CCs can learn from for-profit colleges
Community colleges can learn from for-profit schools, writes Felipe Payan, a computer instructor at Los Angeles Southwest Community College, in Community College Week. For-profit colleges market themselves aggressively to Hispanic and African-American students, Payan writes. But students also choose for-profits because of better customer service and accelerated educational programs that allow students to graduate in [...]
Coloradans cut costs with dual enrollment
While dual enrollment often is touted as a way to motivate struggling students, that’s not who’s enrolling in Colorado, reports the Denver Post. Dual enrollment attracts successful students who hope to cut college costs. “My English class was a lot of work, but I had already taken AP English and IB classes before these college [...]
‘Race to the Top’ for colleges
Federal incentives for states that raise college graduation rates amount to a “Race to the Top” for higher education, writes the New York Times. The campaign to add another eight million college graduates by 2020 will include a new $20 million in grants for states that carry out plans to raise graduation rates, said Education [...]
Online students more likely to fail
Online students are less likely to succeed than students in traditional classes at Washington state community and technical colleges, according to a five-year study released by the Community College Research Center at Teachers’ College, Columbia University. Results were similar to those found in a parallel CCRC study in Virginia. Online students were employed for more [...]
Jobless seek hurry-up training
Laid-off workers want short-term retraining that will get them back in the workforce quickly, St. Louis Community College discovered when it surveyed local employers and workers. Ford and Chrysler had closed local auto plants; General Motors had cut back to one shift. Retraining was an urgent mission, reports Community College Week. The survey reached 1,500 [...]
Biden: Here’s how to graduate more
To make the U.S. first in the world in college graduates, the nation’s governors need to set ambitious goals for their states, said Vice President Joe Biden yesterday at the Building a Grad Nation summit in Washington. Biden announced a 23-page “College Completion Tool Kit” with recommended strategies, reports the Washington Post. The administration wants [...]
CC summit features industry partnerships
A leader in job-training partnerships with industry, Indiana’s Ivy Tech will host the third regional community college summit today at its Fall Creek campus. That’s where 39-year-old Rob Dittemore, laid-off as a pipefitter, is taking math, computer, manufacturing and welding courses, reports the Indianapolis Star. Some of Dittemore’s classes were created as part of Ivy [...]
Fixing Pell Grants
What’s the future of Pell Grants? The Chronicle of Higher Education features six views on the increasingly costly program. Several commentators call for rewarding students who move quickly to a degree. Pell should be updated to stress cost effectiveness, writes Rick Hess, education policy director at the American Enterprise Institute, How about transforming Pell into [...]
Pell-mell policy
Pell Grant policy is a mess, writes economist Richard Vedder in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Spending on grants for low-income students hit $28 billion in 2010, doubling in four years, and is set to rise by more than 25 percent this fiscal year. We’re not getting much education for the money, Vedder believes. Most [...]
Welcome to The Two-Year Track
The Chronicle of Higher Education has launched a new blog on community colleges called The Two-Year Track. (For reasons I don’t understand, it appears as a subset of the On Hiring blog.) Eliana Osborn, an adjunct specializing in developmental English at Arizona Western College, teaches “Pablo,” a Salvadoran immigrant who never attended school until enrolling [...]
