Updates from the SOURCE on Community College  
Issues, Trends & Strategies     

 

Published by
The Roueche Graduate Center, National American University  
in partnership with Lorenzo Associates, Inc.
 VOLUME 5, ISSUE 11 - June 7, 2015
 
 "Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do." 
- Jos� Ortega y Gasset         
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Miscellaneous

Reports & Articles 

 

06/03/2015: Test Preppers, Take Note: Free SAT Study Tools Could Signal Sea Change, by Eric Westervelt, NPR Ed - Students - for free - can tap into new online study prep tools from Khan Academy, the online education nonprofit. The partnership between Khan Academy and the College Board are working with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America to make both online and in-person tutoring available at clubs for students who don't have computers, internet access or a supportive or safe place to study.

 

06/02/2015: Cooke Foundation Awards 90 Scholarships to Exceptionally Gifted Community College Students Prestigious Award is the Nation's Most Generous Scholarship - Education Writers Association - "Community colleges hold some of best untapped talent in the nation, but often these students need financial resources, guidance, and support in order to take the next step and earn bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degrees," explained Executive Director Harold O. Levy. "The Cooke Foundation has always been committed to identifying the best of the best in community colleges across the country, and this year we have an extraordinary group.   

 

05/27/2015: State's Economy Depends on Latino Schooling, by Rob Lapsley, The Sacramento Bee - Latinos are now the largest ethnic group in California and will continue growing. Half of all children under 18 in California are Latino.The demographic change impacts just about every aspect of our society, none more critically than our economy. With this young and growing population, California has a consumer market and workforce rivaled only by entire nations.

05/26/2015: The Cost of an Adjunct, by Laura McKenna, The Atlantic - The plight of non-tenured professors is widely known, but what about the impact they have on the students they're hired to instruct?

05/26/2015: 5 Facts about Latinos and Education, by Jens Manuel Krogstad, PewResearchCenter - Educational attainment among U.S. Latinos has been changing rapidly in recent years, reflecting the group's growth in the nation's public K-12 schools and colleges. Over the past decade, the Hispanic high school dropout rate has declined and college enrollment has increased, even as Hispanics trail other groups in earning a bachelor's degree.

05/23/2015: Early College Can Lead to More Diplomas, by Marcia Fudge, The Columbus Dispatch - Simply put, early college works. However, although they are free to students and families, school districts often cannot support early-college programs due to tuition costs, causing program instability.

05/22/2015: Opinion: Why Americans Need to Reinvent the Entire Education System, by Robert Reich, The Christian Science Monitor - In the big picture, much of our education system - from the bells that ring to separate classes to memorization drills - was built to mirror the assembly lines that powered the American economy for the last century. As educators know, what we need today is a system of education that cultivates the critical thinking skills necessary for the economy of tomorrow.

05/19/2015: The Case for 'Unbundling' Higher Education, by Robert Litan, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Wire - University presidents and trustees cannot afford to be complacent. One compelling suggestion, by Monica Herk, the the Committee for Economic Development's vice president for education research, is that all institutions of higher learning focus far more on certifying competencies in particular skills that employers demand rather than on simply requiring students to complete a fixed number of classes.

05/19/2015: Sen. Bernie Sanders Wants Free Tuition at Four-Year Public Colleges. Here's Why It Won't Work., by  Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, The Washington Post - So much of what Sanders is calling for would take a level of enforcement and compliance that would be difficult to achieve, said Iris Palmer, a senior policy analyst at the New America Foundation. More importantly, she questioned whether free tuition would be sustainable if it encouraged more people to go to college.

05/09/2015: Myths and Misconceptions about Competency-Based Education, by Brian Fleming, Eduventures, Wake-Up Call - At a time when higher education is actively experimenting with competency-based education (CBE), confusion abounds about what CBE is and the extent of its contribution to the present transformation of higher education.

   

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Statistics

06/03/2015: George Will Delivers the Commencement Address Every 2015 College Graduate Needs to Hear, by Mark J. Perry, American Enterprise Institute - See related chart showing the nearly 12X increase in college tuition and fees since 1978 compared to much smaller increases in medical care, new home prices and overall consumer prices.

05/20/2015: Monthly Member Update Call: U.S. Postsecondary Education in 15 Charts, by Monica Herk, The Committee for Economic Development - Monica Herk, CED's Vice President of Education Research, gave a presentation about the current state of postsecondary education in the United States.

 

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Online Education

Reports & Articles

 

05/27/2015: Going The Distance, by Paul Bradley, Community College Week - In its annual survey and report, the Instructional Technology Council, made up of distance learning administrators at 350 colleges, identified lower student retention and completion rates and a lack of preparedness for online learning as among the primary challenges for distance learning administrators.

05/20/2015: Leaders Discuss Taking Online Learning From an Alternative to a "Must", by Meris Stansbury, eCampus News - eCampus News asked distinguished online learning advocates to give their thoughts on why it's imperative to take higher education's perception of online learning from an alternative to a "must."

 

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College Readiness

Reports & Articles

 

09/2013: Creating College Ready Communities, by Kim Nauer and Paul Tainsh, Center for New York City Affairs at The New School - Increasing the numbers of New York City high school graduates going to college and earning a college degree has proven to be an elusive goal for local policymakers. This report seeks to illuminate the latest college access efforts here, and to shed new light on the complicated circumstances that allow some students to go to college and succeed - and so many others to fail.

 

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Remedial Education

Reports & Articles

 

05/29/2015: Community Colleges Sending Too Many into Remedial Math, by Eloy Ortiz Oakley and Pamela Burdman, San Francisco Chronicle - The diagnostic tools most community colleges use have been found to be inaccurate, "under-placing" a large number of students in remedial courses that they don't need for college success. And according to national research, community colleges set a higher bar than even four-year universities: Community college students are about 20 percent more likely to require remedial courses than similarly qualified students at four-year schools.

05/2015: A Call to Action to Improve Math Placement Policies and Processes, by Lara K. Couturier and Jenna Cullinane, Jobs For The Future (JFF) - Jobs for the Future joined the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin and Achieving the Dream sounding a call to action with six policy recommendations to increase STEM student aspirations and success while decreasing racial and income gaps.

03/20/2015: Texas-size Math Lab, by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed - Administrators and instructors at Austin Community College decided to go big when they tried a new approach to remedial math -- like 600 computer stations in the nation's largest learning lab big.  

 

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College Completion

Reports & Articles

 

06/03/2015: Bill Gates, College Dropout: Don't Be Like Me, by David Leonhardt, The New York Times, The Upshot - The post is tied to an interview Mr. Gates has done with Cheryl Hyman, the chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago, the city's network of community colleges. It's still not clear exactly what works best in reducing dropout rates, but it is clear that doing so matters. Two large recent studies suggest that college graduation itself matters. Not only do students learn from the courses they take, but they also learn the valuable skill of seeing something through to the end - of figuring out how to finish what they started and of gaining the confidence that comes with that success.

05/28/2015: Fewer Than a Quarter of Oregon Community College Students Complete Degrees, Audit Says, by Richard Read, The Oregonian, OregonLive - Only 24 percent of Oregon community college students reviewed in a state audit received an associate's degree or certificate within seven years.

05/27/2015: GRCC Success Rates Rise, But About Half of Students Don't Graduate, Transfer in 6 Years, by Brian McVicar, MLive - Achievement rates are rising at Grand Rapids Community College, but about half of students still don't complete a degree, earn a certificate or transfer to another institution within six years, according to a new report.

To view our entire College Completion section, click here. 

Workforce Development

Reports & Articles

 

05/18/2015: Leadership for Life - Assessments, by Barry Schapiro, Workforce Solutions Group - While interviewing methods have become more sophisticated (behavioral questions, less reliance on "gut" feelings, etc.), the research doesn't support interviewing as a successful selection technique when used exclusively.

05/2015: Not As Hard As You Think, Engaging High School Students in Workbased Learning, by Charlotte Cahill and Sheila Jackson, Pathways to Prosperity Network - This brief is intended to allay concerns about perceived barriers to young people's access to workplaces and to highlight the successes of employers who have opened their doors to high school students.

04/22/2015: The Role of Business in Promoting Educational Attainment, by Cynthia Skinner, Lumina Foundation - Highlights how companies in Detroit, Memphis, New York City, and Miami are helping employees advance their education. Features practices to increasing workers' education, such as partnerships between companies and colleges, collaborations with local governments and economic development organizations, and internal company initiatives.  

  

To view our entire Workforce Development section, click here.

Technology Adoption

Reports & Articles

 

05/28/2015: 6 ResNet Pain Points and What To Do About Them, by David Raths, Campus Technology - Today's students expect high-performance residential networks with plenty of bandwidth and anytime, anywhere wireless access. Here are the top ResNet challenges at institutions across the country.

05/27/2015: Report: Chromebook Shipments To Grow 27 Percent in 2015, by Joshua Bolkan, Campus Technology - Since the first model launched in mid-2011, Google's Chromebook has seen success mainly in the education segment across all regions.   

 

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Data Analysis & Assessment

Reports & Articles  

 

05/21/2015: School Counselors Mixed on SAT and ACT Advice, As New SAT Arrives, by Caralee Adams, Education Week, College Bound - A new survey finds school counselors are offering a range of advice to students about whether to take the current SAT, the new SAT in the spring of 2016, the ACT - or a combination of the three. 

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Funding & Economics

Reports & Articles

 

05/28/2015: Wisconsin One of Few States Taking Up Higher Education Cuts, by Karen Herzog, Journal Sentinel - Wisconsin is one of only a half-dozen states that have approved or are considering cuts to higher education funding for the fiscal year starting July 1.

05/25/2015: Many Community College Grads Continue to Out-Earn B.A. Holders a Decade After Graduation, by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report - "But even 10 years later, there are many students with certificates and associate's degrees in fields where they make more money than the B.A.'s," said Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes for Research and a former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

05/22/2015: 3 Effects Of State Higher Education Funding Cuts, by Katy Hopkins, NASFAA - As state funding lingers below pre-recession levels in all but three states (North Dakota, Wyoming, and Alaska), there have been numerous effects on colleges and college-going behavior.  

 

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Transfer & Articulation

Reports & Articles

 

05/27/2015: LBCC Figures Show "Unacceptable" Six-Year Path to Transfer, by Jason Ruiz, Long Beach Post - While the update showed that the school sends the majority of its transfers on to Cal State schools, producing over 900 CSU transfer-eligible students during the 2013-2014 school year, it shed light on its continued struggles to place students into the University of California system.

05/27/2015: Private Colleges Target Community College Grads, by Jon Marcus, US News & World Report - Transfer students like Brown aren't just finding their credits suddenly being accepted by small, private colleges and universities that once turned up their noses at them; as the number of conventional high school graduates begins to slide, they're being actively - even aggressively - recruited.

05/20/2015: College Choice Report Part 3 - Persistence and Transfer, ACT - The "College Choice Report" is an annual report series that follows an ACT-tested high school graduating class from high school through the second year of college. It focuses on an alternating set of student characteristics, preferences, and college search behaviors to assist enrollment managers, admissions personnel, and other college administrators with student recruitment, enrollment, and persistence.

05/14/2015: UConn Professors Have Discretion Over Rejecting Community College Credits, by David Deshroches, WNPR Connecticut - The University of Connecticut is rejecting roughly a fifth of the eligible credits from students who transfer from community colleges, according to a recent study put out by a counselor at Gateway Community College. 

 

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