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Updates from The SOURCE on Community College
Issues, Trends & Strategies
Published by
The Roueche Graduate Center, National American University
in partnership with Lorenzo A ssociates, Inc. 
"My favorite poem is the one that starts 'Thirty days hath September'
because it actually tells you something" -. Groucho Marx
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Volume 6, Issue 16 - September 4, 2016
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Miscellaneous
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08/29/2016: Is U.S. Missing Out On Skills of the Educated and Undocumented?, by Griselda Nevarez, NBC News - What was supposed to be a year in the U.S. to learn English and advance her career became 11 years for Karla Ayon, a life without legal status and of doing domestic work, rather than using her international trade degree and business acumen.
08/29/2016: What do adult students want from college?, by Joseph Dussault, The Christian Science Monitor - The demographics of higher learning are changing, but traditional colleges have been slow to adapt. An adult learner-focused ranking hopes to help prompt change.
08/29/2016: Column: What's making students 'less resilient'?, by Denise Cummins, PBS Newshour - Something very disturbing is happening on college campuses. A 2014 survey by the American College Health Association found that 94 percent of counseling center directors reported a steady increase in the number of college students with severe psychological problems, and 89 percent reported an increase in the number of students arriving on campus who were already taking prescription medication for anxiety or depression.
08/28/2016: 5 Reasons to Like EQUIP, by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed - My agenda is to try and convince you that: a. You should care about EQUIP., and b. You should spend some energy / capital talking positively about EQUIP to your network.
08/25/2016: Third Parties on Higher Ed, by Andrew Kreighbaum, Inside Higher Ed - Green Party's Jill Stein wants to cancel all student debt. Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson wants to kill Education Department.
08/24/2016: ACT Scores Drop as More Take Test, by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed - The average composite score for those who graduated from high school this year was 20.8, down 0.2 points from last year and representing a five-year low. (The highest possible score on each part of the ACT is 36, and the composite is an average of the four scores.) ACT data show that 64 percent of high school seniors in the Class of 2016 took the ACT this year, up from 59 percent last year and 52 percent in 2012. Generally, when a larger share of students take a test - in some cases encouraged by state requirements more than the students necessarily being college ready - scores go down. Score drops were the largest in states that have just started to require all students to take the ACT.
08/23/2016: 2 in 5 High Schools Don't Offer Physics, Analysis Finds, by Liana Heitin, Education Week - Physics, as champions of the subject will remind you, is the cornerstone of many professions, including those in engineering, health care, aerospace, and architecture. And for students hoping to pursue those and other science, technology, engineering, and math fields during college, getting a jump on physics during high school is all but a requirement.
08/22/2016: For Refugee Students, A Diploma Is More Than A Piece Of Paper, by Grace Runkel, NPR-WFPL - Regardless of what he's already accomplished, David said the road to higher education is not easy for refugee students. The two biggest issues they face, according to David, are learning English and understanding the application process.
08/22/2016: Senator suggests colleges swap teachers for videos, by APNewswire - The Republican senator from Wisconsin floated the idea during a question-and-answer session Thursday in Milwaukee.He called higher education a "cartel" and suggested colleges could cut the number of instructors and increase use of online videos like Ken Burns' 11�-hour documentary on the Civil War.
08/19/2016: OPINION: The Digital Library's Best-Kept Secret, by Tara Lifland, EdSurge - There is clearly a disconnect here. How come none of my professors told me about this heavenly resource? Why aren't more of my classmates taking advantage of these resources? Why is this blessing of a resource center the university's best-kept secret? The only plausible reason I could come up with is plain and simple: lack of awareness.
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Online Education
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08/29/2016: A Novel Way to Launch an Online Program, by Maxine Joselow, Inside Higher Ed - While many institutions rely on online program management providers, Schreiner University opts for an alternative way of building an online nursing program.
08/15/2016: How Employers View Online, For-Profit Bachelor's Degrees, by Jordan Friedman, U.S. News & World Report - Recruiters say, the negative perception of undergraduate, for-profit education that some employers have held in recent years may be starting to shift, and not all are skeptical. "Although I think that still somewhat of a stigma might exist against the for-profit universities, given the current state of the job market today and the low unemployment rates, employers are starting to get really creative and are definitely placing more value on this type of degree than they had in the past, and are much more willing to extend an offer to these applicants," says Amy Glaser, senior vice president of Adecco Staffing, a worldwide employment agency.
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College Readiness
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08/24/2016: Growing Number of Students Aren't Ready for College, Wall Street Journal Video - As colleges push students to consider their options for higher education, more high-school students are taking the ACT exam. But the latest test results show a growing number of students aren't meeting college readiness benchmarks. WSJ's Melissa Korn joins Lunch Break with Tanya Rivero to discuss. 08/20/2016: Conquering the Freshman Fear of Failure, by David L. Kirp, The New York Times - Regardless of their credentials, many freshmen doubt that they have the necessary brainpower or social adeptness to succeed in college. This fear of failing hits poor, minority and first-generation college students especially hard. If they flunk an exam, or a professor doesn't call on them, their fears about whether they belong may well be confirmed. The cycle of doubt becomes self-reinforcing, and students are more likely to drop out.
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Remedial Education
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08/18/2016: Stuck at Square One, by Emily Hanford, APM Reports - A system meant to give college students a better shot at succeeding is actually getting in the way of many, costing them time and money and taking a particular toll on students of color.
07/2016: Next-Generation CBE: Designing Competency-Based Education for Underprepared College Learners, by Amy Girardi and Rachel Crew, Jobs For the Future - Competency-based education (CBE) is widely viewed as an innovative alternative to traditional higher education, yet most programs serve only a narrow slice of the postsecondary population. Few are intended for adults who need to boost basic skills in order to succeed in college coursework. However, if designed with the needs of a broader range of learners in mind, CBE could be an important piece of the national movement to increase educational access, equity, and credential attainment. This report is the first in a series that will zero in on the critical question of how to adapt CBE in order to expand access and increase success for this large and growing group.
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College Completion
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08/22/2016: Op-Ed How to measure success in higher ed? Not just how many students attend, but how many graduate., by Peter McPherson, Los Angeles Times - Although the American public is often told that a college education will consign them to six figures of debt and diminished financial prospects, the truth is that 36% of public four-year university graduates complete their degrees without any debt, the average debt among borrowers is $25,500, and less than 2% graduate with more than $60,000 in debt. Never mind that a bachelor's degree adds up to $1 million to a worker's lifetime earnings. Even some college, particularly a two-year degree, adds to lifetime earnings.
08/19/2016: How to Get Students to Finish College? Offer Them a Free Year, by Jessica Dickler, NBC News - Starting this fall, the private University of Evansville - where the four-year completion rate was about 58 percent - officially rolls out a guarantee: If you don't finish in four years, the fifth year is tuition free. Several other schools have initiated a similar push to get students in and out.
08/18/2016: Speeding It Up, by Paul Bradley, Communtiy College Week - A growing body of evidence suggests that starting slow harms rather than helps students. College students who enroll in 15 credits in their first semester, and 30 credits a year, accumulate more credits over the course of their college careers and are much more likely to graduate than those students who initially enroll in just 12 credits, according to a recent study from the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University.
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Workforce Development
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08/23/2016: How to align academic offerings to meet workforce development needs, by Jarrett Carter, EducationDive - A new study from Indeed.com lists computer and information sciences, engineering, architecture, management, health professions and finance as the top areas which have high needs in hiring, and low areas where technology can replace human capital in the workforce.
08/2016: Matching Talents to Careers: From Self-Directed to Guided Pathways, by Thomas Bailey, Davis Jenkins, Clive Belfield and Elizabeth Kopko, Community College Research Center (CCRC) - College plays an important role in connecting students with jobs and careers. Individuals with college degrees are on average able to secure higher-paying, higher-status jobs than those with no college credential or some college experience. Students' choice of major is fundamentally related to how much they will earn and what types of jobs they will secure. This chapter examines the matching process between students and college programs or majors, primarily in community colleges.
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Technology Adoption
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08/29/2016: Higher Ed IT Improvements Flummoxed by Data, System Complexities, by Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology - Although the use of data to improve operations is a dandy idea in theory, practice leaves something to be desired. While two-thirds (64 percent) of higher education IT decision makers agreed that the data generated from their IT operations is "extremely" or "very" important to their missions, most of them (59 percent) lack visibility across their IT systems. For nearly half (48 percent), data in different formats and types is the problem when trying to use data to diagnose IT issues; similarly, data ingestion and normalization challenges 41 percent. 08/23/2016: 5 Higher-Ed Innovators Share Challenges, Ideas for the Future of Digital Learning, by Charlie Chung, EdSurge - In a Meetup hosted by EdSurge on Aug. 17, more than 100 people gathered to hear speakers present how their organizations are embracing the future of digital learning. Held at NovoEd's headquarters, five speakers gave their six-minute lightning talks and then led a smaller group discussion with attendees.
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Data Analysis & Assessment
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08/23/2016: Reflections From NCAN's Idea Incubators on Data and Evaluation, by Bill DeBaun, National College Access Network - This summer, NCAN held a series of four "Idea Incubators" to tackle tough problems in data and evaluation, which we developed based on a strong belief in the cross-pollination of problem solving, resources, and practices that occurs whenever NCAN members come together. The sessions were extremely successful in bringing together college access and success programs from around the country to identify the need for guidance in key areas and to provide a roadmap for future resources NCAN can provide. 08/22/2016: Big Data Analysis in Higher Education: Promises and Pitfalls, by Chris Dede, Andrew Ho and Piotr Mitros, EducauseReview - The grand challenge in data-intensive research and analysis in higher education is to find the means to extract knowledge from the extremely rich data sets being generated today and to distill this into usable information for students, instructors, and the public.
Back to 'In This Issue'
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Funding & Economics
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08/28/2016: Borrow or Work?, by Matt Reed, Inside Higher Ed - -I tried to build a scenario that reflects a fairly representative real life. Should Ashley avoid loans and attend part-time, or cut back her work hours, borrow, and attend full-time?It comes down to weighing risks. If she goes part-time and works a lot for pay, her odds of actually finishing her degree drop dramatically. If she bites the bullet and goes full-time, the odds of finishing the degree are markedly higher.
08/25/2016: Parsing The 'Free' In Free Community College, by Anya Kamenetz, NPR Ed - If you want a free lunch, someone has to pick up the check. In order to make community college free to students, someone, whether the state or the federal government, needs to cover tuition. And to understand how big of a change that would be and how much it would cost, you have to understand how states are currently funding community colleges and how much of the cost they're currently passing along to students in the form of tuition. Across the country, community colleges, like all public colleges, are relying more and more on tuition as a source of funds.
08/24/2016: OP-ED: Should college come with a money-back guarantee?, by Beth Akers and Stuart M Butler, Brookings - Why do so many students keep showing up year after year to pay this high price? Because they believe it will be worth it. They believe that the institution they've chosen will fulfill all of the promises made to them in the glossy recruiting pamphlets and during campus tours led by a charming upperclassman. But what if it doesn't?
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Transfer & Articulation
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08/25/2016: Snapshot Report - Two-Year Enrollment after Bachelor's Degree, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center - During the Great Recession, there was a slight increase in the percentage of bachelor's degree earners who opted to continue their educations at two-year institutions. However, that percentage has now dropped well below pre-recession levels, with only 5.8 percent of 2013-14 bachelor's degree earners having returned to college at two-year institutions.
08/24/2016: College Students Shouldn't Feel Bad About Switching Majors, PR Newswire - "Students' interests grow and change during college, as evidenced by the up to 85 percent of students who switch majors," said Ed Venit, Ph.D., Senior Director at EAB. "The data show that students have far more flexibility to change their majors than many students, parents, and administrators assumed. Exploration can be a positive growth experience that supports student success." The EAB report, "How Late Is Too Late? Myths and Facts about the Consequences of Switching College Majors" features findings from a data analysis of 10 public and private institutions, ranging in enrollment from 5,800 to over 42,000.
08/23/2016: The road less traveled: How I transferred from community college to YaleShare, by Ryan Liu, The Tab - It was right before the start of school when I ultimately made the decision to rescind my Statement of Intent to Register from the four-year institution I had chosen and instead attend community college. Deep-down, I felt like I was being "left behind" compared to my classmates who chose to attend four-year universities. Now, I understand just how important community colleges are, and I wouldn't be the same person if I hadn't attended one.
05/02/2016: What We've Learned, What We Still Need to Know: Insights from the Credit When It's Due (CWID) Research Meeting in Salt Lake City, by CWID Research Team - Interest in reverse credit transfer policy and practice continues to be high among the state leaders participating in CWID. To continue to sustain and advance sound policy and practice, there is strong interest in on-going communications, active networking, targeted technical assistance, and focused professional development.
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The SOURCE on Community College Issues, Trends & Strategies
The Roueche Graduate Center, National American University & Lorenzo Associates, Inc.,
Ann Arbor, MI 48103 - glorenzo@edpath.com
Please send comments and/or suggestions to
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