The "Is College Worth It" Debate- A Debate Worth Having?

By Marcia Y. Cantarella, PhD, Author, I CAN Finish College: The Overcome Any Obstacle and Get Your Degree Guide

 

While the twittersphere and other media are engaged in a debate about the value of college and the congress considers more cuts to federal financial aid and states consider increases to public college tuitions, we learn that the net worth of Blacks and Hispanics is between 16 and 18 percent less than that of whites.  We also know that these populations are the ones suffering  the highest unemployment rates.

 

And we know that these are the populations who graduate from high school the least prepared for college and the least likely to go or persist if they do. And we know that those with a college degree earn at least 54% more than those without. These facts are all related. What they relate to is that Blacks and Hispanics, being educationally disadvantaged, are ultimately denied the possibility of attaining the college degree that might put them in a position to narrow that net worth gap. And people (with college degrees....) debate whether college is worth it? Excuse me! 

 

I could suggest that those in power (affluent and college educated) are behaving in ways with regard  resource allocation impacting blacks and browns that smacks of both racism and conspiracy.

 

As a dean in a variety of college settings I dealt with  students who came to college unprepared, not intellectually, necessarily, but culturally. In places like Princeton there are safety nets and resources to sustain students and subsequent high graduation rates. In places like CUNY, where the resources are slim, it is easier for students to drift, unaware that they should take advantage of resources there to help them. Students who do not come from privilege view college as an elite experience of which they often feel unworthy. They do not approach the resources offered  like career offices, tutoring, faculty office hours or advisers as the entitlements that their more affluent fellow students do.  So they slip and slide their way out the door and no one seemed to notice that only 25% of black males entering college were graduating or that nearly 50% of all students entering college were not finishing in 6 years. Kids who grow up in the inner city may not have access to books at home or people to read to them as I did. But it is the skill that predicts by third grade whether one will graduate from high school. So if we want college graduates we need to encourage reading all the time. But urban libraries are closing. And who tells their parents what the stakes are so they can either advocate for resources or make other plans?

 

We also need, on campuses, to stop casting a disdainful eye on vocationality.  The majority of leaders come from liberal arts backgrounds and narrow focus on career skills later. The reality has been, that skills like critical thinking, communication, research, problem solving are available across the liberal arts spectrum. There have been CEOs who were Religion majors and Psychology majors. Most faculty only stay in touch with those students who become the "mini-me" and follow the professor's path to the professoriate. We don't arm faculty with responses to the "what can I do with this major?" question. The reality that a college education is not a luxury but an economic necessity and is perceived as such by those who are paying the salaries. It is especially the hard pressed first generation, low-income and student of color for whom this question is most crucial.

 

Guidance counselors and parents direct students in linear ways forcing a history buff to be a chem major and try for medical school which has nothing to do with his interest or aptitude. Or worse, students of color are directed to "majors" that will only limit their futures because they are too narrow—like medical technician.  Not that the jobs are not worthy—but people need to be prepared for demise of some careers as new ones emerge. So a vocational education still needs to be delivered in a way that provides intellectual agility. No one points that out to the student in the inner city high school who is trying to figure out college.

 

These students do not know what a syllabus is, who a bursar is or why they have to open campus emails and why walking away without guidance is financial disaster. Kids with college educated parents are being hand held through every step of the college process. No concern exists for them about entitlement. The student who is not sure about how they fit in the world given a history of disadvantage does not feel entitled to even ask questions. And we wonder why they do not succeed.

 

Not knowing how to navigate college, feel empowered to have a voice or seek help, Black and Brown students drop out and remain economically disadvantaged.  We need to make college preparation systemic beginning with reading to toddlers and moving up to making inquiry acceptable and valued behavior. If college is an economic necessity then this should be the norm—for all children regardless of ethnicity, national origin or income. There was a time when this was more true but we lost that as the urban education landscape made people less ready to engage in college level work and the economics of college became more daunting. This is nuts.. As my father Whitney Young pointed out, what happens to Black folks in our economy is like the canary in the coal mine. Our losses become the nations.

 

The question is not is college worth it but how can the "smart" people who influence policy shift to asking how can we better explain why it is worth it and how to make it viable for more who need it so desperately. Unless, of course, there is a racist conspiracy going on.

 

Media Contact: Marcia Cantarella I CAN Finish College, 212-580-1495, mycantarella@gmail.com News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com/

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/04/4466666/the-is-college-worth-it-debate.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Perseverance is the biggest part of college success

By Pauline Chow

I have taught calculus for many years, and I know most students don’t relish the idea of signing up for this class. But calculus is surely as integral to a good education as Shakespeare.

Calculus is required for many degrees — mathematics, actuarial science, physics, biology, computer science and engineering — to name a few. Some business and economics programs also require at least one semester. Because Harrisburg Area Community College has an open door, we serve a diverse population of students. It might take students many semesters to build the skills necessary to be ready for calculus.


Students often find the subject matter difficult, but allow me to relate the story of my fall 2010 class. There were 36 students enrolled in my course, which ran five days a week for 50 minutes a day.
After each class, at least six students would follow me to the conference room for an additional two-hour tutoring session. This was on top of the many study groups. After the Thanksgiving holiday, I noticed a decline in attendance, but I had two more chapters to finish in less than two weeks.

At that point, there were 33 students, whom I called fondly “my high-maintenance ducklings.” On Friday, before the last week of classes, I announced that there would be one more take-home assignment, which was a bonus assignment worth 14 points. However, they would not get points if they missed any class the last week.

On Monday, all 33 ducklings showed up. Fourteen bonus points were marching on. On Tuesday, a few started returning to old habits and showed up late. Nevertheless, all 33 ducklings showed up. Fourteen bonus points were marching on.

On Wednesday, all 33 ducklings showed up again. Some followed me to the calculus session. Fourteen bonus points were marching on. On Thursday, all 33 ducklings showed up. I took a picture and titled it “33 high-maintenance ducklings.” Some followed me to the calculus session and discussed the algebra intricacy in solving arc length and surface-area problems. Fourteen bonus points were marching on.

On Friday, all 33 ducklings showed up. I announced that the take home would not be collected. I could hear the gasps and whispers “What? She is not collecting the assignment? I worked so hard last night to get it done.”

I smiled benevolently, then distributed the solutions to the class and continued the last bit of lecture. I entertained the class with my favorite “Chow top 10s” and debuted the “Calculus pick-up lines in a bar.” A few ducklings clearly did not want class to end.

On Monday, all showed up for the final exam. I started at 8 a.m., an hour earlier than the scheduled time. All stayed till the end, including the best students. They didn’t want to give up.

When I finished grading the exams and adding up all the scores, not one duckling needed the bonus points to achieve their grade. These 33 high-maintenance ducklings had already earned the bonus points. If the ducklings did the math, 14 bonus points out of 1,000 wouldn’t make a dent in their grade anyway.

I don’t have a recipe for students succeeding in my math classes. They do it in the old-fashioned way — learn, practice, talk about it and write about it. Throughout the semester, they work together and peer-tutor one another. They cheer one another on. They also know that I care.
Now my ducklings have moved on with their academic journeys. Here’s a snapshot:

 

B moved on to pursue his engineering degree; L majored in biology and pursued her research interest in genetics; K continued her degree in math education to become a high school math teacher; B and K, study partners, continued their studies in architecture; C switched his major to pursue a career of being a politician; A, with self-confidence, continued to seek her degree in math education to become a middle school math teacher; B, a former business major, switched to major in math and seek a teaching career; S, a pharmacy major, transferred to a pharmacy college.

D moved from Pittsburgh and settled in central Pennsylvania and continued his studies at HACC; A, working quietly but acing all the tests, including the final exam, continued with a chemistry major; A, repeatedly aiming to get a B in the course after some false starts, earned one and continued to pursue his goal.

May is a month of graduations. I will be thinking of these ducklings who will proudly walk across the podium during the commencement to receive their diplomas. 

Pauline Chow is a senior professor of mathematics and chairwoman of the department at HACC. She is writing a guest column through July.

http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2012/05/perseverance_is_biggest_part_o.html

Online Video Invades the Classroom

Teachers become enamored with YouTube, TED, and WatchKnowLearn.

In his 40 years of teaching, Al Hasvitz has always understood the importance of video aids in the classroom. “I am one of the few teachers in the United States who can thread a 16mm projector,” the award-winning social studies teacher from Walnut, Calif., boasts. But today, like most teachers, Hasvitz looks online to find instructional videos for his seventh grade students. In fact, he bookmarks more than 80 video websites. But how does he find quality content among all these options?

Online video has become a valuable 21st century learning tool, in and out of the classroom. In the last year, views of educational videos on YouTube doubled. But teachers still struggle to find safe and easy ways to find quality content for students. YouTube is the most common online source, accounting for 84 percent of the 181 million unique online video views in January 2012. But many school districts prohibit student access to YouTube, fearing distracting and inappropriate content. Some districts block the site entirely, others provide faculty passcodes, and a few require teachers to submit each video for approval.

“It takes away the spontaneity,” says Deven Black, a teacher-librarian in the Bronx, where the New York City Department of Education blocks YouTube completely. “If a topic comes up I can’t just search for it and use the video immediately. I have to download it at home in advance and transfer it to a different format. It just becomes more complex.”

But accessing video is becoming less cumbersome as innovators find new ways to aggregate and share quality educational clips. Hasvitz, for instance, primarily uses WatchKnowLearn, a free portal for teacher-approved videos. Other sites like SchoolTube and TeacherTube allow teachers and students to upload their own videos to share. And YouTube is actively seeking to join the curriculum. In December the site introduced a new network setting, YouTube for Schools, which allows access only to approved channels. When the school or district administrator enables the setting, teachers and students only have access to videos on the YouTube EDU section of the site, with comments and related videos hidden. An administrator can also enable access to additional channels, including those individual teachers create for classrooms. Hundreds of schools across the country have signed up since the December launch, says Angela Lin, head of YouTube EDU.

 

YouTube EDU currently features more than half a million videos on 750 channels from education partners, and although it was initially university focused, the site has recently been working to increase K-12 content. More channels are expected in the coming months, including some from big names like Amy Poehler, Rainn Wilson, and Participant Media, the film production company behind Food, Inc. and Waiting for “Superman.”

One of YouTube EDU’s most popular new channels has been TED-Ed, which launched its first 12 videos last month and had over one million views within one week. TED-Ed pairs teachers with animators to create short, engaging educational videos. Teachers are invited to submit their best lessons, and TED-Ed works with them to refine and record the script. Unlike other content from TED, each video, covering topics from ocean mysteries to the American election schedule, is only three to eight minutes long, perfect for initiating classroom discussion.

“We work really hard to ensure that we’re doing our best to celebrate these teachers’ voices,” says Logan Smalley, who heads TED-Ed. He highlights the “slightly unexpected but particularly fruitful partnership” between educators and animators. The YouTube channel is just the first step in TED-Ed’s mission to create and aggregate quality K-12 educational content—the next phase of the initiative launches later in April.

Still, YouTube for Schools may not yet be the perfect video source. Some firewalls block the site, and a number of teachers think the K-12 content is inadequate and hard to navigate. WatchKnowLearn remains a popular substitute, especially because the free site features most of YouTube’s educational content. Entirely funded by an anonymous donor, WatchKnowLearn functions as a wiki and has been building its library since 2008. It was created for teachers, by teachers.

“For four years teachers have gone out and loaded the videos and designed the directories,” says CEO Joe Thomas. “WatchKnowLearn is teacher designed, teacher rated, and teacher managed.”

YouTube retains incomparable content, if you know how to navigate it. Somewhere amid LOLcats and pirated SNL clips are thousands of videos explaining everything from equilateral triangles to the Roman Empire. “These other sites are all poor substitutes for YouTube in the classroom,” says Jason Mammano, an instructional technology facilitator of a large district in North Carolina. He regularly uses WatchKnowLearn, but admits that the site does not have the speed or capacity of YouTube.

But, as the 80 sites Hasvitz bookmarks on his computer indicate, there is no shortage of videos available. It’s just a matter of where to find and share them. Until these websites get it right, teachers will keep innovating. “Teachers are very resourceful,” says Mammano. “If there’s a piece of content they think will help students, they’ll find it.”

http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=5600201065329856541&ids=cjgRdzkUej8PdjoMcj0Oc30SdiMRejsPczwRc34Vcz0QcPAMc3oRb3wUdPwNcjkUdjgVd30Ne3AVdjkId3sUcjAOc3wMd3wQdz8Sc30SdiMUc3wNdz0PdzcTd3cNdj4Mc3oR&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod2-b-pub-4&ut=16RhigSI6HJlc1

Will New Funding Rules Improve Dismal University Graduation Rates?

So many students will graduate from Slippery Rock University this spring that administrators have had to limit the number of guests each one can invite.

There isn't enough room in the basketball arena for everybody.

At a time when American higher education is under fire for dismal graduation rates that have eroded the nation's leadership in college degree-holders, this public university in western Pennsylvania will graduate a record number of students, and do so more quickly than in years past.

That's because Slippery Rock has built in aggressive new measures to help students succeed — and eliminated many obstacles that make success so elusive almost everywhere else.

It lowered the number of credits required to graduate, which, as at many other schools, had been creeping up and keeping students in school longer. It trained residence-hall staff to watch for signs of academic or personal problems such as absences or poor grades. It clustered students with the same majors in dorms so they can help one another with class work, and hired 90 peer tutors to run a tutoring center in the library.

Altruism alone didn't compel the university to take these steps. It was money — $1.5 million a year, to be exact.

Slippery Rock may be the poster child for a resurgent idea called "performance funding," which pays public universities to meet goals set by increasingly results-conscious state legislatures.

Under Pennsylvania's performance-funding formula, Slippery Rock has earned as much as $1.5 million a year more from the state for improving its outcomes than it would have otherwise, said provost William Williams.

"Whether you like this method or not, the purpose was to drive up the quality of this institution," Williams said. "It's what we should have been about anyway."

Yet, until now, public universities and colleges were largely given money based on how many students they enrolled, not how many actually graduated.

The schools didn't focus on success, said Williams, "because they didn't have to."

Now their budgets are beginning to depend on it.

"This is coming, whether people like it or not," said Thomas Harnisch, a policy analyst at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities who monitors the trend.

When performance funding was first tested in the 1990s, many universities resisted it, "gamed" the numbers or even cheated, research by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, and others has found.

But tight budgets have prompted dozens of states to try the idea again. And universities are coming around to it.

That's because performance funding no longer just involves vying for cash bonuses above and beyond universities' annual budgets. Now universities are competing for their share of dwindling state allocations.

"It's not the cherry on top anymore," says Travis Reindl, a higher-education researcher for the National Governors Association. "It's the base."

The Obama administration also wants to use money as a motivator. It has proposed a $1 billion competition, modeled after the Race to the Top program, to reward universities for becoming more affordable and raising graduation rates, and to withhold federal financial aid from universities that raise tuition too quickly.

"This has really burst back onto the scene," said Stan Jones, former Indiana commissioner of higher education and now president of Complete College America, which pushes states to improve graduation rates. Only 55 percent of students at four-year universities graduate within six years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And, the United States has fallen to 16th in the world in the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds with a college or university degree, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development reports.

The first round of performance funding began in 1979 in Tennessee. Twenty-five more states joined the movement in the 1990s and early 2000s, when healthy tax revenues enabled them to give financial bonuses to universities and colleges for meeting certain goals. But as the money dried up, one state after another abandoned the idea.

A revival began in 2007, led by Washington and Indiana. The portion of public-university budgets tied to performance, or that will eventually be tied to performance, varies from state to state, ranging from 6.5 percent in Indiana to 45 percent for technical colleges in Texas.

"Through performance funding we will show that each dollar we spend on higher education provides a greater return than if the dollar were spent on one of the numerous other competing worthy causes," the Illinois Board of Higher Education pronounced. "We know we must be able to demonstrate that we can deliver a return on investment."

State strategies vary. In Indiana, university budgets will be based on four things: the number of students who complete courses (instead of the number who enroll); the time it takes students to earn degrees; the number of degrees awarded; and the number of degrees earned by low-income students.

Ohio's performance goals for universities include making it easier for students to transfer credits, and limiting the number of credits required to graduate. Tennessee will allocate state money for higher education based on such metrics as the number of students reaching milestones of 24, 48, and 72 credits. Louisiana will tie part of universities' budgets to successes in improving graduation and job-placement rates, among other measures. And Texas already rewards universities for increasing the number of degrees awarded, and enrolling older, low-income and at-risk students who score below national averages on the SAT or ACT.

Various performance funding strategies are also under way, planned or being considered in Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

Rather than continuing to give money to universities based on how many seats they fill, Jones said, "It's astonishing that, after 60 or 70 years, [states have] finally got around to the point of saying, 'Okay, did anybody graduate?' "

Now some states are also imposing penalties based on performance. When Indiana cut the budgets of its universities and colleges, it made deeper cuts for those with higher per-student costs and lower graduation rates.

Several studies, including two by the CCRC, show that even in its earlier incarnation, performance funding had an impact.

In Ohio, the average time it took to earn a bachelor's degree fell. Pennsylvania reported fewer dropouts, higher graduation rates, more diversity and higher faculty productivity. Texas saw a 9.3 percent increase in the number of degrees awarded.

Academic strategies also shifted. Tennessee universities increased tutoring and advising. Community colleges in Washington eliminated fees for degrees or certificates, which had prevented some students from graduating. In Florida, community colleges monitored withdrawal rates to weed out and retrain faculty whose courses students most commonly dropped.

At Slippery Rock, the proportion of students who graduate within four years has jumped to almost 38 percent (from below 22 percent), and within six years to nearly 58 percent (from below 52 percent).
"That's a significant change in the success of our students," said Williams, the provost. "You have to recalibrate your entire campus to remember that the reason they're here is for your students to be successful."

There are plenty of critics of performance funding. If universities get money based on their success rates, critics say, they're unlikely to admit marginal students who have potential but may have trouble graduating. To keep the money coming in, these critics say, universities might lower standards to make it easier to earn degrees.

In fact, one CCRC study reported that several university branch campuses in Ohio categorized rising juniors as transfer students to meet performance-funding targets. A faculty member at a Florida community college reported being told to push students into more courses than they needed, so the school would get extra performance points. In several states, faculty reported being pressured to avoid giving failing grades, while admissions counselors said they were instructed to reject marginal students.

Education analysts also say that universities with different missions and resources shouldn't all be forced to meet the same goals.

"What you're doing is you're taking a university, which is a very complex enterprise, and you're attempting to boil it down into a few quantifiable metrics," Harnisch said.
And some things, educators say, are beyond their control.

"This seems to be a way of saying, well, by putting pressure on colleges and universities, we'll force them to be better managers, and that will make the problems go away," said Garrison Walters, former executive director of the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education and interim chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents. "Trashing the structure and management of American higher education as a way of making a point about costs damages the infrastructure that's intrinsic to the solution."

For now, though, as universities start to make the changes required by performance funding, some are even using money to motivate faculty and students. Slippery Rock, for instance, promises money for travel, conferences and lab equipment to departments that hire faculty who meet Pennsylvania's performance-funding targets for diversity and for new professors to have particular credentials.

Ball State University, in Indiana, gives a $500 scholarship to every in-state student on track to earn a degree within four years. It also has cut tuition in summer classes by 18 percent to keep students moving through.

"We were trying to create some financial incentives," said Jo Ann Gora, Ball State's president. Not to mention, she said, that anything that raises the four-year graduation rate "will ultimately help us with performance funding."

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2113097,00.html#ixzz1tFy0bcz6

Promoting Active Learning

All too often, students simply want to “get the work done” without recognizing that active learning is essential to building a lasting foundation for excellent work in school.  For example, in our work with students in mathematics, one of the simple, yet critical things we do is emphasize the “logic” of an answer to a problem.  We label that process with names like “the logic test” or “the smell test,” i.e. “Does that ‘smell’ like a reasonable answer?” The goal is singular: engage students beyond the simple read problem/provide answer dynamic in order to help them develop a sense of reasonableness and involve them in a way which makes them pause and reflect.  By doing this, we help students to strengthen their confidence in relying on their “gut,” and we also help them to take pause, thus better cementing the bigger lesson concepts of the problem(s) into memory.

This kind of thing can be done at home as well.  While not every parent is going to be able to help their child with the specifics of a math problem, a scientific process, or a historical movement, parents can promote student reflection on subject matter by requiring them to spend a minimum amount of time working on a topic, rather than simply requiring them to “finish his/her homework.”  A reasonable time requirement, rather than a completeness requirement, can reduce the temptation for the student to go as fast as he/she can when completing assignments and creates an atmosphere that is conducive to active learning.

Article Located at: http://www.qwertyed.com/blog/promoting-active-learning

Sneak peek at one simulation on Dyslexia for a Day

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=107900060&gid=66995&trk=eml-anet_dig-b_nd-pst_ttle-cn&ut=2WwjYmUEJQzBc1

An interesting experiment to show some individuals how students with dyslexia may appear in the classroom.

Scientists Probe Role of Brain in ADHD Cases .

By ROBERT LEE HOTZ

A brain area that helps orchestrate mental activity works overtime in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, reflecting the internal struggle to hold more than one thing in mind at a time, neuroscientists reported Sunday.

The scientists used a functional magnetic imaging scanner to track signs of neural activity among 19 affected children and 23 other children who were asked to remember a simple sequence of letters. The scientists discovered that a critical mental control area, called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, worked much harder and, perhaps, less efficiently among children with attention problems.

This fundamental difference in brain function might be an underlying cause of the inattentiveness, impulsivity and focus problems that make it hard for ADHD children to concentrate in the classroom, the scientists said during an annual gathering of 31,000 brain researchers in Washington, D.C.

"Our findings suggest that the function as well as the structure of this brain area is different in children with ADHD," said Wayne State University biologist Tudor Puiu, who reported the team's findings Sunday at a conference held by the Society for Neuroscience. "It might explain the cognitive problems we see in the classroom."

All told, about two million U.S. children have been diagnosed with attention problems. No one yet understands the basic neurobiology responsible for the mental ailment, which has grown more common since 2003, according to a survey by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.

The portion of those with the most severe symptoms who are treated with prescription stimulants, such as methylphenidate (Ritalin) and amphetamine (Adderall), also has continued to rise, the National Institutes of Health reported in September.

The finding reported Sunday adds to growing biomedical evidence that those diagnosed with the attention disorder—arguably the most common childhood behavioral issue—have unusual patterns of brain function that can persist well into adulthood.

Overall, the brain of an ADHD child matures normally, but it may take up to three years longer to fully develop, especially in areas at the front of the brain's cortex, an outer layer of tissue important in controlling attention, reasoning and planning.

Researchers have also reported a range of specific anatomical differences among ADHD children that may be linked to behavioral problems. Earlier this month, researchers at New York University's Langone School of Medicine reported that ADHD children appeared to have a significantly thinner cortex and less gray matter than other children in some areas involved in regulating attention and emotion.

In a separate study, other scientists said they had determined that ADHD children have differences in the caudate nucleus, which is involved in learning and memory, compared to other children.

"These networks are disrupted," said Mr. Puiu. "The ADHD brain has to work harder than the normal brain."

Write to Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com