Credential
Creep Confirmed
The broad public policy push for more Americans to get a higher education
leans heavily on the idea that those without a college degree are up a
creek, because so many jobs in today’s technology and information economy
(and more in tomorrow’s) will require a credential. Many critics of higher
education, in turn, complain that the "college completion" movement
has been fed by (and feeds) credential inflation, with employers imposing a
degree requirement for many jobs that never required one (and still don’t)
simply because they can. A new report offers evidence to support both
arguments — and reasons both for college officials to be
optimistic about continuing demand for their degrees and to see danger
signs on the horizon.
Inside Higher Ed, September 9, 2014
The Long View
on Wages
A Virginia state agency has released what is likely the first broad look at
the mid-career earnings of college graduates, with a newly
released report tracking wages at all degree levels for up to two
decades after graduation. The new data from the State
Council of Higher Education for Virginia advances the large and growing
amount of proof that college pays off, at least for graduates. It
includes wages for students who earned associate, bachelor’s and doctoral
degrees in the state in 1993, also comparing earnings across
disciplines. The overall trend lines were good for graduates as they
reached the middle of their careers.
Inside Higher Ed, September 9, 2014
Report
Highlights 3 Universities’ Efforts to Help Disadvantaged Students Succeed
First-generation and minority students borrow far more for college and are
much less likely to graduate, a problem that will worsen
with demographic shifts. But three public universities have shown
how, even in an era of declining state support for higher education,
colleges can reverse those trends, according to a report being
released on Tuesday by theCenter for American Progress. All three —
the University of California at Riverside, the University of North Carolina
at Charlotte, and the University of South Florida at Tampa — offer generous
need-based scholarships as well as robust support services, including
summer bridge programs and learning communities that allow freshmen to work
in groups. All three have increased their percentages of enrollees with
Pell Grants and all but eliminated graduation gaps between white and black
or Latino students.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 9, 2014
Measuring What?
The New York Times kicked off its higher education conference here
Monday night by releasing what it called a "revolutionary college
index" that ranks institutions that enroll students from low-income
backgrounds. The rankings are derived from a formula based on the
proportion of undergraduates who receive Pell Grants and the net price
(what students actually pay as opposed to sticker price) paid by those with
family incomes of $30,000 to $48,000. But the Times applied this
formula only to institutions with a four-year graduation rate of at least 75
percent. That's a bar that only about 100 colleges meet, and all but three
of them are private institutions.
Inside Higher Ed, September 9, 2014
OECD ‘Education
at a Glance’ report published
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has released its
annual Education at a Glance report, an almanac of indicators on such
topics as educational attainment, employment rates by level of education,
funding for educational systems, and student mobility across the 34 OECD
member nations as well as for 10 additional countries.
Inside Higher Ed, September 9, 2014
Young families
and student debt
Studies that show student loan debt increasing are a dime a dozen these
days. But while a new report from the Federal Reserve Board reinforces the
idea that more Americans are taking on more debt to finance their
postsecondary education, it also suggests a slowing of that trend in the
last three years.
Inside Higher Ed, September 8, 2014
Editorial:
Washington’s tuition stability good for students, GET program
Washington's prepaid tuition plan rebounded into financial solvency on
the wings of a rebounding stock market and a shift in legislative policy.
That’s good news for the state: In 2013, the Guaranteed Education Tuition
(GET) program was underfunded by $631 million. Absent the rebound,
Washington would’ve been on the hook. But the real winners in the
rebound are Washington college students and their families, whether they
had GET accounts or not. The prepaid plan’s deficit had been compounded by
a ruinous state policy of huge tuition increases.
The Seattle Times, September 7, 2014
Think college
rankings are useless? Use your imagination
Year after year, college rankings maintain their hard-fought relevance. The
leader of the pack, as every admissions officer knows, is U.S. News
& World Report, whose annual rankings are due out next week.
Colleges have long maneuvered to improve their standings on the hallowed
list, changing various policies (and sometimes cheating) to jibe with the
magazine’s methodology. U.S. News’s stranglehold on colleges needs to
end, writes Vox’s Libby Nelson in a post published Friday
morning. While college rankings are usually chided for being arbitrary
or useless, she writes, the real crime is how colleges are enslaved by
them, in ways that hurt students. By indicting the U.S.
News list, Ms. Nelson is indicting the whole of college rankings. But
what critics like her might forget is the indisputable fact that, while
college rankings are, like any metric, of limited use, they can serve
students—anyone, for that matter—in very concrete ways.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 5, 2014
Is a degree
still worth it? Yes, researchers say, and the payoff is getting better
One could be excused for thinking the value of a college degree is in a
downward spiral. With overall student-loan debt topping $1-trillion and
tuition racing upward, to college graduates facing high levels of
underemployment and stagnating wages, it might appear college simply isn’t worth
it. However, a study released on Tuesday by two researchers with
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concludes the opposite is true: The
value of a bachelor’s degree is near an all-time high.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 5, 2014
Converting
reading teachers
Physics professors don’t teach students how to read better. That’s what
Lilit Haroyan, a physics instructor at Pasadena City College, thought when
she was introduced to a faculty training program called Reading
Apprenticeship. "It's a reading teacher's job," Haroyan said
she thought at the time. “The discipline I’m teaching is already complex
enough." ... Reading Apprenticeship is an academic method for
instructors across academic disciplines to learn how to incorporate reading
into their teaching methods. The approach, which was originally designed
for K-12 teachers and later adapted for community college instructors,
seeks to help students better engage with texts and improve their
comprehension of academic material.
Inside Higher Ed, September 5, 2014
GET, state’s
prepaid college-tuition plan rebounds
What a difference a tuition freeze and a surging stock market
make. Washington’s embattled prepaid college-tuition plan — once
threatened with a shutdown by state lawmakers who worried it would go
belly-up and cost the state millions of dollars — is now fully solvent,
State Actuary Matt Smith announced Thursday. The Guaranteed Education
Tuition plan, or GET, has a funded status of 106 percent, meaning it can
meet all of its financial obligations for current enrollees, and then some.
The Seattle Times, September 4, 2014
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