CC students provide free tax help
Colorado community college students helped low- and moderate-income taxpayers collect $6 million in refunds this year through Tax Help Colorado. The program, funded by the Piton Foundation, targets working families who are eligible for tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. Participating students take a tax-preparation class in the [...]
College: ‘We’re a revenue generator’
Illinois taxpayers get a good return on their investment by supporting Lewis and Clark Community College, according to a study commissioned by the rural Illinois college. Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. estimates a 6 percent return on investment for local taxpayers, reports The Telegraph. This means that for every dollar of state or local tax money [...]
The major matters
New college graduates with bachelor’s degrees start at $27,000 a year — if they can find jobs, according to a new study of 2009 and 2010 grads. That’s down from 2006-08, reports the New York Times. Worse, only 56 percent of the class of 2010 reported holding at least one job by spring, compared to [...]
Deadly deadlines
As a first-year college student, Thomas Benton didn’t go to his grandmother’s funeral. He had a term paper due and finals to take and no idea that his professors might cut him some slack. Now a professor, he wonders why his students’ grandmothers always die just before finals. Should he ask for proof? A few must [...]
Higher ed’s have-nots are worried
U.S. college presidents are worried about higher education’s future, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education, citing a Pew Research Center Survey. The have-nots — community colleges, less-selective four-year institutions and for-profit colleges – worry the most. Although seven in 10 college chief executives rated the American system today as the best or one of the best [...]
$1 million to boost college degrees
Fifty-seven cities are competing for a $1 million prize for raising the percentage of residents with college degrees. CEOs for Cities will offer the Talent Dividend Prize, funded by the Kresge Foundation and Lumina Foundation for Education, to the metropolitan area with the greatest increase in postsecondary degrees awarded per capita over a three-year period. In [...]
The educated unemployed
Pumping up the number of semi-educated people with college degrees in soft subjects doesn’t lead to prosperity — or a healthy democracy — argues economist Thomas Sowell. Students can graduate from some of the most prestigious institutions in the country without ever learning anything about science, mathematics, economics, or anything else that would make them [...]
If everyone has a degree . . .
Some students aren’t “college material,” writes Walt Gardener on Ed Week. They don’t have the academic skills or motivation to earn a college degree. And if we push everyone to college and somehow manage to double the number earning degrees — President Obama’s goal — the college degree will be devalued. “Colleges too often are education-free [...]
Rude students
Rude students rile Rob Jenkins, who teaches English at Georgia Perimeter College. A female student walked out of his freshman composition class, returning a few moments later with a bag of chips, a candy bar, and a Diet Coke. Maybe she needs to eat frequently because she has low blood sugar or some other condition. [...]
75 minutes without Facebook: Is that so hard?
An English professor at Mount Wachusett Community College, Susan Coleman Goldstein has learned something by taking a computer skills class during her sabbatical: Class time is social media time for many students. The girl sitting next to her in the computer lab writes to friends and flips through Facebook photos, swiftly minimizing the page when the instructor walks by. When I stand in [...]
