Funding doesn’t follow success

Kevin Drumm, president of a New York community college with an above-average completion rate, complains that funding rewards enrollment, not success, reports Inside Higher Ed.

Broome Community College’s three-year federal graduation rate is nearly 28 percent, above the national average of around 23 percent. It’s ranked 15th in the nation for student retention out of 210 colleges that submitted data in the National Community College Benchmark Project. Some 87 percent of Broome graduates who transfer to a four-year institution complete a bachelor’s degree, the best performance among New York’s 30 community colleges.

But Broome was hit by a 15 percent cut in state funding. The college’s relatively high completion rate depresses funding, Drumm argues.

Hybrid classes engage students

Hybrid classes — a blend of online and face-to-face learning — can work well for community college students, writes Linda Thor in Community College Times. Thor draws on experiences at Rio Salado College, a virtual college in Arizona for working adults, and the Foothill-De Anza Community College District in California’s Silicon Valley, where she serves as chancellor.

A Center for Community College Student Engagement survey found that students who received blended instruction reported being more engaged than those who took all-online classes, Thor writes.

By shifting some attendance off campus, hybrid classes allow colleges to serve more students with the same facilities.

Students experience the benefits of online learning, including “convenience, flexibility, and increased opportunity for reflection and self-directed learning” without giving up on “face-to-face contact with an instructor and social interaction with other students.”

Faculty members report that well-structured hybrid courses can stimulate exciting levels of student engagement and participation in ways similar to fully online courses. Online, no one can sit silently in the back of the class. The online medium offers opportunities to engage students in innovative ways that are not as feasible or effective on campus.

A well-designed hybrid class can help instructors make the most of their classroom time by enabling electronic completion of such tasks as exchanging tests, papers, and other documents; dispensing information about grades; and critiquing student work. Students also can easily share their work with each other.

Mike Murphy, a Foothill computer science instructor, uses Web video- and audio-conferencing software applications for his Cisco networking class. Students can attend his class in person or virtually.  That enables working students to review material they missed or participate in class live while traveling.

Hybrid courses can increase demand on campus computer labs and the technology infrastructure. Faculty and students may need more tech support.

Teaching a hybrid course for the first time requires faculty to climb a steep learning curve for which they need adequate time, resources, and support. They need the computer equipment, software, course development time, training, and instructional design services necessary to develop, maintain, and manage the delivery of high-quality instruction.

Developing effective hybrid courses is just as difficult as developing fully online courses, Thor writes. Ultimately, the most important factor is the skill of the instructor.

For-profits cut off low-skilled applicants

With many students defaulting on federal loans, two for-profit educators, Corinthian Colleges and Kaplan will deny enrollment to high school drop-outs who pass a basic-skills test known as an “ability to benefit” test, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Kaplan discontinued the tests last year at some institutions citing poor student performance. Corinthian announced it will drop the tests because “ability to benefit” students default on their loans at twice the rate of other students.

Starting in 2014, “the Education Department will hold colleges accountable for defaults of student cohorts for three years after the students graduate or leave college, a year longer than under current law,” reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

About 15 percent of Corinthian’s students in the last academic year used the ability-to-benefit test. The company, which operates more than 100 campuses across North America, estimates it will lose 16,000 potential students and about $120-million in the next fiscal year as a result of this decision, but it will also lose the risk of higher default rates those students would bring. The 15-percent enrollment of ability-to-benefit students was a decrease from 24 percent the previous year, credited to a greater focus on default management at Corinthian, as well as the growth of its online division, which does not enroll such students.

If colleges can’t help ability-to-benefit students succeed, it’s not far to load them up with debt, said Deborah Cochrane, program director at the Institute for College Access and Success.

Last year, a GAO report found “testing officials at a for-profit college helped students cheat on an ability-to-benefit test, the Chronicle reports. The Education Department said it would strengthen monitoring.

People who’ve failed to complete high school or a GED are likely to be weak in persistence as well as reading and math skills. If they’re cut off from for-profit options, they can try adult education or community colleges: Their success rate will be low at lower cost.

Students, you are adults in my class

On the first day of class, Rob Jenkins makes sure students get the message: You’re adults. Act like adults. An English instructor at Georgia Perimeter College, Jenkins prints his first-day welcome in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Students don’t have to raise  hand to speak or ask permission to use the restroom. They won’t be penalized for coming late or missing class, “beyond the natural penalties that accrue as a result of your missing class time and activities.”

You should also know that, according to several recent studies, students who attend class regularly earn, on average, one full letter grade higher than students who attend only sporadically. If you don’t know what “sporadically” means, you should definitely come to class.

“Along with considerable freedom, being an adult also carries a great deal of responsibility,” Jenkins reminds students.

You’re responsible, first of all, for displaying good manners, being considerate of others, and generally not being a jerk. That means you won’t interrupt other speakers, including me. You won’t routinely be late to class, or regularly leave before it’s over, because that’s rude. And you’ll keep your cellphone turned off, unless you have some really good reason to leave it on, such as your mother is in the hospital, your partner is about to give birth, or the Braves are playing in the World Series.

Moreover, you are personally responsible for everything we cover in class, whether you’re here or not. I don’t mean that unkindly, but please don’t come up to me and ask, “Are we going to be doing anything important on Wednesday?” Of course we’re going to do something important on Wednesday. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be there either.

And please don’t ask “Is it OK if I’m absent on Friday?” or “Is it OK if I leave early?” As far as I’m concerned, it’s neither OK nor not OK. I prefer you to be in class all the time, for the simple reason that I want you to succeed in the course. But it’s entirely your decision. You’re an adult. Do what you have to do. You don’t need my permission, nor will I give it. Just remember that you’re responsible for all the material.

Jenkins warns students that he doesn’t give many A’s because not many students excel. But plenty are good enough to earn a B, if they show up and do the work.

Wanted: plumbers, electricians, carpenters

Worldwide, there’s a shortage of skilled trades workers, concludes a Manpower survey, Strategic Migration: A Short-Term Solution to the Skilled Trades Shortage. On Marketplace, Nancy Marshall Genzer interviews Manpower CEO Jeff Joerres, who says parents push their children to go college “no matter what.”

Jeff Joerres: It almost seems better to spend $30,000 and end up waiting tables after four years of college than to spend half of that and be productive and have a career in the skilled trades.

Despite the recession, which has hit construction hard, construction firms are having trouble hiring skilled plumbers, electricians and carpenters, says Clark University business professor Gary Chaison. If the economy recovers, employers may look overseas to find skilled tradesmen. The long-term solution is to offer more and better vocational programs to train Americans.

Skilled trades workers are the number one or two hiring challenge in the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Brazil, according to Manpower.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

Preparing students for jobs “should be front and center in the thinking of educators,” writes Camille Paglia in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The idea that college is a contemplative realm of humanistic inquiry, removed from vulgar material needs, is nonsense. The humanities have been gutted by four decades of pretentious postmodernist theory and insular identity politics.

Paglia is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where students can work with their hands as “ceramicists, weavers, woodworkers, metal smiths, jazz drummers.” They’re a lot happier than students with “trendy, word-centered educations,” she writes.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: We need a sweeping revalorization of the trades. The pressuring of middle-class young people into officebound, paper-pushing jobs is cruelly shortsighted. Concrete manual skills, once gained through the master-apprentice alliance in guilds, build a secure identity. Our present educational system defers credentialing and maturity for too long. When middle-class graduates in their mid-20s are just stepping on the bottom rung of the professional career ladder, many of their working-class peers are already self-supporting and married with young children.

. . .  educators whose salaries are paid by hopeful parents have an obligation to think in practical terms about the destinies of their charges. That may mean a radical stripping down of course offerings, with all teachers responsible for a core curriculum. But every four-year college or university should forge a reciprocal relationship with regional trade schools.

A word-centered education worked fine for me. My only manual skill is touch-typing. But many young people are wasting a lot of time and money in college because their real goal is not to get an education but to get job credentials. Often they end up with a lot of debt and no degree.

The ‘four-year college myth’

The idea that everyone needs a four-year college degree is a “myth,” writes Jerry Ice, president of The Graduate School, in the Washington Post.  Many careers require education or specialized training, but not a four-year degree.

“Well over half of all students attending four-year undergraduate institutions are dependent on loans and graduate having incurred enormous debt” Ice writes. Community college students can earn vocational certificates or associate degrees without taking on heavy debt.

Community colleges now represent over 50 percent of higher education enrollment. Their affordability and accessibility are a significant part of their appeal, as is their focus on essential skills and job-related training. While many who attend community colleges do so with the intention of transferring to a four-year school and earning a B.A., it appears that more than half are there to complete technical or vocational training, or just to upgrade their job skills.

Distance education is flexible and often more affordable than classroom-based training, Ice writes.

“Explore the possibilities for short-term professional training and determine what will work best for you,” he advises.

You may already have an AA

You may already have an associate degree, according to Project Win-Win, which is trying to find former students whose academic records qualify them for a degree  they never received.  Project Win-Win also hopes to persuade former students who are nine or fewer credits short of a degree to finish up.  The three-year, $1.3-million campaign was organized by the Institute for Higher Education Policy and funded by the Lumina Foundation, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

IHEP will work with 35 community colleges and four-year universities that offer associate degrees in Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Institutions will examine student records to find eligible students and those who are only a few credits short.

If all colleges and universities that award associate degrees participated in Project Win-Win, we’d see at least a 12 percent increase in associate degrees, predicts Cliff Adelman, a senior associate at IHEP. 

Last year, a pilot program  in partnership with Education Trust awarded nearly 600 associate degrees at nine institutions in three states. Almost 1,600 students were identified as potential degree recipients.

Many former students are surprised to learn that they’d met the degree requirements or come close. They weren’t keeping track — and neither were the colleges they attended.

New Mexico looks for near-graduates of four-year universities to help them complete their final credits and earn a degree, reports College Puzzle.

Training community college instructors

Teaching community college students requires skills that don’t come with a master’s or a PhD, argue graduate programs that offer a special credential, Inside Higher Ed reports.

Temple University offers a community college teaching certificate; students don’t have to be enrolled in a Temple graduate program. In addition, there is a  track for current community college instructors who want to learn new teaching techniques.

The certificate for current community college instructors consists of a three-credit seminar on “teaching in higher education” — with broad-based lessons on various teaching philosophies and course designs — and three one-credit modules on specific topics. Current topics are “assessment,” “diversity and inclusive teaching” and “teaching with technology.” Aspiring higher education instructors in graduate school take the same introductory seminar but then take on a teaching practicum in which they serve as teaching assistants at Temple instead of taking the module courses.

One of the most valuable aspects of the program, according to its participants, is the opportunity to talk about their individual teaching practices with other community college instructors and learn from one another.

Valerie Schantz, reading and critical thinking professor at Delaware County Community College, took the teaching class even though she’s taught for more than six years. She plans to allow students to use technology more often.

 So instead of always assigning a five-page essay for students to show their understanding of a concept, she said she will encourage the creation of videos or other multimedia presentations for the class. Additionally, she said, she will try to make more use of interactive online tools to stimulate discussion among her students outside of the classroom.

The certificate program also includes a module on “diversity and inclusive teaching,” which teaches instructors to develop  “diversity action plans” and adapt their teaching to the demographics of their students.

Temple hopes to offer an online version of its community college teaching certificate program.  

A few other graduate programs offer certificate programs for teaching certain disciplines at community college, such as San Francisco State’s graduate certificates in “the teaching of composition” and “teaching post-secondary reading.”

Jennifer Trainor, an English professor at the university, explains that most students who pursue these certificates are earning master’s degrees in other disciplines such as literature, creative writing or linguistics.

. . . “We try to give those in the certificate program an overview of composition theory, and we also show them common student errors in writing and how to approach them constructively,” Trainor said. “Sometimes the first response to bad student writing is to put red ink all over a paper, throw your hands up and go look for another job. We try to show these future instructors what kinds of mistakes students make and how not to mark up everything and how to take teaching them step-by-step.”

San Francisco State is working with community college to strengthen the program by preparing students for the online learning environment and for administrative duties new instructors may have to take on.

Sugie Goen-Salter, another English professor at San Francisco State, wants to require future instructors to study the history of community colleges and their missions.

Students train as emergency responders

Colleges have expanded homeland security training to prepare students for  emergency response, police, firefighting and private security jobs, reports Community College Times.

In Illinois, the College of DuPage (COD), which offers a certificate in homeland security training, is building an indoor street “lab” to train emergency responders.

When COD opens the new $25-million center in 2011, it will offer an array of courses in the industry — terrorism methodology, cyber terrorism, hazardous material training, urban response, fire science procedure, officer recruitment and security training.

The center will house criminal justice and fire science programs, as well as local law enforcement training. Its other features will include an emergency operations command center designed to instruct National Incident Management protocols, advanced forensic technology and cybercrime laboratories, and a lecture hall that will double as a mock courtroom, complete with a judge’s chamber and jury box.

The Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) in Pennsylvania is adding a homeland security degree to its certificate program.

“Graduates of this program may seek employment as homeland security professionals in various fields, including border, airport and seaport security as well as intelligence, technology security and disaster or emergency response, “says Jill Oblak, director of CCAC’s Public Safety Institute.

Demand is expected to grow for emergency medical technicians, paramedics, police officers and firefighters.