors (e.g., faculty, senior administrators, trustees), models and norms of effective shared governance remain elusive. Indeed higher education critics within and beyond the academy often identify the practice of shared decision-making as a major barrier to innovation and fiscal efficiency, two organizational qualities deemed essential for survival in today’s rapidly changing global knowledge economy.

In Locus of Authority: The Evolution of Faculty Roles in the Governance of Higher Education, authors William G. Bowen and Eugene M. Tobin offer their insider perspective on the promise and pitfalls of shared governance. They draw upon both historical analysis and their own extensive university leadership experience to explain why antiquated, yet omnipresent, governance structures and processes are ill-equipped to resolve contemporary higher education challenges. At the heart of Bowen and Tobin’s shared governance treatise is the assertion that since faculty are pivotal in advancing and/or thwarting institutional change efforts, higher education actors seeking to improve governance processes and institutional outcomes need to first understand the historical evolution of faculty roles in governance. Bowen and Tobin argue that this historical knowledge is key to successfully navigating and perhaps shifting the political, economic, social, and cultural factors that influence the exercise of authority in American higher education.

The structure of Locus of Authority is comprised of an informative preface, five chapters, and a lengthy appendix consisting of four institutional case studies. The narrative is engaging and fairly easy to digest thanks to Bowen and Tobin’s decision to use footnotes to cite sources and provide extended discussions of material readers may find interesting but that are not crucial to the main story. Readers looking to dive deeper into the historical sources and governance anecdotes will appreciate the accessibility and depth of the footnotes. Bowen and Tobin’s familiarity and focus on the governance roles of arts and science faculties in selective institutions are evident throughout the book. Individuals interested in learning about the history and practice of governance in more diverse institutions will need to consult other sources.

The Introduction provides a coherent overview of the book’s organizational framework and clearly articulates the authors’ focal argument—century-old shared governance norms are ill-equipped to tackle the complex problems confronting contemporary higher education. In support of this argument, Chapter One presents a historical overview of faculty governance from the establishment of the Harvard Corporation in 1650 through the World War II era. Chapter Three extends the historical analysis to the present day, supplementing the authors’ general historical overview with extended excerpts from four institutional case studies. It closes with a discussion of faculty governance tensions occurring within institutions seeking to engage in or expand online learning endeavors. Drawing upon analysis of successful and unsuccessful online education efforts, Bowen and Tobin seek to illustrate: (a) the need to respect institutional culture when launching major reform efforts, (b) faculty distaste for considerations of cost savings in educational decision making, and (c) the importance of a strong central administration in negotiating decisions concerning online education institutional strategy, instructional content, and intellectual property rights.

Together the historical overview chapters effectively distill and integrate important moments in the evolution of higher education governance, relying extensively on the analysis of highly regarded higher education historians such as John R. Thelin, Laurence R. Veysey, Frederick Rudolph, Jurgen Herbst, and Roger L. Geiger. The organization and content of Chapters Two and Three mirror the chronological historical frameworks adopted in most higher education history texts and illuminate key faculty governance issues (e.g., academic freedom). Occasionally the historical narrative loses focus or gives limited attention to key historical moments—for example, the governance implications embedded in the Affirmative Action and Title IX efforts of the 1960s and 1970s. While Bowen and Tobin’s historical analysis is not highly original, they effectively synthesize historical scholarship on the evolution of faculty decision-making authority into one volume, a project of value to higher education governance scholars and institutional actors (e.g., trustees, academic senate members, etc.) interested in understanding the history behind contemporary governance practices. Case study vignettes interwoven throughout Chapters Two and Three add depth to the sweeping historical narrative and underscore the importance of local context in shaping governance processes and structures.

Starting A Career Before Graduation

October 15, 2015 7:37 am

By Melissa Burns

Experience: how students can cross this threshold.

Sooner or later every college student faces the necessity of finding a job. Some years ago it was almost an impossible task. And we don’t speak about some part time jobs as a waiter or a baby-sitter. We are talking about a serious job in a successful company with the prospect of development and career growth. Many employers simply refuse to hire someone without any experience on a serious position. Moreover, many students and graduates face enormous financial difficulties and loan debts after finishing college, and they simply don’t have time to stay home and wait for a dream job appear by itself.

In order not to be trapped in this circle “I have no experience, this is why I don’t have a job – and I don’t have a job, because of lack of experience”, getting professional experience is worth considering during the process of college studying.

So, how is it possible to differ from other job seekers and to ensure that the desired employer will choose you for the position?

One of the main problems associated with the promotion upwards the career ladder is the huge competition present. But as you study at college, it means you have already made the first step. You have chosen the niche in which you see your future development. With this you can easily explore the competition market. Things you need to do is optimize your plans and skills:

  • Read the other candidates resume, look at their experience, compare with your own.
  • It is useful to look through the positions you would like to obtain in the future, but you can’t qualify now due to the lack of experience, knowledge, diploma, age or what else. Mark the requirements specified for this vacancy. Put them as goals for yourself, and start preparing.

How to become credible for employers if you are still a college student?

Your own authority can be earned only by means of what you do. First of all write a resume, but better check what quality resume templates are available on the internet. This is the first impression that employer receives and evaluates. Your name is your brand. Make your name recognizable.

If you have a talent, use it and bring it to the maximum. You must have something that you can do better than anybody else.

There are lots of resources on the internet that can help you find a remote work in a field of your interest. Participate in different projects. This way you gain not only experience, you also create your portfolio.

Practical experience: where and when?

Never forget about the internship. An internship in a well-known company is the largest plus to your resume in your further job seeking. Employers appreciate such experience. Also remember that successful trainee that received high score from the company management can be offered a permanent job. Moreover, internship is a great opportunity to make useful contacts in the required segment of the market.

As people say, the first comes not the one who runs the faster, but the one who ran out earlier. The conclusion is if you want to achieve big results, start gaining experience before you get your diploma.

Author’s bio:

Melissa Burns graduated from the faculty of Journalism of Iowa State University in 2008. Nowadays she  is an entrepreneur and independent journalist. Her sphere of interests includes startups, information technologies and how these ones may be implemented

Students Should Work For Free Tuition

October 14, 2015 7:01 am

“Free” has been the higher education buzzword of the year, as Democrats have proposed a range of plans to infuse billions of federal dollars into public institutions to lower tuition to zero or close to zero, Inside Higher Ed reports. But as politicians pitch debt-free and tuition-free college, some are also pushing another narrative: that they expect students to work in exchange for those new benefits. (real clear education)

Model Local Partnership For College Transition Support

October 13, 2015 6:28 am

Long Beach Promise Expands

By
Ashley A. Smith, Los Angeles Daily News

For the last seven years, Long Beach, Calif., has worked to develop a path from the earliest levels of public school to college by establishing a partnership among its city government, state university, community college and K-12 systems.

That partnership — the Long Beach College Promise — has been successful in increasing access to college for the city’s students and was one of the examples for the Obama administration’s America College Promise, which plans to provide two years of free tuition to community college students.

And the administrators for the Long Beach program only expect to see more success. On Thursday, officials announced hat the initiative would expand from offering one tuition-free semester at Long Beach City College to a full year. The tuition is funded by donations to the Long Beach City College Foundation, which saves about $600 for each participating student a semester.

“We’ll continue to push to provide as much access to our local students as possible,” said Eloy Oakley, superintendent president of Long Beach City College, adding that officials hope to set an example for a future statewide program.

He also expects to see more students taking advantage of going to college now that the program has been extended at the community college. Students in the Promise program can also receive preferred admissions to California State University at Long Beach.

Since 2008, nearly 12,000 Long Beach students have received one free semester at the college. Of the Long Beach public high school seniors who attend a community college, 77 percent enroll at Long Beach City College. And 1,700 students took advantage of the free semester this past fall, Oakley said.

“We’ve long been fans of the Long Beach College Promise. As President Obama was putting together the initial proposal, we looked to Long Beach as a model, and Long Beach continues to inform the administration around priorities of America’s College Promise as we work with Congress on passage of America’s College Promise Act,” said Ted Mitchell, U.S. under secretary of education, in a phone call with reporters about the expansion. “What has been truly astounding has been the community action taking place in Long Beach and states like Oregon and certainly Tennessee, where communities are coming together and saying they’re not going to wait for Congress to act.”

In Indiana this week, Shelby County became the first in the state to provide free community college to qualified students from the area to attend Ivy Tech Community College. The program is called Advantage Shelby County.

Oakley serves on one of the committees that is part of the White House’s recently announced independent coalition –College Promise Advisory Board — which is being led by Jill Biden, a community college professor and the wife of Vice President Joe Biden. The group is working to spread the free community college message across the country to either start or boost programs like the one at Long Beach.

“This is a model that should be replicated. We do it in Long Beach and people think it’s business as usual and don’t understand how special it is,” said Jane Conoley, president of Cal State Long Beach.

Already other cities in California, like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Fresno and Sacramento, are using Long Beach College Promise as a starting point for developing similar partnerships. Oakley said he looks forward to a potential California Promise program emerging.

Despite the program’s success, challenges remain. Oakley said even with the prospect of at least some tuition free, the college has struggled with getting students to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. He believes simplifying the FAFSA would alleviate much of that problem.

The Broken Record of Student Debt

October 12, 2015 6:37 am

 

by Dr. Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute

I recently read an article by Mitchell Weiss of credit.com in USA Today titled “Student Loan Debt: America’s Next Big Crisis.” Weiss points out that the percentage of delinquent student loans rose from 11.1 percent to 11.5 percent between the first two quarters in 2015. On the surface, that doesn’t sound like much. But given that there are $1.19 billion in student loans, that amounts for approximately $137 million in delinquent loans in the second quarter of 2015. Weiss also notes that past due student loan debts account for one third of all “seriously past-due debt payments” in the United States.

That’s huge.

 

I’ve written about the financial strain put on recent retirees due to either their own student loan debt or their children’s or even grandchildren’s debt. The impact on taxpayers, social security, and other government support programs is immense and will loom even larger. Just recently I wrote about Lumina Foundation’s new report on affordability, and previously I have spoken out against Bernie Sanders and others who have their new plans for making college free. My conclusion has remained the same: they’re talking about the wrong end of the equation by ignoring the costs of higher education (read the August 19, 2015 Swail Letter).

Mitchell Weiss suggests that all loans be restructured to make payments more manageable. This is helpful but does not get at the growing issue of the expensive of higher education.

I am not a proponent of free tuition programs. I believe in affordability, but everyone should take some of the burden of the cost of a higher education. To do so, we have a responsibility to first reduce the cost of higher education, and second, determine better, more responsible ways for students and families to pay their responsible piece of the cost.

Ultimately, once we can agree on a fair level of payment on behalf of students, which is what Lumina is trying to get around, we have to look more seriously at income-contingent loans (ICLs). Used for years in other countries, and even offered as a vehicle for the US Department of Education, it never took root here for a variety of reasons. Financial experts and economists don’t like them because they are akin to a credit card company calling you to extend your payments. This makes the monthly more affordable but it also increases your interest payments, leading to tens of thousands of dollars in extra debt for high debtors. The same thing goes for auto dealers pushing people to 84 month loans now. Only a few decades ago the maximum auto loan term was for 36 months. Now the typical is 72 and is pushing longer. The same is happening in the mortgage industry where the typical mortgage term is 30 years. But only a decade or so ago is was a 25-year term. Mortgagecalculator.org now shows 40- and 50-year mortgages.

To make the ICL more fair than the examples above, there typically is a sunset on total debt. The current US ICL has a loan sunset of 25 years, such that if the borrower has been unable to pay off the total during that period, the loan is forgiven in full. This is the primary difference between a car or mortgage company program and a government-subsidized program: the former never stops compounding interest, while the student ICL forgives at some point.

Hillary Clinton’s New College Compact proposal would significantly reduce student debt for those attending public institutions by eliminating the need for loans. To do this, she would provide approximately $175 million in grants to states that, in effect, make up for the reduced fees from loan-based tuition fees. There is, however, a catch for state institutions: they have to show they can contain costs and increase higher education funding over time. Thus, states cannot bait and switch with federal money. To receive it, they’ll have to continue to make progress on their funding and system performance.

The second part of the Clinton proposal is to reduce interest rates and cut the ICL term from 25 to 20 years, further expanding affordability to students who have already incurred student debt and those that still will at private institutions.

The reality is we have to do something about student debt, and to do that appropriately we have to think more about cost drivers in higher education as well as the looming question of the linkage between higher education and the workforce and the relative cost of teaching and learning beyond high school.

 

Things to think about when choosing a college

October 8, 2015 5:53 am

By Melissa Burns

 

It is not always easy to make a decision, however it may become simple as soon as you know all the pros and cons. Choosing the university to study at and your future career one should keep in mind the following criteria:

What to study

Make an honest confession to yourself what subject/activity/field you like the most. This is a starting point on your way to success. When you choose what you like, you will be satisfied, motivated, inspired and full of positive energy. Try to understand what is your real passion and calling. Complete some career tests to know yourself and your skills better. After a test you may do a research of the best universities specializing in this or that field. Liaise with the students so they may give you a piece of advice how their study really is. Although it is cool to study at a top tier university, try to rely on your own financial side too.

Where to study

Now is the time for choosing the right university. Your new life period will differ from the one you had at high school – new environment, new studying system, new place. University location is significant too. Still, central universities have a great infrastructure, additional libraries, courses, part-time job. On the other hand, there are also a lot of places for fun like bars and night clubs that are less in a small city, anyway it is up to you how to balance between studying and relaxing time for the successful graduation from the university.

 

Funding

To cover your accommodation, living expenses and tuition fees you should ask the administration of the university or find the information just on its site about Scholarships and Student Finance. It is vital the way you present the information in an application. You may follow the link on some tips for Scholarship Application. It is a special procedure specific for each university, still has some common characteristics. Find some pieces of advice on living expenses in different countries here Student Finance.

Living Abroad

If you are excited about any other culture or want to study different languages, you can go abroad. You will be completely immersed into a foreign environment and culture there. Before exploring a new country, one should get familiar with its traditions, rules and cuisine. That is a great opportunity to travel while you are still a student. You will definitely make new friends there and be happy with your new experience!

Employment

Before graduate from the university, try to get a real practice when you are still a student. Find an internship or apprenticeship and go after it, you will already have a work experience that is essential to move on. Learn how to create an outstanding CV, how to work with a team and improve your writing with blogging. Find a lot of the job searching sites and apply. Do not expect that companies are just waiting till your graduation. Be active, interrogate with many people, take part in exhibitions and be optimistic and confident. Also, you can work part time like at different pubs or restaurants or even a cleaning company like SYK End of Tenancy Cleaning that may not be connected to your major but still they will pay you.

So, making an important step in your future life is not that complicated when you think over all the issues connected to university studying. Just remember one thing – whatever you choose, it should inspire you!

Author’s bio:

Melissa Burns graduated from the faculty of Journalism of Iowa State University in 2008. Nowadays she  is an entrepreneur and independent journalist. Her sphere of interests includes startups, information technologies and how these ones may be implemented in the sphere of education

Why Congress Should No Kill Oldest Student Aid Program

October 7, 2015 10:26 am

From New America Foundation

The federal government’s oldest grant program that helps low-income students gain access to college may be on the chopping block.

No, I’m not talking about the Pell Grant program, which is the government’s primary source of aid for financially needy students. I’m referring toSupplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (SEOG), which go first to Pell Grant recipients who need more money to pay for college and then to other students who have “exceptional” financial need. Unlike Pell Grants, which are awarded directly to students, SEOG funds are distributed to colleges, which add their own institutional aid dollars to the program and then award the money to students.

As Congress begins work on renewing the Higher Education Act, the law that governs federal student aid programs, key lawmakers have called foreliminating the SEOG program as part of a broader effort to simplify the government’s financial aid system. They say that the system is too complex, in that it offers multiple, and sometimes redundant, federal grant, loan, work study and tax credit programs to help students pay for college. They argue that the aid programs should be streamlined so there’s only one program in each category. Under this scenario, the one grant program would be Pell Grants, which typically go to students with annual family incomes below $50,000.

It’s not hard to see why these policymakers are taking aim at the SEOG program, which Congress created in 1965 as part of the original Higher Education Act. (For full disclosure, the Education Program at New America proposed eliminating SEOG in this report, which I helped write.) For one thing, the program is exceptionally small. In the 2015 fiscal year, the government spent $733 million on it, compared to the roughly $30 billion it spent on Pell Grants.

For another, the formula that the federal government uses to distribute SEOG funds to schools is outdated, and, as a result, the grants are not well targeted. Elite private colleges receive a disproportionate share of the funding, even though they enroll a much smaller share of low-income students than regional state schools and community colleges. Multiple efforts to make the formula more equitable have met fierce resistance from private college lobbyists andsenators representing states that are home to these exclusive colleges.

But before bidding adieu to the SEOG program, it’s important to note that it has one feature sorely lacking from the Pell Grant program: colleges participating in the program must contribute at least 25 percent of the award amounts. In other words, the program requires colleges to spend a portion of their own institutional aid dollars on need-based aid.

In contrast, the Pell Grant program doesn’t require any similar contribution from colleges. Institutions receive the money with no strings attached. As a result, colleges have no obligation to use Pell Grants to supplement institutional aid they are providing to financially needy students. Instead, many colleges appear to be using the federal money to supplant their own aid, and then shifting their funds to recruit more-affluent students. This is one reason why even after historic increases in Pell Grant funding, the college-going gap between low-income students and their wealthier counterpartsremains as wide as ever. Far too often, low-income students are left no better off.

At a time when colleges are increasingly using institutional aid to chase afterthe “best and brightest” students to rise in the rankings, and affluent students to increase net tuition revenues, it may be counterproductive to kill a program that, in the words of Stetson University president Wendy B. Libby, “leverag[es] hundreds of millions of dollars in student aid from colleges and universities.”

“While simplification that reduces cost and redundancy is welcome, eliminating programs that provide significant amounts of funding from colleges for students is not,” Libby wrote in a column for the Orlando Sentinellast December. “Simplification does not help taxpayers when it leads to increased pressure to raise Pell Grant funding because of cuts to state and institutional aid for low-income students.”

Jon Oberg, a former U.S. Department of Education official and researcher, agrees. “Any simplification must favor programs with a track record rather than conforming to mindless legislative talking points about the desirability of simplification for its own sake,” he told me. “SEOG would be a program into which other programs might be folded, not the other way around.”

Oberg, who has spent many years analyzing federal student aid programs, has long argued that the SEOG program provides a better model for supporting low-income students than Pell Grants. “Empirical evidence shows that, for the lower-income population, increases in SEOG are associated with more support from state and institutional matching sources, whereas increases in Pell are associated with less support from states and institutions,” Oberg said. “SEOG, therefore, gives more bang for the federal buck and provides incentives for states and institutions to keep up their investments in this population.”

If Oberg had his druthers, Congress would significantly expand the SEOG program. To finance the increases, he would eliminate tuition tax-break programs, like the American Opportunity Tax Credits program, which do little to help low-income students gain access to college, and he would stop providing Pell Grants to students to attend for-profit colleges, many of which have been caught up in scandal.

In addition to growing the SEOG program, he’d overhaul it so that grants from the program “would more closely follow financial need.” In other words, schools like Harvard, which educate a fairly small number of low-income students, would no longer receive a disproportionate share of the money.

Oberg would also require colleges that participate in the program to use the additional funding to reduce the debt burden of low-income students on their campuses. Schools failing to meet this requirement would risk losing eligibility for federal student aid programs.

Lawmakers should consider Oberg’s proposal. It may not simplify the federal student aid programs, but it would likely make them work better. And shouldn’t the ultimate aim of student aid reform be to make the programs more effectiv