Many four year colleges are hard-pressed in these economic times to find ways to increase their revenues amidst state budget cuts and dwindling enrollments from students who are choosing more economically priced community colleges. In the article below, many colleges are trying to “close†students and parents ahead of time through advanced payment plans. This may pay the college less over the long haul, but it ensures student attendance and commits students to that school for the course of their degree programs unless something goes really wrong.
Europe’s Higher-Education Restructuring Holds Lessons for U.S., Report Says
CAROL’S SUMMARY:
Clifford Adelman from the Institute for Higher Education, is leading a new way of thinking in the U.S. based on the Bologna Process, the higher education agenda of 29 European countries. Like many of us, Adelman believes the U.S. is no longer on the cutting edge, nor can “we assume world-wide dominance oblivious to the creative energies, natural intelligence and hard work of other nations.”
The Lumina Foundation agrees with Adelman and will be working in three states–Minnesota, Utah and Indiana–to pilot some of the strategies from the Bologna Process. Most appealing to me, is that people from many perspectives will be surveyed–students, faculty, recent grads and, hang on to your hat, employers in an effort to define knowledge and skills needed from specific disciplines as they translate to real world success. Wow!
What a concept and how obvious in this age of serious global competition. I would encourage all states to follow suit as soon as possible.
The Lumina Foundation’s goal is to increase the quality of degrees–and I am sure there must be workforce equivalent to measure this longitudinally–from 39% to 60% by 2025. As I said, we could really benefit from this nationally. In this age of global achievement and opportunity, the U.S. needs to look out for best practices and then apply them to an educational system which can again become cutting-edge, hopefully on or before 2025.
ARTICLE
Chronicle of Higher Education
April 8, 2009
To view entire article visit
http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=tmVtWCKdrCC6W9rrvrhSmf5mcXpNkvfc
Report Envisions Shortage of Teachers as Retirements Escalate
CAROL’S SUMMARY:Â
As the article below indicates, over the next four years, one third of the nation’s 3.2 million teachers are slated to retire. In addition to that, many entering the profession—one in three–drop out in their first five years of teaching.
What can we do to keep talented young teachers on the teaching track? What are we not doing in our schools of education to prepare these students for what lies ahead? How can we recruit some of the best and brightest people from industry to get their teaching certificates and become teachers in this tough economy? How can we look to other nations for top talent in teachers who can inspire and educate our students in the United States? How can more talented teachers become principals or leaders in their districts in other important capacities?
Many people with industry experience are now being considered for Superintendent positions. School boards value managers who are data driven, smart and able to motivate and inspire people beyond what they have always done. Michael Bennett in Colorado was a lawyer and a successful business person before he ran Denver Public Schools. Now that he is a United States Senator, his successor was the CFO under Bennet and has the same business sensibilities as the new Superintendent.
ARTICLE
New York Times
By SAM DILLON
April 7, 2009
Over the next four years, more than a third of the nation’s 3.2 million teachers could retire, depriving classrooms of experienced instructors and straining taxpayer-financed retirement systems, according to a new report.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/education/07teacher.html?emc=eta1
Community Colleges Anticipate Boom in Baby-Boomer Students
Students over 50 will be hitting college campuses this year at record rates. What does that mean for colleges and what does that mean for the students themselves?
The Complicated Task of Simplifying Student Aid
The FAFSA form, which is how students and families apply for financial aid, is a long cumbersome form which baffles and stymies many families. Nationally, 8 million people fail to file the FAFSA form. As the article below indicates, many people feel that this form is longer and more complex than the 1040.
So, what can be done to make this form more simple and straight-forward for people to complete? Many ideas are being considered including linking this to tax information. Along with privacy issues, opponents argue that by the time that tax information would be considered, it is two year old. It seems like whatever is done to streamline this process, more disadvantaged populations will gain access to Higher Education. Currently, only 7% attend college from the lowest socioeconomic realms representing the most “at-risk” populations, while 60% of students attend college from the middle to upper class population. While the latter may not be at-risk economically, they are often at-risk emotionally and socially as they begin college. No matter what, a shorter FAFSA would provide more access for all and less family stress in considering how to get in to and pay for college.
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ARTICLE:
The U.S. Education Department examines 2 ways to make it easier for families to apply
By KELLY FIELD
The first time Kathy Peterson saw the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the six-page form that the government uses to assess student need, she felt overwhelmed.
“I just kept going from one screen to the next, wondering, ‘When is this going to end?'” said Ms. Peterson, an office manager for a telecommunications trade association, whose son will attend Old Dominion University in the fall.
She says she spent at least 20 hours completing the electronic form, 20 times as long as the government estimates it should take.
Ms. Peterson was one of the persistent ones. Each year more than 40 percent of college students, nearly eight million, fail to file a Fafsa, even though most of them would be eligible for aid, according to the U.S. Education Department. The agency doesn’t know how many students start the process and give up, or how many never even begin because they’re intimidated by the form’s length and bureaucratic language.
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The Global Campus Meets a World of Competition
CAROL’S SUMMARY: Private career colleges like University of Phoenix have pioneered in the on-line learning environment because they are completely-student centered. In their language, they might say “customer-centered.” Traditional colleges who are still under pressure for high academic and research standards often
struggle to make students a top-priority with so many competing priorities to juggle.
In the on-line world, traditional colleges have lagged behind the private career colleges and it is costing traditional universities a bundle. In the article below, the cost issues, especially, are laid out during these very
difficult economic times. The on-line option in addition to student success, retention, research and fund-raising, has become onerous but necessary as our world marches towards a whole new learning and teaching model in the on-line learning world.
ARTICLE:
Online-education venture at the U. of Illinois tries to distinguish itself from other distance-learning programs
By DAN TURNER
The University of Illinois Global Campus, a multimillion-dollar distance-learning project, is up and running. For its March-April 2009 term, it has enrolled 366 students.
Getting to this point, though, has looked a little like the dot-com start-up bubble of the late 1990s. Hundreds of Internet-related companies were launched with overly ambitious goals, only to later face cutbacks and other struggles to stay alive. Most crashed anyway. Some observers now say the Global Campus must try to avoid the same fate of churning through a large initial investment while attracting too few customers.
The project, planned about four years ago, was designed to complement existing online programs offered by individual Illinois-system campuses at Urbana-Champaign, Springfield, and Chicago. Those programs primarily serve current students as an addition to their on-campus course work. The Global Campus, in contrast, seeks to reach the adult learner off campus, who is often seeking a more focused, career-related certification or degree, such as completing a B.S. in nursing.
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Does Experience Trump Higher Education?
CAROL’S SUMMARY: Does experience trump education? It certainly can. That is why it is more important for students to plan interesting and different ways to spend their summer or winter breaks in high school than overly obsessing about their SAT score. In life, as Dr. Robert Sternberg says, you need Successful Intelligence—the ability to be analytically, creatively, and practically intelligent. Schools foster analytical skills, which are important, but the other skills you need for life success like taking calculated risks, learning new skills, stretching beyond your comfort zone and learning to work with people who aren’t like you, can propel you to job success and security.
Questions to consider:
1. What are all the things you could imagine for yourself if things could go as well as possible?
2. What are the successes as well as failures that have been your greatest life teachers?
3. How can you think about your future as a balance of education and experience?
ARTICLE:
By Matthew Vuturo
Wall Street Journal
March 27, 2009
I wouldn’t trade my education for anything. All of my educational experiences have shaped the person I am today, high school on through my business degree. Educating their children was my parents’ top priority, for which I will be eternally grateful.
But, these days, as I look around, I can’t help but feel like education is the biggest scam going. With so many accredited institutions minting fresh undergraduate and graduate degrees, the perceived value of formal education has become greatly diminished. An undergraduate degree used to represent a real achievement in life, whereas now it seems to be mere proof one has a pulse.
Like many others who went through a traditional M.B.A. program, I dedicated serious time and money to completing my degree. With a full time job and classes most nights of the week, the two years I spent dedicated to the cause was a grind to say the least. I remember a year ago now how much I believed my advanced degree would help me get my foot in the door, and in front of the right audience. I knew it didn’t guarantee me anything, but I did think it would help me stand out and get my shot.
Visit http://blogs.wsj.com for the entire article
Social Networks are the R&D Teams of the Future
CAROL’S SUMMARY:
All of learning is changing because of technology. The more that we as educators, authors and administrators understand the way students learn and the need to have a learning “experienceâ€, the more students will be motivated, engaged and challenged. Here are questions to consider:
What changes might you need to make to harness this potential?
1) How will you have to be different?
2) How will your students need to interact as teams?
3) How will you measure the outcomes of this new learning world versus the more lecture-based formats of the last one hundred years?
4) How can more students who struggle show their ability and their knowledge through technology?
ARTICLEÂ
ASCD
Author name not posted
This morning’s session “Professional Learning Networks Using Web 2.0 Tools,” presented by Meg Ormiston, shared a bunch of networking tools (find the liveblogged rundown on the session’s wikispace) and some big ideas:
“Social networking for educators is about breaking down isolation. Imagine if every 2nd grade teacher was on Twitter and their network was primarily other 2nd grade teachers. It would accomplish so much more than all our binders of curriculum.”
To view entire article visit http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/prof-learning-networks-using-web-20.html
Researchers Propose 6 Ways to Keep Community-College Students Beyond the First Few Weeks
CAROL’S SUMMARY:
Community colleges lose almost half of their freshmen before their first year is over. Administrators are carefully observing, for the first time ever, what maze of experience a typical incoming students goes through in their first three weeks on campus. Many students don’t have the coping skills to negotiate finding the right people, getting the right signatures or even finding the right classroom on time. So, what can community colleges do to streamline the process, make the steps more simple and provide more direction in that first month of school?
Additionally, how can we better equip most community college students with the wherewithal to persevere beyond the things which daunt them, intimidate
or stymie them? Certainly, many things in life are frustrating and perplexing and hard to figure out. Those who use their minds and abilities to work through road blocks, can make their way safely to the other side, ready for even more complex challenges next time. So, how do students need to be challenged more in high school to develop college and life coping skills?
ARTICLE
By STEVEN BUSHONG
March 18, 2009
Chronicle of Higher Ed
Thanks to online video sharing, academics’ lecture missteps, intentional and otherwise, are sometimes preserved for posterity.
Some students at community colleges never make it into the enrollment statistics. They drop out before the first count is taken, usually a few weeks into the semester.
A report to be released today by the Center for Community College Student Engagement seeks to help officials understand the student experience in those critical first three weeks, and how they might engage those at-risk students and prevent them from becoming dropouts.
The report, “Imagine Success: Engaging Entering Students,” is based on data from the Survey of Entering Student Engagement, or Sense, conducted this fall. Its findings come at a time when community colleges are being called on to help achieve a national goal set by President Obama: to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.
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A Straight-Talk Survival Guide for Colleges
CAROL’S SUMMARY:
Universities and colleges are not exempt from the economic woes facing virtually every other industry across the country, yet in higher education the stakes are higher because our students will experience the blunt of the fallout in higher tuition rates and possibly a compromise in the quality of their education. Here are a few questions to consider:
1) How many public research universities can the nation afford?
2) What could be the long-term consequences if our colleges fail to educate students so that they achieve upward mobility?
3) As colleges struggle to stay afloat, how can they harness the power of the students themselves to help solve some of these issues? After all, when students enter the real world of work, they will encounter similar challenges.
ARTICLE
Chronicle of Higher Education
Times are tough, very tough. The great majority of colleges are looking at 2009 and 2010 and beyond, in anticipation of the deepest budget cuts in more than a generation. But as bad as the financial situation may be, colleges can survive if they take swift and strong emergency action.
To read the entire article please visit http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=SjpTXfspzvT3nNFcmd6q5Ny6MvRKJmHr