$10 million for college completion
Complete College America will give $10 million to states to fund college-completion programs. The Gates-funded grants are designed to reward: shifting to performance funding instead of paying for enrollment; reducing time to degree; restructuring to help students balance college with jobs; accelerating remediation to move students into first-year, full-credit classes as quickly as possible, and [...]
Rethinking ‘gainful employment’
The Education Department should rethink its “gainful employment” regulations aimed at for-profit colleges, writes Rick Hess in Ed Week. The rules reflect a major policy switch that should be debated, Hess argues. Do we want to make it possible for all Americans to attend college? Or do we now want colleges to reject nontraditional students who are at [...]
Fixing higher ed
The Washington Post’s Daniel de Vise looks at eight ways to improve our higher education system: 1. Measure student learning 2. End merit aid 3. Three-year degrees 4. Core curriculum 5.More homework 6. Encourage completion 7. Cap athletic subsidies 8.Rethink remediation Here’s the online discussion and go to College, Inc. for more ideas from education leaders [...]
Listen to students
In the discussions of how to raise success rates for low-income students at community colleges, students’ voices are absent, write Tara Watford, Vicki Park and Mike Rose, members of the Gates-funded Pathways to Postsecondary Success project, in Inside HigherEd. How and where do low-income students get information about attending college? What goes into their decision-making to [...]
We can’t do everything
Overwhelmed by unprepared students who fail remedial classes, Pima Community College in Arizona is limiting admissions, writes Chancellor Roy Flores in Inside Higher Ed. In 2009, 89 percent of new students were placed in remedial math, 35 percent in remedial reading and 51 percent in remedial writing. Pima spends more than $20 million a year on [...]
‘Gap year’ can be forever
Taking a “gap year” off from academia after high school may benefit affluent students, but low-income students who don’t go directly to college may not go at all, concludes a new study (pdf) to be published in The Review of Higher Education. Those who do go to college after taking time off are significantly less likely to complete [...]
Disrupting college
Online education is a “disrupting innovation” that will transform higher education, argues paper by the Innosight Institute and the Center for American Progress. Online learning can enable learning to happen in a variety of contexts, locations, and times; it allows for a transformation of curriculum and learning. . . . This emerging disruptive innovation also allows [...]
What Washington wants from CCs: Job training
The National Community College Legislative Summit concluded Wednesday with a speech by Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-California, the House majority whip and a former community college board member. “The mindset on both sides of the aisle is knowing that the crunch is about to hit us,” said McCarthy. The budget debate in the next few weeks will [...]
Community college summits go regional
The U.S. Education Department will convene four regional summits to discuss promising practices for increasing completion rates at community colleges. “Community colleges must lead the way to meeting President Obama’s goal that the United States once again having the highest college attainment rate in the world by 2020,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. On the schedule: [...]
The wrong goal?
The “completion agenda” is setting the wrong goal, argued Arthur M. Hauptman, a public policy consultant, at the Degrees of Difficultyconference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. Inside Higher Ed reports: “I don’t think it helps to have broad, unrealistic goals that will never be met,” said Hauptman, referring not only to the Obama attainment goal but also [...]
