Everybody's Business

NPR addresses some of the identity issues that middle-class black and Latino teenagers face, thus resulting in lower overall performance and attendance than their Asian or white peers.

Latino schooling in the U.S. has historically been characterized by high dropout rates and low college completion rates1. According to a national survey of 2,012 Latinos ages 16 and older by the Pew Hispanic Center, nearly three-quarters (74%) of all 16- to 25-year-old survey respondents cut their education short because of the need to support a family.  read more »

Findings from a 17-year study, based on the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Development, found that engineering retention isn't lower than other fields.  Inside Higher Ed details the findings of Matthew Ohland's, associate professor of engineering education at Purdue University, research of 70,000 engineering students.

Inside Higher Ed article, Cut Student Services? Think Again, talks about the forthcoming research by Cornell University student, Douglas Webber, and the director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, Ronald Ehrenberg, which shows that "graduation and persistence rates are linked to greater expenditures on student services," more so than expenditures on instructional or research.    read more »

In a study named The Opportunity Equation: Transforming Mathematics and Science Education for Citizenship and the Global Economy, the Carnegie Institute for Advanced Study urges America to improve it's quality of education in Math and Sciences. Without it, the Institute predicts that the United States will not be able to compete in a global technological-connected world. Points of this study include:   read more »

As college costs rise, more college students are forced to work now than ever before. Although it is assumed that working more hours gives students less time to study and therefore, gives the students a disadvantage, here are two conflicting studies of this argument.  read more »

President Obama continues to respond to questions regarding his goal of "putting the United States atop all countries in college-completion rates by 2020."  As part of this goal, he wants every American to have a year or more of education and reward both 2-year and 4-year colleges that keep the students' cost as low as possible.

To read more, click here.    

On April 22, The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators announced a slew of recommended changes to the current American College Financial Aid system released in a report called "National Conversation Initiative Preliminary Recommendations".  read more »

The director of education-technology services at Pennsylvania State University at University Park, Cole W. Camplese, says that by allowing and encouraging his students to 'tweet' during class adds an "additional layer of communication...[which hopefully] will disrupt the old classroom model and allow new kinds of teaching in which students play a greater role and information is pulled in from outside the classroom walls."   read more »

"Administrators at Chaffey College, a two-year institution in California, were concerned. A growing number of their students were landing on academic probation, and by the spring of 2004, about 3,500 students—one out of every five—were on probation. The officials decided something had to be done."

To read the full article and find out how implementing and mandating a college success course for students on probabtion turned out, click here.