College
freshmen seek financial security amid emotional insecurity
Confident in their academic ability but less so in their interpersonal
skills, this year’s freshmen believe the main benefit of a college
education is to increase their earning power. More than ever they aspire to
be well off — and also to help others — while their emotional health has
hit a new low.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 5, 2015
Connected or
disconnected?
This year’s freshmen traded some of the hours they would normally have
spent hanging out with friends or partying during their senior year in high
school for time on social media, a survey of those students shows. Rather
than conclude the freshmen entering college today are more introverted than
past cohorts, the 2014 Freshman Survey, conducted by researchers at the
University of California at Los Angeles’s Higher Education Research
Institute, suggests the findings raise new questions about how students
interact with their peers — and how they view those interactions
themselves.
Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 5, 2015
3 things
academic leaders believe about online education
The Babson Survey Research Group released its annual online-education
survey on Thursday. ... 1. Online education has become
mission-critical, even at small colleges. ... 2. “Hybrid” courses are
at least as good as face-to-face courses. ... 3. Most professors still
don’t think online courses are legit.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 5, 2015
Is your first
grader college ready?
Forget meandering — the messaging now is about goals and focus. “It’s sort
of like, if you want your kids to be in the Olympics or to have the chance
to be in the Olympics,” said Wendy Segal, a tutor and college planner in
Westchester County, N.Y., “you don’t wait until your kid is 17 and say, ‘My
kid really loves ice skating.’ You start when they are 5 or 6.” Credit
President Obama and the Common Core Standards for putting the “college and
career ready” mantra on the lips of K-12 educators across the country. Or
blame a competitive culture that has turned wide-open years of childhood
into a checklist of readiness skills. Whatever the reason, the fact remains
that college prep has hit the playground set.
The New York Times, Feb. 4, 2015
Endangering a
trust
Should all professors be required to report student accounts of sexual
assault to college officials? A growing number of institutions are saying
yes, adopting policies requiring all faculty members and other professional
employees — not just those obligated by law to do
so — to report sexual misconduct to designated
administrators, who may then initiate investigations and alert
authorities. ... But while faculty members overwhelmingly support
their institutions’ transparency and accountability goals, many feel that
mandatory reporting will hurt the cause more than help it.
Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 4, 2015
Warrior and
scholar
Military veterans have more life experience and maturity than the average
traditional-aged college student. But some say they could benefit
from extra guidance as they make the transition to a residential
college environment often designed for 18-year-olds. Several start-ups
are stepping in to help the large numbers of veterans
attempt to adjust to campus life. ... The up to
two-week program is immersive and demanding, say both its organizers
and participants. A veteran runs the sessions, which are taught by
university professors and graduate students. The curriculum is designed to
help participants prepare to tackle the reading lists of rigorous college
courses.
Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 4, 2015
Anonymous
feedback, fine. Insults? Not on these platforms
Students have a lot to say. And when they can hide behind anonymity,
they’re not afraid to say it. Recently, students have taken to
social-media platforms like Yik Yak to anonymously air gripes against their
professors. ... Colleges have long sought student feedback — usually
by way of end-of-semester course evaluations — but the rude complaints on
Yik Yak are seen by some professors as cyberbullying. A few colleges
and professors are experimenting with new services that attempt to steer
the conversation in a more constructive direction. The services, which
unlike Yik Yak have the support of the colleges using them, allow students
to anonymously provide their professors with feedback throughout the
course, while giving officials the ability to discover the names of users
who are posting inappropriate comments.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 4, 2015
Corinthian sale
goes through
A student loan guaranty agency finalized its purchase of roughly half of
the for-profit Corinthian Colleges chain this week. And the announcement
included new, student-centric concessions that earned praise from federal
agencies and some consumer groups. Corinthian sold 53 of its Everest and
WyoTech campuses and online programs to the Zenith Education Group, a new
subsidiary of the ECMC Group. The nonprofit will pay $24 million for
the campuses, which enroll about 33,000 students.
Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 4, 2015
Big gap in
college graduation rates for rich and poor, study finds
College completion rates for wealthy students have soared in 40 years but
barely budged for low-income students, leading to a yawning gap in
educational attainment between rich and poor that could have long-lasting
implications for the socioeconomic divide. In 2013, 77 percent of adults
from families in the top income quartile earned at least bachelor’s degrees
by the time they turned 24, up from 40 percent in 1970, according to a new
report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Alliance for Higher Education
and Democracy and the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher
Education. But 9 percent of people from the lowest income bracket did the
same in 2013, up from 6 percent in 1970.
The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 3, 2015
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