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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 Associates, Inc.

"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."  - Confucius

Volume 6, Issue 16 - September 18, 2016    
  
In This Issue
Miscellaneous
Sep-Oct/2016: The Sixteen Most Innovative People in Higher Education, by Gilad Edelman, Washington Monthly - These front-line innovators don't always have a lot of power. So when they try to advocate for new and better ways of serving students, they are typically pushing against resistant leadership, indifferent or threatened colleagues, and a general institutional inertia that makes progress painfully slow.

09/08/2016: OPINION: We Need a Strategy - Not a Silver Bullet - for Student Success, by Karen Vignare, EdSurge - As a pioneer of online, blended and emerging technologies within higher education, I know many of the people within higher ed leveraging new tools are looking for a silver bullet to help more students be successful. It is just as clear that it is going to require multiple tools or new digital pedagogy to improve student success for those students underserved in both of the lower socioeconomic quartiles.

09/06/2016: Preparing New Leaders for New Challenges, by Karen Stout, LinkedIn Post - On average, community college presidents remain in their leadership positions for three and a half years. By comparison, presidents at four-year institutions remain in their positions for an average of seven years.

09/05/2016: Getting Real About Today's College Students, by Daniel Greenstein, Impatient Optimists - It's back-to-school time again, the season where we are surrounded by images of grassy quads and ivy-covered buildings, ads promising solutions to cramped dorm rooms, and the inevitable stories about the angst of college costs.  And while all of this reflects time-honored traditions and rituals, it also paints an incomplete picture of today's college students and what they need to be successful.  This matters because we need more students than ever to make it into and through college to fuel our economy and maintain social mobility. What are some of the most common misconceptions about today's college students?  Here are just a few...

09/02/2016: The Politics of Higher Education, by Emily Deruy, The Atlantic - The new film "Starving the Beast" explores both the view - generally proffered by liberals and schools that rely on taxpayer support - that higher education in the U.S. is a public good to be supported by society, and the counter narrative - backed by conservative think tanks and policy wonks - that it is a cost to be shouldered primarily by individual degree-earners and private entities (who will presumably benefit in the long run).

09/01/2016: Big Companies That Help Older Workers Finish a College Degree, by Lisa Rabasca Roepe, NextAvenue - Nearly 3 � million Americans age 50 or older have taken some college courses but haven't earned a degree or certificate, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Some big employers, such as Starbucks, JetBlue, Fiat/Chrysler and Pizza Hut are now helping them finish a college degree.

08/31/2016: College Degrees Are Due for Reform, by Charles J. Sykes, Time - To finally reform higher education, we should start by asking fundamental questions, such as: Why does it take four years to get a degree? There is, after all, nothing sacred about four years. Why not three? Or two, or one?

08/30/2016: Why Continuing Education Programs Are Poised to Become Hubs of Innovation, by Michael B. Horn, EdSurge - Those with a continuing education program have a valuable asset they should leverage as their hub of innovation to improve opportunities not just for adults but for all students.

Online Education
09/01/2016: Mapping the Transformation of the Online Education Marketplace, by Chip Paucek, EvoLLLution - As the online education marketplace continues to grow, colleges and universities need to carefully consider the role online education will play at their institution and do more to ensure these learners are integrated better into the campus community.

College Readiness
08/31/2016: Program boosts number of college advisors at Michigan high schools, by Brian McVicar, MichiganLive - AdviseMI, a program created by the Michigan College Access Network, will embed 49 recent college graduates at 62 high schools, where they will help students research and apply to various colleges, fill out financial aid forms and take admissions tests.The schools where the advisors will be placed have relatively low college-going rates and serve a significant number of low-income students, according to the program, now in its second year. The advisors have undergone a four-week training session.

08/31/2016: Does Working in High School Benefit or Hinder College Prospects?, by Terri Williams, GoodCall - About one in four students report working in high school, whether out of necessity, to gain practical experience, or for some other reason, according to the most recent Census Bureau information. But until now, there was no definitive research on the effects of juggling work and high school. Does working hinder or increase academic ability? Does working in high school make students more or less likely to attend college?

08/18/2016: States attack college readiness in high school, by Jon Marcus, APMreports - High schools in many parts of the country are judged on the proportion of their students who graduate, not whether those students are ready for college. Surprisingly, scoring "proficient" on state-mandated standardized tests required to receive high school diplomas does not necessarily mean students are prepared for college-level work.

Remedial Education
09/2016: Remedial Coursetaking at U.S. Public 2- and 4-Year Institutions: Scope, Experience, and Outcomes, by Xianglei Chen, NCES, U.S. Department of Education - While much research on the effectiveness of remedial education has been conducted, rigorous studies are limited and the results have been mixed. This Statistical Analysis Report attempts to contribute to the literature with a descriptive analysis of beginning postsecondary students' coursetaking spanning the 6-year period between 2003 and 2009, documenting the scope, intensity, timing, and completion of remedial coursetaking and its association with various postsecondary outcomes among students who began at public 2- and 4-year institutions. Remedial education programs may include support services in addition to precollege-level coursework, both of which are designed to get underprepared students ready for college-level work.

College Completion
college completion
09/08/2016: With daunting long-term target, SUNY hails recent increase in degree completions, by Keshia Clukey, Politico - Under the agenda, state campuses were each required to put in place a degree target customized to their school as part of their performance improvement plan. SUNY is tracking to make sure every campus is meeting its individual goals, Zimpher said. Campuses have received funding, including $18 million allocated in the 2015-16 state budget toward the Investment and Performance Fund, to assist them in implementing the programs. SUNY also pooled both internal and external resources, including $55 million in bonded capital support from the state for SUNY2020, to increase the fund to $100 million, according to SUNY.

09/07/2016: Completion Is Not Enough! Up Next: Advising, by Michael Collins, Completion By Design - Completing degrees that only provide access to low paying wages has major implications for economic opportunity and economic mobility. People who earn low wages will struggle to earn enough money to cover their basic living expenses, let alone save enough to provide some semblance of economic security. Choosing programs of study wisely is particularly important for students whose primary and immediate interest in completing a college credential is gainful employment and economic mobility. In actual fact, students, particularly those who are low income and first generation, are unlikely to be able to navigate the complexity of the connection between credentials and earnings on their own.

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Workforce Development
08/30/2016: The 'Soft Skills' Employers Are Looking For, by Kate Davidson, The Wall Street Journal - Nearly 58% of employees who touted stellar communication skills were hired over the course of a year, according to an analysis of 2.3 million LinkedIn profiles for The Wall Street Journal.

Technology Adoption
09/15/2016: A (New) Bronx Tale: A Community College Embraces Edtech to Give Students a Happy Ending, by George Lorenzo, EdSurge - Hostos Community College may be in the South Bronx, the poorest congressional district in the U.S., but it's cultivating an award-winning, technology-rich culture with a laser-like focus on delivering student services.

09/13/2016: Game On: How Four Community College Professors Spawned the CUNY Games Network, by George Lorenzo, EdSurge - When four professors from the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) started collaborating on game-based learning (GBL) in developmental math and writing instruction in the mid-2000s, they had no idea what they were setting in motion.

09/06/2016: LaGuardia Community College: Where Business and Tech Education Meet, by Rian Ervin, EdSurge - LaGuardia Community College in Queens, NY was recently awarded $3.9 million in federal grants to provide at-risk, disadvantaged young people with free tech industry training. The grants are part of a White House and U.S. Department of Labor initiative called TechHire that sponsors 39 similar programs across the U.S. to help position participants for high-growth, well-paying information technology jobs that require skills such as coding, software development and systems management.

Data Analysis & Assessment
08/29/2016: Delaware State Using Data Science to Improve Retention, by Jamaal Abdul-Alim, Diverse - Not so long ago, officials at Delaware State University (DSU) responded to dropouts and stop-outs in an after-the-fact manner. But DSU - which cut a series of low-enrollment programs earlier this year - can no longer afford to take that kind of approach, Williams says. Now, the school uses data analytics to flag not only when students leave the school, but to anticipate before they "stop out." School officials also use analytics to understand the reasons why and to figure out what, if anything, can be done to get them to stay or re-enroll and finish.

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Funding & Economics
09/13/2016: Clinton Campaign Launches College Cost Calculator, by Sri Ravipati, Campus Technology - It is estimated that 40 million Americans have student loan debt. Through the college calculator, borrowers can input information, such as current student loan balance and how many years are left on the loan, to find out how much they would save if Clinton were elected. Similarly, prospective college students can use a separate portal to calculate the cost of their tuition at a two-year community college, four-year in-state and out-of-state institutions.
 
09/02/2016:  Clinton 'Free' Plan Would Swell College Enrollments, by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed - Analysis estimates public colleges would enroll up to 22 percent more students, mostly at open-enrollment institutions. A quarter of the gain would come at the expense of private colleges, particularly less selective ones

Transfer & Articulation
09/06/2016: Understudied Barriers to Transfer, by Davis Jenkins and John Fink, Inside Higher Ed - Research we and others have done on transfer, together with years of visiting colleges and talking to students, has given us some insight into why transfer outcomes are so poor.

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The SOURCE on Community College Issues, Trends & Strategies
is published by
 
The Roueche Graduate Center, National American University & Lorenzo Associates, Inc.,
Ann Arbor, MI 48103 - [email protected]

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