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.

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 »

Opening with an unsettling, yet all-too-common conversation, held between a career counselor and a "failed" college student, Marty Nemko does a good job at revealing the truths of an academic epidemic that continues to sweep the nation.

This opinion piece addresses how much students actually learn from four-year institutions, what needs to be done to improve undergraduate education, and ways to increase the preparedness of incoming students, so that they leave college with more than a drained savings account.   read more »

It is Obama’s goal “for the nation to have the world’s highest proportion of college graduates by 2020.”

Last Tuesday (February 24, 2009), Obama’s speech to Congress was compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats during the Great Depression because of their economic-crisis focus, yet as for education, he was said to have been more like John F. Kennedy as far as his ambitions went.  read more »

Community colleges and regional public and private colleges and universities have long educated large numbers of low-income, first-generation, and second-chance students. However, social mobility has slowed and our nation’s rank in terms of higher education attainment has also dropped. Restoring public trust in education is as important as in other industries, especially for first-generation students and children of immigrants who are seeking to achieve the American dream.  read more »

Adapted from an Eric Hoover article from the August 8 Chronicle of Higher Education

David H. Kalsbeek, senior vice president for enrollment management and marketing at DePaul University, offered some thoughts on the persistent problem of retention and degree attainment at the University of Southern California's Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice.  read more »

A July 2008 report (attached below) published by the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that:

 "Remediation might promote early persistence in college, but it does not necessarily help students on the margin of passing the placement cutoff make long-term progress toward earning a degree."

Authors Juan Calcagno and Bridget Long studied remediation and graduation for nearly 100,000 community college students in Florida.

Minnesota recently launched a reporting system that will make public performance on 10 measures at the state's 32 colleges and university. The system reports on student fees, persistance, graduation, employment, licensing pass rates, and conditions of facilities, among other items.  read more »

Some key findings (from the report):

Approximately 58 percent of first-time, full-time bachelor’s or equivalent degree-seekers attending 4-year institutions completed a bachelor’s or equivalent degree within 6 years (table 5).  read more »