News
We'll try to post recent news pieces here that involve community colleges, financial aid, and higher education.
High Schools, Community Colleges Need Better Alignment
7-16-2010 Accessed on Red Orbit
http://www.redorbit.com/news/education/1892756/high_schools_community_colleges_need_better_alignment/#
High schools need to work with community colleges to align their curricula better and to reduce the number of students who need to enroll in remedial courses, according to a University of Illinois expert who studies community college education policy.
Debra Bragg, a professor of educational organization and leadership and the director of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at Illinois, says a major reason why college completion is not keeping pace with enrollment is that many students graduate from high school inadequately prepared for college-level work.
“It’s a system-wide problem, as well as a fundamental lack of alignment between high schools and colleges, and the system’s lack of expectations and support for students who aren’t seen as high achievers as they progress through K-12,” Bragg said.
Of students attending community colleges, 58 percent were enrolled in at least one remedial course, compared to slightly more than 30 percent of students attending non-selective four-year institutions, 2 percent attending selective four-year institutions, and fewer than 1 percent at highly selective institutions. During the 2006 to 2007 school year, about 6.2 million students attended community colleges, accounting for nearly half of all undergraduate students enrolled in higher education in the U.S.
When students spend a semester or more re-taking high school or sometimes even elementary school-level course work at a community college before ever enrolling in a college-level class, it not only slows whatever educational momentum they have toward earning an associate’s degree or eventually transferring to a four-year institution, it also greatly reduces the chances of that student ever completing any college certificate or degree, a key goal of President Obama’s ambitious American Graduation Initiative, Bragg said.
“It’s a pervasive problem in that, by repeating these high school-level courses, it uses up a lot of students’ financial aid,” she said. “When students don’t have the money to go to school, their choices are limited to finding entry-level jobs in a tight labor market. Once they do that, the likelihood that they will ever go back to school and earn a degree is greatly diminished.”
Despite college enrollment being at an all-time high, the percentage of students earning college degrees has remained relatively unchanged over the past 25 years. From 2004 to 2007, less than three in 10 community college students actually earned degrees, according to federal data. With other countries’ college completion rates rising, the U.S. is holding steady in real numbers but declining relative to other countries in the proportion of students with college credentials.
In Illinois, Bragg noted positive developments associated with the state’s College and Career Readiness Pilot Act, a law passed in 2007 aimed at reducing remediation in Illinois’ community colleges. One of the positive developments to come out of the bill, Bragg said, is that high schools and community colleges in Illinois are now establishing partnerships, including incorporating early college-level placement testing when students are still in high school, and having instructors share grading rubrics to better assess where students need to be when they graduate for high school and enter college.
“There was a systemic problem ? seeing these the K-12 and higher education systems as separate ? as well as a lack of understanding between high schools and colleges about the level of competency that students need to enroll in college credit-generating classes,” Bragg said.
High-stakes tests such as the SAT, ACT and the myriad achievement tests used to judge adequate yearly progress by states is also part of the problem because are not aligned with college-level material, Bragg said.
“Those kind of tests tell us a little bit about what a student has learned in high school, but not enough,” she said. “Nationally, we really need to get the conversation going between high schools and community colleges about what they teach, how they teach, and what and how they assess. We need to get teachers from both levels on the same page so there’s not such a big gap for students.”
One idea for reform that’s gained some traction would allow 10th graders who pass a series of tests to bypass their junior and senior years and immediately enroll in community college. A poor performance on such a test could provide students with an early warning about the knowledge and skills they need to master in high school before they go off to college.
“That’s an idea that’s been around for quite some time, but I think it’s one that doesn’t align very well with our values,” Bragg said. “The state of Oregon designed statewide school reform around a very similar idea in the late 1980s. There were never able to fully implement the reforms, and the clout it would take to reform the system on that level would be pretty enormous.
“We’re already starting to see a blurring of college and career prep programs that are extending into the high schools that recognize all students need the academic skills to be successful in college or the workforce. But it’s a little too top-down for our country.”
In some higher education circles, there’s an impression that remedial courses are cash cows for community colleges, with demand so great for some courses that they now operate on an around-the-clock schedule. But tuition rates for remedial-level classes are typically lower than they are for college-level courses, and community college tuition overall is quite low, Bragg says.
“Community colleges aren’t getting rich off of these remedial students,” she said.
“Even though they are usually using adjunct faculty to teach remedial students, they are expenses that exist outside the core budget to deliver remedial programs.”
The bigger issue for community colleges, according to Bragg, is the largely undeserved rap that they’re a second-class institution of higher education.
“What’s really disconcerting is the growth in remedial courses while still needing to hold the line on academic standards,” she said. “The dilemma is how you sustain yourself as an institution of higher education when the largest growing number of students are below college level. That’s really troubling to community college leaders.
“But if we can align curriculum better and, for those who need it, find a very effective strategy at the high school level, then we could move a fair number of students out of the remediation track.”
Despite the hefty price tag of last year’s American Graduation Initiative ? $12 billion over 10 years ? Bragg believes President Obama’s faith in community colleges is more than justified.
“I don’t think it’s misplaced because where community colleges typically shine is in workforce development,” she said. “They have been the higher education institution that has been willing to step up and partner with business and industry to design curriculum around demand. Those ideas are not ones that the rest of higher education has stepped up to very quickly. New programs of study emphasizing college and careers have led high schools to counsel students to take more rigorous coursework in the junior and senior years of high school, in the hopes of avoiding remediation.”
Connecting Students to Aid (5-20-10)
Access - Inside Higher Ed -
http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2010/05/20/collegeboard
WASHINGTON ? Millions of dollars in federal financial aid go unclaimed each year by eligible low-income students at community colleges, according to the inaugural report from the College Board?fs new Advocacy & Policy Center.
The study notes that community college students are less likely than their four-year counterparts to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. During the 2007-8 academic year, 57.8 percent of Pell Grant-eligible community college students applied for federal financial aid, while 76.8 percent of eligible students at public four-year institutions did so.
Ronald Williams, vice president of the College Board, told a group of educators gathered for the report?fs release that boosting the number of community college students receiving federal financial aid was critical to the ?gcompletion agenda?h that the Obama administration and numerous advocacy groups have embraced with the goal of drastically improving graduation rates at two-year institutions.
The failure to fill out a FAFSA and therefore to qualify for financial aid can negatively affect students' ability to complete college, the report notes. For example, a student might choose to attend community college part-time, or work more than 20 hours a week while studying full-time. Numerous studies show that students who attend part-time or work while attending college are less likely to complete a degree.
George Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges, described as a "breakdown in the system" the fact that so many students qualify for aid but do not apply for it. Students are shortchanged by community colleges, he noted, when they do not receive consistent, early and accurate information about their financial aid options before enrolling. College officials, he said, should focus on improving the financial literacy of both students and parents.
Among other suggestions for remedying this financial illiteracy, the report recommends that community colleges ?ginvolve families of students when providing financial aid materials and activities,?h ?gprovide bilingual services and materials,?h and ?glink financial aid application and followup with college enrollment or registration.?h
Williams, former president of Prince George's Community College, said that financial aid offices need to be more ?gproactive?h than ?greactive,?h noting that many help students through the aid process only if they ask for assistance. Debt counseling, he added, is an important part of this process that needs to be addressed early on, especially for low-income students, who may be more reluctant to borrow or take on debt to pay for their college education.
Williams acknowledged, however, that some groups of community college students may distrust government agencies that ask students to provide personal information in order to qualify for aid. In these cases, he suggests that community colleges work with community organizations that serve minority and immigrant communities and use them as a ?gbroker?h -- since they are perceived as a trusted, non-government source -- to relay relevant financial aid information to these groups.
The report highlights numerous examples of community colleges that have made changes to their financial aid structures with success. The Connecticut Community College System, for example, streamlined its financial aid practices and regulations across its 12 institutions about a decade ago.
Marc Herzog, chancellor of the system, noted that the system now uses the FAFSA alone to determine aid eligibility instead of the FAFSA plus 12 different institution-specific applications. The reduction in paperwork has simplified the process and encouraged more students to apply for aid, he said. Among other changes, he said, the colleges also adopted the same ?gsatisfactory academic progress?h requirement for students who receive aid and those who do not, whereas most institutions have two different standards. This change, he said, lessens the burden on institutions to determine continuing eligibility for financial aid, allowing financial aid officials to concentrate on getting students aid in the first place.
Since the system streamlined its financial aid operations and created a centralized aid office for its 12 institutions in 2001, it has seen ?gthe number of students applying for and receiving aid more than double at a time when enrollment has grown by 25 percent.?h Last academic year, 63 percent of the system?fs students applied for federal aid, while only 42.5 percent of community college students nationwide did so.
? David Moltz
Ford Motor Co. to Restore Tuition Benefit for Factory Workers (5-13-10)
Access -The Chronicle - http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Ford-Motor-Co-to-Restore/23978/?sid=cc&utm_source=cc&utm_medium=en
The Ford Motor Company plans to restore tuition benefits for its factory workers as the automaker's fortunes improve. According to the Associated Press, the United Auto Workers union, which had agreed to give up the tuition benefit as part of concessions to help the company deal with tough times, filed a complaint after Ford restored the tuition payments for its white-collar employees, but not its factory workers. The company's move could have a direct effect on universities and community colleges in Michigan.
On Transfer Students & Transfer Friendliness (4-27-10)
Access: The Chronicle - http://chronicle.com/blogPost/On-Transfer-Students-and/23499/?sid=cc&utm_source=cc&utm_medium=en
By Eric Hoover
Transfer students are relatively anonymous players in this season of front-page admissions angst, but on many campuses they are a crucial part of the enrollment picture. And some colleges expect to rely more heavily on transfer students to fill their classes in the coming years.
A report released today by the National Association for College Admission Counseling explores the realm of students who start at one institution and end up at another?about a third of all college students. (The report is based on NACAC data, and was administered in partnership with a dissertation project at Michigan State University.)
Nationally, the average acceptance rate for transfer students was 64 percent in the fall of 2006, compared with 69 percent for first-year students, says the report. On average, colleges enrolled 64 percent of the transfer students they admitted, compared with 42 percent of the first-year students who received acceptances.
For both groups, grade-point averages were the most important factor in admissions, but for transfer students, high-school performance generally took a back seat to college grades. Standardized test scores were also relatively unimportant in evaluations of transfer students.
Jon Boeckenstedt, associate vice president for enrollment policy and planning at DePaul University, has thought a lot about the needs of transfer students over the years. DePaul has built a robust transfer pipeline, which has grown in recent years. In the 2002-3 academic year, DePaul had 5,576 transfer applicants and enrolled 2,167. In the current academic year, the university had 7,235 transfer applicants and enrolled 2,526. (Those numbers do not include summer terms.)
On Monday, I asked Mr. Boeckenstedt about how his large university tries to maintain a "transfer friendly" admissions process.
How do transfer students fit into your overall enrollment operation?
We consider it an offshoot of our mission. Transfer students bring a lot to the classroom, to the community. It's a big part of who we are. There are a lot of students who decide for themselves that it's better geographically or economically to start at a community college and transfer in later. We've invested a lot of time, effort, and research over the last five years to make sure DePaul is transfer-friendly and tech-friendly.
Before they apply, students can now transmit their transcripts online, and feed them into our system to get an almost instantaneous sense of how credits will transfer, and then also see how they will transfer to a particular degree program. This gives them a better sense of how long it might take them to get a degree. ?c As opposed to freshman admissions, we publish cleaner, more precise cutoffs for admission, so you know it's only a matter of a certain number of credits and a certain grade-point average for 99.8 percent of students.
In general, what's different about a transfer applicant and a first-year applicant, from an enrollment perspective?
First of all, freshmen follow a fairly lockstep process. We know when they apply. A transfer may come in at any term, including the summer. They may have been at one or two places before coming to DePaul, and they may switch back and forth between part-time or full-time. You might have a student who went to Arizona State and decided to come back to Chicago. Or a student who went to a community college who transferred in after finishing an associate degree. Or we could have someone who's been out of college five years, decides he needs a degree, and comes back. So the paths they take may vary, and you have to be flexible in all ways as a university. Freshmen are easy. For transfers, it can be anytime, anywhere.
When you say ?eflexible,' what do you mean?
You can't say that everyone's gonna come in and do things exactly the way it makes it easiest on you. ... The whole idea of deadlines and timelines is something you need to be more aware of if you're going to be a transfer-friendly institution. Five percent of people put things off to the last minute. It's not that transfer students are irresponsible, but they have life commitments other students may not have. So if you're not allowing for that, you're going to discourage a lot of very capable, very deserving students who just can't make that decision until the week before classes start.
What's something you've learned about working with transfer students over the years?
Whereas freshmen are looking for fit and a lot of softer or more nebulous elements of finding the perfect place, transfers, in general, are asking two, maybe three questions. How will my credits transfer? How long is it going to take me to finish my degree? And what is it going to cost me? They're very transactional in that sense. So you need to be able to give students answers.
The frustrating thing about freshman admissions is that you can do everything right, but the student still decides go elsewhere because another campus just feel rights to them. Transfers are much more able to quantify and put into words the factors that are driving their decision. They think it's going to advance their career, and they know how long that's going to take.
What about tips for other colleges?
The biggest thing is to look at things from the student's side: understanding that students who are transferring would like to meet with someone in the college. So you may need to stay open in the evening. And you may need to be open the week before classes start. All those sorts of things contribute to it. More than that, you need to have a process and procedure to deal with credits from a wide variety of institutions.
Obama Signs Student Loan Reform (3-30-2010)
Access: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/03/obama-signs-student-loan-reformBy Jessica Calefati
President Obama has said he considers community colleges "one of the great undervalued assets in our education system." Tuesday, he affirmed that sentiment by signing student loan reform into law at the Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria. The legislation ends a program started half a century ago that ceded lucrative government subsidies to private student loan lenders. It also helps make college more affordable by redirecting $36 billion of the $61 billion the legislation saves taxpayers over 10 years to the Pell Grant program for low-income students. Minority-serving institutions, community college job training programs, and a grant program to increase college access and readiness will also receive part of the savings.
Obama thrust community colleges into the national spotlight last summer when he challenged them to graduate 5 million more students by 2020 and proposed a $12 billion plan to finance his vision. But that mandate has not yet been funded, and an annual survey released Tuesday shows community colleges are facing greater enrollment gains and deeper budget cuts than in previous years. Of the 128 community college presidents and chancellors who responded to this year's survey, about two-thirds said their enrollment had increased more than 10 percent from the winter of 2009 to the winter of 2010. More than half of respondents also confirmed that their operating budgets had shrunk, with 18 percent reporting a decrease of more than 10 percent. Student loan reform is a great legislative victory, but it will mean little for students if traditionally open-enrollment community colleges are forced to start turning applicants away for fiscal reasons.
Obama Reaffirms Support for Community Colleges at Signing of Student-Loan Bill (3-30-2010)
Access: http://chronicle.com/article/Obama-Reaffirms-Support-for/64877/?sid=cc&utm_source=cc&utm_medium=enBy Andrea Fuller
President Obama signed legislation last week that ends the bank-based lending system for student loans and pours tens of billions of federal dollars into higher education.
At the signing ceremony, which was held here at Northern Virginia Community College, the president also announced that Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and an English instructor at the college, will lead a community-college summit at the White House this fall. The president thrust community colleges into the limelight last summer when he called on them to produce five million more graduates by 2020 and proposed a $12-billion plan to improve and expand the institutions. But the student-loan bill provides just a portion of the money Mr. Obama had sought.
The legislation, which also overhauls the nation's health-care system, uses the savings from ending subsidies to private student lenders to provide about $43-billion over 10 years for spending on education. Most of that money, about $36-billion, will go to the Pell Grant program for low-income students. Other beneficiaries, in addition to community colleges, include minority-serving institutions and a grant program to improve college access and completion.
President Obama called the student-lending overhaul "one of the most significant investments in higher education since the GI Bill." He criticized the banked-based lending system, calling it a "sweetheart deal," and condemned loan companies such as Sallie Mae that spent millions of dollars on "armies of lobbyists" to fight the bill.
"We need to invest that money in our students," the president said. "We need to invest in our community colleges, we need to invest in the future of this country."
In announcing the White House meeting on community colleges, Mr. Obama called those institutions "one of the great undervalued assets in our education system."
The measure signed last week provides $2-billion for job training at community colleges. A version of the bill that passed the House of Representatives in September had contained $10-billion for the institutions and would have financed a broader array of programs, including the colleges' efforts to meet the president's 2020 graduation goal.
Robert G. Templin Jr., president of Northern Virginia Community College, said he was disappointed by the drop in money devoted to community colleges in the final bill, but he still called the measure a "landmark piece of legislation." He said the bill was important both financially and symbolically.
"I hope it draws attention to the fact that America's community colleges represent one of our best resources for putting America's working class back to work," Mr. Templin said in an interview this week.
He said that the reduction in funds for community colleges could slow progress on some projects his college is involved in, which he had hoped the bigger pot of money in the earlier version of the bill might help finance. Those projects include a national work-force-training partnership between community colleges and Goodwill Industries International and a statewide effort in Virginia to increase rates of enrollment and completion for first-generation college students.
But Mr. Templin said the college did operate programs that would be potential candidates for the aid in the newly signed bill, including programs to assist out-of-work adults who need retraining and to help people transition from dying industries to emerging ones.
6 Strategies Can Help Entering Community-College Students Succeed (3-29-2010)
Access: http://chronicle.com/article/6-Strategies-Can-Help-Entering/64871/?sid=cc&utm_source=cc&utm_medium=enBy Ashley Marchand
Even though most community-college students say they are motivated, many haven't developed the habits that could lead them to actually achieve their academic goals.
That was a key finding of a new national survey of community- and technical-college students that is being released on Monday. A report on the survey, "Benchmarking and Benchmarks: Effective Practice With Entering Students," provides six benchmarks for colleges that are trying to improve students' habits during the critical first three weeks of class.
The Survey of Entering Student Engagement, or Sense, which is administered by the Center for Community College Student Engagement, was given to more than 50,000 new students at 120 community colleges during the fourth and fifth weeks of classes in fall 2009 to assess early impressions of institutional practices and student behaviors. The survey began in 2007 with a pilot test involving 22 colleges.
While 90 percent of community-college students said they agreed or strongly agreed that they had the motivation to do what it took to succeed in college and 85 percent believed they were academically prepared, about 33 percent said they had already turned in an assignment late and 24 percent of students said they neglected to turn in an assignment at all. A quarter of the students surveyed also reported that they skipped class one or more times within the first three weeks of class.
Goal-Thwarting Behavior
Angela Oriano-Darnall, assistant director of the survey, said students' goals when they first enroll at community colleges are sometimes negated by their actual habits in the classroom.
"That gap between students' aspirations and those behaviors that we know do not better prepare them for success in college, ultimately result in high attrition rates among community-college students," she said.
The six benchmarks listed in the report offer staff members and administrators ideas about how to help more students stay in college and graduate or transfer. They are fostering "college readiness" programs for high-school students, connecting early with students, encouraging faculty and staff members to have high expectations for students, providing a clear academic path, engaging students in the learning process, and maintaining an academic and social-support network.
Iowa Valley Community College District, for example, provides lunch-hour workshops to support new students academically and socially. The lunches have been particularly helpful for students, like laid-off workers, who were surprised to find themselves back in the classroom.
Recently two local factories shut down and another downsized, sending about 150 blue-collar workers to Iowa Valley to retrain for other jobs.
"They were people who, for lack of a better way to say it, never had to think like college students before," said Jim A. Merritt, director of the career and employment center at Iowa Valley.
Staff members and administrators reviewed the new students' answers from a 2008 field test of Sense to determine their needs and perceptions about academic success. They then administered a separate questionnaire to learn what kinds of help students wanted.
Those answers led to the development, in spring 2009, of "lunch and learn" workshops on the topics of preparing for final examinations, interacting with student advisers, and taking online courses.
Iowa Valley also helped students connect early with staff members (one of the key benchmarks) during the workshops. "We really wanted to put faces in front of the students," Mr. Merritt said. "We really wanted to do it in person so they could see those people, get to know them, and learn their names. Retention really goes up when they make a personal connection."
Keeping Students Engaged
Retention did seem to rise as a result of the workshops. The retention rate of the 78 students who participated in the spring workshops was 93 percent the following fall, compared with the general student-retention rate of 75 percent over the same period.
Connecting students to community-college faculty and staff members, whether through workshops or even academic advising, can also help create a clear academic plan for students, another benchmark identified in the survey.
While the majority of students said they had help setting academic goals and choosing classes in their first semester, about 30 percent said an adviser did not help them choose classes. And 31 percent said they disagreed or strongly disagreed that an adviser helped them set academic goals and create a plan to achieve those goals.
Not only is it important for students to lay out their academic goals with the help of a faculty member, it is also critical for faculty members to have their own set of high expectations for the students they advise. "When entering students perceive clear, high expectations from college staff and faculty," the survey said, "they are more likely to understand what it takes to be successful and adopt behaviors that lead to achievement."
Ms. Oriano-Darnall calls the first few weeks of class the "front door" of the community-college experience, the time when academic habits can be formed. Opportunities to help students during those opening weeks are crucial to bolstering attendance and ultimately graduation, she said.
"We have to focus on the front door of colleges because students don't succeed if they don't come back," she said. "If we can't get them through the first semester or the second semester, they're not going to complete their educational goals."
Congress approves Obama's overhaul of student loans (3-25-10)
Access: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2418677420100326By Thomas Ferraro
WASHINGTON, March 25 (Reuters) - An overhaul of the college student loan program, ending federal subsidies to private lenders, won final congressional approval on Thursday, giving President Barack Obama a second major legislative victory this week.
Coming in the wake of passage on Sunday of Obama's landmark U.S. healthcare reform, the measure would end the 45-year-old Federal Family Education Loan Program, which has supported private student lending with federal subsidies.
The program will be replaced by an expansion of direct federal lending to students, eliminating well-paid middlemen -- bankers and other private lenders who have also been shielded by taxpayers from the risk of default.
The projected $61 billion in savings over 10 years would be used to provide federal grants to needy students and help fund other federal education programs, such as support for community colleges and historically black schools.
Obama's fellow Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives got the measure through Congress by tucking it into a package of changes to the healthcare overhaul.
Lawmakers in both chambers approved the package and sent it to Obama to sign into law.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation said this week that a telephone survey of 1,030 adult Americans found 64 percent of respondents approved it, while 34 percent opposed it.
"There is still a big partisan gap, 82 percent of Democrats support the change, compared to 52 percent of Republicans," said CNN polling director Keating Holland. "Nonetheless, a majority of both parties have a positive view of the proposal. We haven't seen that very often in recent polls."
While student groups and Democratic lawmakers have backed the overhaul, student loan giant Sallie Mae (SLM.N) and other private lenders have staunchly opposed it.
Critics say the action will reduce students' lending options and eliminate the jobs of thousands of private lenders, hurting efforts to remedy an ailing U.S. economy that has a 9.7 unemployment rate.
A number of lawmakers, most Republicans, also opposed the measure, saying it would end a successful program and amount to an unwarranted federal takeover of the student loan industry.
Private lenders would still have a role, albeit a greatly diminished one, in servicing loans, such as helping collect payments. Direct federal loans, unlike bank loans, must be serviced by U.S. workers.
"Congress voted to stop wasting billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize big banks, and start investing that money directly in our students and families," said House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller.
"With this one move, we will help students pay for college, prepare them for our global economy, keep jobs in America and reduce the deficit," Miller said.
The House of Representatives approved the measure last year, but it got stalled in the Senate in the face of a threatened Republican procedural roadblock that takes 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to clear.
Democrats avoided the roadblock by putting the student loan measure into the package of changes on the healthcare measure, which needed only a simple majority to pass.
"It's a very bad idea," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in denouncing the student loan overhaul.
"We now have the government running banks, insurance companies, car companies" and Democrats want the government to now "take over the student loan business," McConnell said.
(Additional reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by David Alexander and Peter Cooney)
