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THE NEWS
ACADEMIC PREPARATION
When an A isn’t enough
By Charlie Boss, The Columbus Dispatch
How students do in high school is the best way to gauge whether they'll succeed in college, many admissions counselors say. But state statistics show that many college freshmen weren't prepared for the coursework - even those from high-performing high schools. More than half of the Class of 2008 from Gahanna Lincoln High School graduated with a B or higher. More than one-quarter of those students took at least one honors or Advanced Placement course. Yet, 39 percent of those graduates who attended a public college or university in Ohio had to take a remedial math class. Thirteen percent needed developmental English.
School transfers rare in Conn under ‘No Child’ law
By Stephanie Reitz, The Boston Globe
More than 120,000 children are eligible to transfer from their struggling Connecticut schools to better schools this fall, but there's no mass exodus in the making. Many parents are finding that even when they try to transfer their children under provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law, neighboring schools often aren't performing any better -- and if they are, they often don't have space for newcomers. Education improvement activists say the promise of transferring to a better school is a fundamental flaw in the No Child law, disappointing parents when they discover the roadblocks to making such a switch.
A decade later, Pennsylvania cyber schools go viral
By Devon Lash, The Allentown Morning Call
In the decade since cyber charter schools first opened to Pennsylvania students, turning on a computer instead of hopping on the bus has just … clicked. The Internet became the classroom, partly or wholly, for more than a million students across the country last year. And in few places has it been more popular than in Pennsylvania, where the cyber charter school experiment has morphed into a movement, serving one of the highest registrations in the country, more than 23,000 full-time students. But the state's 11 digital academies have mostly failed to meet state testing standards. Six of the schools in 2008-09 did not make Adequate Yearly Progress because of academic performance in either math or reading on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment.
POSTSECONDARY ACCESS SUCCESS
Another chance is offered to those who fell just short of a degree
By Jennifer Gonzalez, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Students who left college before graduating may get a second chance at earning their degree. The Institute for Higher Education Policy and the Lumina Foundation for Education announced a joint program on Wednesday to find formerly enrolled college students whose academic records qualify them to be awarded associate degrees retroactively. The three-year, $1.3-million effort, called Project Win-Win, also plans to identify former students who are fell just short of an associate degree, by nine or fewer credits, and re-enroll them to earn a degree. The project has the potential to be a real game-changer in terms of the nation's efforts to achieve the college-completion goals set out by President Obama, the nation's governors, and Lumina.
Georgia Perimeter part of project to improve student success
By Laura Diamond, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Perimeter College is among a dozen institutions selected to participate in a national program to increase student success in community college. The Association of American Colleges and Universities chose GPC for a new program -- called Roadmap Project -- to design stronger support programs so students will be more likely to graduate. The idea is to provide students with tips, encouragement and academic help as soon as they begin college and at several stops along the way. Students will "become active partners in their own quest for educational success," according to a news release from the association.
Campus goal: get out in four
By Jeannie Kever, The Houston Chronicle
Classes started on Tuesday at most Houston-area campuses. They began Wednesday at the University of Texas at Austin and Aug. 30 at Texas A&M University. Schools report their official enrollment on the 12th day of classes. But increasingly, they are focused on what happens after that. A decade after the state launched an ambitious plan to raise education levels in Texas — an additional 122,000 students enrolled in 2009 over the previous year - the emphasis is on ensuring that more students earn a degree. The news there hasn't been so good. Just 57 percent of students in the state's public universities earn a degree within six years. At most schools, the graduation rate is lower. The pressure is on.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
The appliance of extra science is no economic panacea
By John Morgan, The Times Higher Education
An academic believes he has found evidence to refute the government's case that increased university provision of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects is needed to aid the economy. There is "no significant relationship" between a nation's economic growth rate and the number of STEM students, according to an analysis by Paul Whiteley, professor of politics at the University of Essex. In January, the then business secretary, Lord Mandelson, told the House of Lords that STEM skills were "crucial in securing future prosperity", hence the government was "opening up opportunities in universities and beyond".
A shifting international mix
By Elizabeth Redden, InsideHigherEd
In fall 2004, Kansas State University had just one Chinese undergraduate on campus. In fall 2009, there were 534. The statistic would be staggering in any context, and yet the surge is merely an extreme manifestation of a national trend. Chinese undergraduate enrollment has soared at U.S. universities in recent years and, as another academic year begins, the trend line shows no sign of reversing. Nationally, Chinese undergraduate enrollment shot up 64.7 percent from 2006-7 to 2007-8, and another 59.8 percent from 2007-8 to 2008-9. According to the most recent Open Doors data, collected by the Institute of International Education, 26,275 Chinese undergraduates were enrolled at U.S. universities in 2008-9.
Australia steps up efforts to recruit Latin American students, and they respond
By Janaki Kremmer, The Chronicle of Higher Education
During the past six years, Australia has had rapid success in recruiting students from a relatively new market: Latin America. Since 2004, enrollment of students from the region has risen from 7,000 to 34,000. Academics and recruiters attribute that success to aggressive outreach and reduced visa restrictions. The unpopularity of the Bush administration within the region, recruiters say, also helped drive students to look to countries other than the United States for foreign study. But most Latin American students in Australia are only still here to learn English at private vocational colleges and English-language schools.
REPORTS WORTH READING
Big Gaps, Small Gaps: Some colleges and Universities Do Better Than Others in Graduating African-American Students
In Education Trust brief shares insights from looking beneath the averages. The brief identifies public and private four-year institutions that appear to serve their black and white students equally well—that is, where both groups graduate at similar rates. It also identifies public and private institutions that have a lot of work to do to catch up: Their graduation rate gaps are among the largest in the country. Colleges can have small or nonexistent gaps in undesirable ways—for example, when students in both groups have abysmal graduation rates. On the other hand, an institution can have a relatively high graduation rate for black students but still have large gaps because white students do even better. The focus of the report is, however, on the graduation-rate gaps within institutions.
40th Annual Survey Report on State-0Sponsored Student Financial Aid
The report by the National Association of State Students Grant and Aid Programs (NASSGAP) provides data regarding state-funded expenditures for student financial aid. In the 2008-2009 academic year, the states awarded about $10.3 billion in total state funded student financial aid, an increase of about 2.7% in nominal and constant dollar terms from the $10.0 billion in aid awarded in 2007-08. The report also indicates that the majority of state aid is in the form of grants. In 2008-09, more than 4.0 million grant awards were made representing about $8.4 billion in need and nonneed-based grant aid, an increase of about 5.2% from the $8.0 billion in grants awarded in 2007-08. Of the grant funds awarded in 2008-09, 72% was need-based and 28% was nonneed-based, about the same percentage as seen in 2007-08.
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