SBCTC NEWS LINKS | Articles about – and of interest to – Washington state community and technical colleges
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State board to consider tuition hike for Peninsula, other community colleges
The State Board for Community and Technical Colleges will vote on a proposed 12 percent average increase for community college tuition Thursday. The board, which oversees the state’s 34 community and technical colleges — including Peninsula College, which has campuses in Port Angeles, Port Townsend and Forks — raised tuition last year by 13 percent for full-time students and 11 percent for part-timers.
Peninsula Daily News, May 7, 2012
Tuition to be increased again at WSU
Some are speeding up their education, to avoid further tuition increases. Some are leaving the Richland campus temporarily to take courses elsewhere, such as Columbia Basin College in Pasco -- a community college -- where it's more affordable before continuing with a bachelor's degree. "One of my friends has started lightening her (class) load to take on more shifts at work," Eubanks said. Even the regents lamented the impact of the increases on students, and called on them, as well as alumni and state residents, to voice their concerns to lawmakers.
The News Tribune, May 5, 2012
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/05/05/2132542/tuition-to-be-increased-again.html
Wash. students face another big tuition hike
In-state tuition at Evergreen and Central will go up 14 percent this fall. Tuition at Eastern is going up 11 percent. Western will have a second year of 16 percent tuition hikes.
The State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, which oversees Washington's 34 community and technical colleges, raised tuition last year by 13 percent for full-time students and 11 percent for part-timers. …
Business Week, May 4, 2012
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-05/D9UI7K6G1.htm
Olympic College engineering students first to make diploma walk in Pullman
In 2009 Alexander was enrolled in the engineering program at the University of Washington. He would wake up at 4:30 a.m. to get ready, his wife would take him to the Bremerton ferry dock for the hour ride to Seattle, then he'd grab a bus to the University District and make it to campus about an hour ahead of his first class at 10 a.m. It was normal for him to be on the 10:30 p.m. boat back to Kitsap County. "The commute just killed me," Alexander said. He got an easier path to the degree when WSU partnered with Olympic College to offer baccalaureate degrees in engineering for students studying in Bremerton during the traditional third and fourth years of college.
Kitsap Sun, May 4, 2012
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2012/may/04/olympic-college-engineering-students-first-to-in/
South Puget Sound Community College president will retire in January
South Puget Sound Community College president Gerald Pumphrey announced today that he will retire in January.
The Olympian, May 3, 2012
http://www.theolympian.com/2012/05/03/2091541/south-puget-sound-community-college.html
Bonaudi delivers final college address
Lauds victories, calls for more support for higher education
Columbia Basin Herald, May 3, 2012
http://www.columbiabasinherald.com/bbcc/article_f6af5342-954b-11e1-8e10-0019bb2963f4.html
Big Bend presidential finalists announced
Columbia Basin Herald, May 4, 2012
http://www.columbiabasinherald.com/bbcc/article_e362dc78-960e-11e1-8c56-0019bb2963f4.html
Green’ Grandview Library awarded Gold Certification
Yakima Valley Community College and the City of Grandview have announced that the Grandview Library has been awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold Certification. This is the first LEED-certified project in Yakima County.
The Grandview Herald: May 2, 2012
http://yvccpress.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/capture.pdf
How College Students can work with Professors to Achieve Academic Success
A Washington college professor is shaking up the world of education and helping students get better grades like never before. Using a progressive teaching style that breaks down barriers, Ellen Bremen, a tenured professor of Communication Studies at Highline Community College just outside of Seattle, Washington is teaching students things that no one ever dreamed of telling students before.
College Recruiter, April 23, 2012
Salcedo joins staff of Times, Globe
Lauren Salcedo has family in Arlington and was also enrolled in Running Start at Everett Community College. Because she was already studying journalism at the age of 15 at EvCC, she soon found herself editing that school’s newspaper. “I did everything from laying out all the pages to cleaning up after we were done,” said Salcedo, who graduated from high school in 2007 and transferred from EvCC to the University of Washington.
Marysville Globe, April 25, 2012
http://www.marysvilleglobe.com/business/148931395.html
Murray, local college students talk loan debt
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray made a stop at Clark College in Vancouver on Thursday afternoon to glean stories from Southwest Washington college students she hopes to use as “ammunition” in an anticipated debate in Congress about student loan interest.
The Columbian, May 4, 2012
http://www.columbian.com/news/2012/may/03/murray-students-talk-loan-debt-senator-says-she-wi/
Back on the COURT — Christa Spitler, a star player at Mount Vernon High in the mid-1990s, steps in for the SVC women’s tennis team at age 33
When Christa Spitler begins her matches for the Skagit Valley College tennis team, sometimes a few of her four kids can be seen at the edges of the court, watching her play. Spitler said it reminds her of when she and her sister were growing up, watching and learning from their father Vince Hughes, the longtime coach at Mount Vernon High School. “It’s almost a flashback of growing up with tennis,” she said. As the Cardinals prepare to wrap up their season next weekend at the Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges championships in Spokane, Spitler will be ending an unusual season — but one she hopes creates plenty of memories for her and her children...
Skagit Valley Herald, May 6, 2012
http://www.skagit.edu/files3.asp_Q_pagenumber_E_2960
Sen. Murray discusses future of student loans at LCC
Lower Columbia College student Chance Stewart, 25, used a college loan to turn his life around. "I'm the first person in my family to graduate high school, let alone attend college," the Castle Rock resident told Sen. Patty Murray Thursday at a roundtable discussion at LCC about legislation to keep student loan rates low. Stewart, who was homeless twice by the time he was 24, is an honor student on a general transfer degree and is considering a career in music or higher education administration. He has several more years of school ahead of him, and the possibility of interest jumping from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on a federally subsidized Stafford loan "scares me to death," Stewart said.
The Daily News, May 4, 2012
Alliance pitches Kitsap County’s aerospace potential to Cantwell
“Virtually every high-tech aerospace firm will tell you that they’re hungry for trained people,” said state Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-Tacoma, a leading advocate in the legislature for higher education. Cantwell saw where some of that training will take place when she visited Olympic College in Bremerton after the KADA roundtable. She was on hand to mark the launch of a new aerospace training program made possible by a grant she helped secure last fall. … Cantwell toured the new classrooms and met students enrolled in the composites training program. The training program is made possible by a $20 million Department of Labor grant that was awarded to Air Washington to support the training of more than 2,600 workers statewide with the skills needed by Washington state’s 650 aerospace employers.
Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal, April 30, 2012
LWIT Funeral Services Program Receives Full Accreditation
Lake Washington Institute of Technology’s (LWIT) Funeral Services Education Program—the only accredited one in Washington—has received full accreditation after graduating its first class.
Redmond Patch, May 1, 2012
http://redmond.patch.com/articles/lwit-funeral-services-program-receives-full-accreditation
LWIT’s Funeral Service Education Program receives accreditation
Lake Washington Institute of Technology’s (LWIT) Funeral Service Education program received accreditation last week by the American Board of Funeral Service Education.
Kirkland Reporter, April 30, 2012
http://www.kirklandreporter.com/news/149591275.html
South Sound Business People: Awards/Recognition
John Walstrum, president of Clover Park Technical College, recently received the Shirley B. Gordon Award of Distinction from Phi Theta Kappa.
The News Tribune, May 1, 2012
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/05/01/2126959/south-sound-business-people.html
Editorial: S. Carolina Boeing plant offers some good lessons
Spokane Community College has honed its aerospace courses by working with the 80-odd companies in the region in that business. In September, SCC received $5.8 million of a $20 million grant to the Air Washington Program for training a new generation of aerospace workers. GSI is trying to raise student awareness of opportunities in aerospace as early as middle school …
The Spokesman Review, May 1, 2012
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/may/01/editorial-s-carolina-boeing-plant-offers-some/
Highline College's StartZone seeks to expand through partnership
Highline Community College is collaborating with The Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI), a pioneer in offering Sustainable MBA and certificate programs, to expand its StartZone program outside the South King County area.
Highline Times, May 2, 2012
STEM Grant to Benefit Highline Students
Students in Highline will have better opportunities to be prepared for careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), thanks to an initiative announced today. The non-profit Washington STEM has announced a grant of $270,000 to launch the South King County STEM Network. This newly formed network of school districts, businesses, higher education, workforce development, research institutes, and public/private organizations will work collaboratively to improve STEM education for students in the region.
Highline Times, May 2, 2012
Boeing nears worker peak: Head count will start falling next year
The number of people building Boeing jetliners, which has been climbing steadily, will peak this year at nearly 83,000 and start to dwindle in 2013, according to company leaders …
And the employment shrinkage doesn't mean that Boeing will stop hiring - it still must replace a huge cadre of older workers getting ready to retire - but the newly revealed projection places a ceiling on what had started to seem like an endless hiring spree. "Everybody realizes this isn't going to last forever; it hasn't in the past and it won't again," said Susan Loreen, vice president for work force development and training at Edmonds Community College. "At this particular moment, we're still at the gearing up, but we know it won't last”
KOMO News, May 4, 2012
http://www.komonews.com/news/business/Boeing-nears-worker-peak-Head-count-will-start-falling-next-year-150099735.html
Renton gets something extra in opening film at Seattle International Film Festival
The producers were looking for a handsome older gentleman. It didn’t take long for Don Bressler of Renton, the retired president of Renton Technical College and active in the community, to get the part in the film that will kick off the Seattle International Film Festival in Renton, “Fat Kid Rules the World.” Bressler plays a doctor in the film. He’s an extra, mostly in the background, adding to the realism of the shoot at a hospital.
Renton Reporter, May 3, 2012
http://www.rentonreporter.com/news/150088315.html
EdCC and the Washington Alliance for Better Schools Celebrate natural leaders and parent mentor certificate graduates
A unique partnership between seven local school districts, the non-profit Washington Alliance for Better Schools, and Edmonds Community College helps immigrant families connect to the public school system and helps parents turn their natural talents into resume-building credentials. … Scholarships for these bilingual/bicultural students have been made to the Edmonds Community College Foundation's Parent Mentor fund by The Seattle Foundation’s Turnstone Fund, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and United Way of King County. These funds support student tuition for two of the five quarters needed to complete the certificate.
Edmonds Beacon, May 4, 2012
http://edmondsbeacon.villagesoup.com/schools/story/edcc-and-the-washington-alliance-for-better-schools-celebrate-natural-leaders-and-parent-mento/819941
TRENDS| HORIZONS | EDUCATION
COLUMN: A new idea for expanding college access
Every time tuition goes up, another student decides not to knock on the door to higher education. "Sticker shock," as it's known in higher education circles, puts very real psychological and financial barriers in front of Washington's high school seniors. Financial aid hasn't kept up with tuition, and students are rightfully leery of graduating deep in debt. … But instead of aiming for a watered-down version of the past, let's do something different and better for the future. Let's give an open opportunity for any graduating senior -- limited by only their own academic performance -- to attend their local community college or a state public university, tuition-free. In exchange, a legal quid pro quo: the student contributes 1.5 percent of their income, if they attended community college, or 4 percent if they attended a university, for 25 years.
The Herald, April 25, 2012
The Imperiled Promise of College
The New York Times, April 29, 2012
The Campus Tsunami
The most important and paradoxical fact shaping the future of online learning is this: A brain is not a computer. We are not blank hard drives waiting to be filled with data. People learn from people they love and remember the things that arouse emotion. If you think about how learning actually happens, you can discern many different processes. There is absorbing information. There is reflecting upon information as you reread it and think about it. There is scrambling information as you test it in discussion or try to mesh it with contradictory information. … How are [colleges] going to blend online information with face-to-face discussion, tutoring, debate, coaching, writing and projects? How are they going to build the social capital that leads to vibrant learning communities? Online education could potentially push colleges up the value chain — away from information transmission and up to higher things.
The New York Times, April 29, 2012
Remediation for Remedial Math
Texas community colleges to offer different types of developmental classes in hopes of moving more students toward graduation.
Inside Higher Ed, May 9, 2012
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/09/texas-community-colleges-reinvent-developmental-math
1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed
Kitsap Sun, April 23, 2012
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2012/apr/22/1-in-2-new-graduates-are-jobless-or/
An Unrealistic Business Plan
The Committee for Economic Development’s (CED) new report, “Boosting Postsecondary Education Performance,” was not written in the spirit of Warren Buffett. Nor of Paul Volcker. More’s the pity. For if the report’s authors had acknowledged that trying to substantially boost performance without boosting investment is an unrealistic business plan, they would have seized the opportunity to change the national conversation to stimulate genuine growth and affordable, quality higher education. … Unfortunately, the CED report continues some policy makers’ misconstruction of for-profit universities as efficient. It is a false efficiency. As a sector, these institutions are VERY expensive to students and to the government. They have high tuition and they live largely off massive infusions of federal student aid. Disproportionate numbers of their students default on their loans at the government’s, not the corporations’ expense.
Inside Higher Ed, May 7, 2012
EDITORIAL: What’s best for students is best for Washington
If Washington maintains its current level of investment in higher education, per capita income will increase $1 per year by 2025. One dollar. That startling estimate by the Center for Postsecondary and Economic Success underscores again just how vital a highly educated, highly trained workforce will be to Washington’s future, as it will be for every other state and the nation as a whole. A center report, “The Credential Differential,” which was released last week, says 60 percent of workers ages 25 to 64 will have to have a bachelor’s or associates degree, or some kind of certificated post-high school education, to meet 2025 labor market demands. … The Washington Legislature has repeatedly cut higher education budgets that campuses have tried to make up for with a series of double-digit tuition hikes. And despite the openings of branch campuses around Washington to bring education closer to students, Washington continues to rank among the worst states in its capacity to accommodate four-year students, a failing offset in part by the highest graduation rate among the 50 states.
Spokesman-Review, May 3, 2012
Online-education lawsuit misfires on state funding
Washington state must embrace online learning, "the future of education," but a lawsuit against funding cuts interferes with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction's right to decide where to allocate dollars.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorials/2018161580_edit08lawsuit.html?cmpid=2727
Learning That Works
… tech-track students "are more focused, so they're more likely to graduate from two- and four-year colleges. Those who graduate from high school with a certificate technical expertise in a field like auto repair or welding are certainly more likely to find jobs." Still, Huppenthal finds vocational school is a tough sell to the state's education establishment. "It doesn't have the prestige of a college-prep course," he says, "and it costs a lot more than two-dimensional education to do it right." Traditionally, Democrats have tended to be opposed on ideological grounds. They're the strongest believers in college for everyone. Republicans are reluctant to spend the money on state-of-the-art equipment like the veterinary center on the Navajo reservation, although some concede that CTE programs that prepare students for actual jobs are a good idea.
TIME, May 14, 2012
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2113794,00.html?xid
Pennsylvania community colleges first to adopt voluntary framework of accountability state-wide
Pennsylvania's 14 public community colleges today announced that they will adopt the Voluntary Framework of Accountability (VFA) as their state-wide accountability metrics. The colleges thus become the first state-wide system in the nation to publicly endorse the new framework, launched last year by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC).
Sacramento Bee, May 3, 2012
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/03/4462744/pennsylvania-community-colleges.html
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Funding on a Curve
My state is considering tying individual colleges’ shares of the state higher ed allocation to “performance” on a series of measures. And it has no intention of increasing the size of the allocation. In other words, for Northern State to get more, Southern State would have to get less. We’ll be funded on a curve.
Inside Higher Ed, May 2, 2012
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/funding-curve
Confessions of a Community College Dean: One Course at a Time
A few years ago, my college started a January intersession in which students take a single course for two weeks. It was a runaway hit; enrollments have grown every year, course completion rates have hovered around 90 -- off the charts by community college standards -- and faculty feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
Inside Higher Ed, April 25, 2012
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/one-course-time
Growth and Cuts [in Online Learning]
While more students are enrolling in online community college classes, institutions are struggling to maintain services. … But after years of unbridled growth, the council's chair, Fred Lokken, sees the lower numbers as a “pause” while community colleges regroup and attempt to cope with budget cuts and address shortcomings of their programs. The study’s biggest surprise, Lokken said, is that some colleges are cutting back on student services for distance students. Institutions providing access to online counseling and orientation dropped more than 10 percentage points to 49 and 63 percent respectively, in this year’s study. Lokken attributes that partly to budget cuts, partly to staff turnover and partly to variations in the study’s sample of 143 institutions.
Inside Higher Ed, April 25, 2012
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/25/online-enrollment-grows-not-much-community-colleges
College Credit Without College
Prior learning assessment could be higher education's next big disruptive force, and ACE and CAEL are poised to catch that potential gold rush. But many remain skeptical about academic credit for work experience.
Inside Higher Ed, May 7, 2012
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/07/prior-learning-assessment-catches-quietly
Pinning Down a New Medium
Colleges consider the pros and cons of Pinterest, the fast-growing, image-based social media website, as a marketing platform.
Inside Higher Ed, April 25, 2012
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/25/colleges-ponder-pros-and-cons-pinterest-marketing-tool
POLITICS | LOCAL, STATE, NATIONAL
Senate GOP blocks Obama’s student loan proposal to avoid raising taxes on the wealthy
The Boston Herald, May 9, 2012
Retiring secretary of state wants to grow bipartisan spirit
Poised to retire in December, Reed is on a farewell tour of sorts. On Wednesday he stopped at Yakima Valley Community College, one of 45 college campuses he's visiting this year to extol the need for civic involvement and civil dialogue. … "I wasn't someone with family connections or corporate backing when I got involved," Reed told a small group of YVCC students Wednesday. "I got involved with (former Gov.) Dan Evans' campaign because I was excited and interested." … Individuals can make a difference, he told students at YVCC.
Citing the mere 133 votes responsible for Democrat Chris Gregoire's 2004 victory over Republican Dino Rossi, he said the YVCC campus probably had "well more" than that number of people who were eligible to vote but didn't that year.
Yakima Herald, May 2, 2012
Capital budget plan will create jobs, address state's budget problems
Last week the governor signed a state capital budget that has been described as a jobs package, one that will put 18,000 folks to work. For example, we know there are jobs waiting for graduates of Tacoma Community College’s health-professions programs. By investing in additional classroom space, we can help the college increase the number of graduates it produces in those growing career fields by as much as 50 percent. By State Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, and Sen. Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee, chairman and ranking member, respectively, for the Senate’s capital budget.
The News Tribune, May 1, 2012
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/05/01/2126973/capital-budget-plan-will-create.html
Compiled by the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges
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