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Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education, Matthew Lynch

The 1 Thing You Should Know About Rising Sex Crimes on College Campuses

There’s no denying it, sex crimes are a major issue on college campuses.

In fact, a new report released by the U.S. Education Department found that reported cases of sexual assault and offenses on college campuses rose from 3,357 in 2009 to 6,073 in 2013.

However, while the numbers seem rather daunting, there’s one thing to keep in mind about this:

Officials in the Education Department say (in the letter) that the actual crimes have likely not risen, but awareness of them has. The push to encourage young people to speak up when they feel their sexual rights have been violated is gaining momentum across the country. Even the Obama Administration has stepped up and encouraged colleges and universities to take stronger actions when cases of sexual assault are reported, threatening to investigate schools that do not take the proper steps.

Working on a college campus, I don’t believe for a second that it has gotten twice as dangerous for students since 2009 when it comes to sexual assault. I think these numbers are exactly what the Education Department hints at — a result of raised awareness. Victims are feeling more comfortable speaking up and friends are more empowered to speak up when they see something happen that isn’t right.

Frankly, I would rather see numbers like this that indicate more young people are coming forward and feeling supported than to see a drop in numbers at this point. Until all colleges and universities have stringent sexual assault policies that they enforce, reports like this one are necessary to wake us from our slumber.

What do you think about the rising numbers of reported sex crimes? Does it come from more assaults or more awareness? I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts, so please leave a comment.

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity, HBCU's, Matthew Lynch

6 Facts You Must Know About Student Loans and College Debt

If the P-12 education system is all about preparing its students for success in adulthood, then college preparation is obviously a must. In the fall of 2012, 66 percent of high school graduates from that year were enrolled in college, and that number does not include students that waited longer to enroll or non-traditional adult students. It seems that P-12 classrooms are getting more students ready for the academic demands of a college education – but what about the financial commitment? In this article, we will discuss 6 facts that you must know about student loans and college debt.

Currently, there is a call for a more affordable college education, which makes sense. It comes on the heels of a recession that undercut the value of a college education. Even those with a college degree were not immune to the financial hit that the economy took and those still paying off their student loans were often left without the very job they had always assumed would pay off their educational debts.

In this article, I’m going to discuss a few interesting facts and statistics about student loans and debt that will hopefully trigger a conversation about possible solutions to make college more affordable in this country.

  1. Graduates with advanced degrees are not immune to inordinate debt.

A study by the Urban Institute found that almost 300,000 Americans with master’s degrees were on public relief, along with 30,000 with doctorates. The average debt of a college graduate is $35,200 and that can take decades to pay off.

  1. Half of black graduates finish school with $25,000 or more in debt.

A recent Gallup poll found that in the last 14 years, around half of black college students graduated with student loan debt exceeding $25,000. Only 35 percent of white students had loan debt that high.

Often the only way for black students to afford a college education is by taking on these loans. Four out of five black students take student loans to attend college and typically have nearly $4,000 more student loan debt compared to white students, according to a 2013 report by The Center for American Progress.

There is deep inequality here in the U.S. In 2013, the median income for black households was $34,600, and the poverty rate is 27%, nearly three times that of white Americans.

  1. College students with high debt suffer long-term health issues.

According to a new study via Gallup.com, college graduates “who took on the highest amounts of student debt, $50,000 or more, are less likely than their fellow graduates who did not borrow for college to be thriving in four of five elements of well-being: purpose, financial, community, and physical.”

The survey has an area of 25-years as Gallup only polled individuals who graduated college between 1990-2014. What the study found is that graduates who are burdened with $50,000 or more in student loan debt may struggle to repay their loans, which in turn has causes them to delay making large purchases, e.g. buying a new home.

Those saddled with debt are unable to save as much as their counterparts who do not have as much debt or none at all, and Gallup’s “thriving gap,” percentages between those with $50,000 in debt less the percentage of student’s without it, shows an 11 point percentage spread between the two parties.

The study also found that more recent college graduates seem to be performing worse than those who graduated prior to 2000. Those who obtained a college degree between the years of 1990-1999 are doing better socially, physically, and in purpose.

Student loan debt now outweighs credit card debt and has surpassed $1 trillion. With wage growth still stagnant and many individuals going without full employment, this will mean more health issues and many former graduates with void savings accounts as well.

These issues are not left ignored, however. The next few facts about college debt will focus on the solutions proposed and implemented to tackle the issue of college affordability. For example:

  1. President Obama has reformed student loans.

The Obama Administration has spearheaded college loan reform at the federal level. No stranger to student debt himself (nor the First Lady), he has implemented payment reform starting this year. Under this new plan:

  • New borrowers will pay no more than 10 percent of their disposable income towards outstanding student loans.
  • Any student debt remaining will be wiped clean after 20 years.
  • Public service employees, like military members, nurses or teachers, will have their debt forgiven in 10 years if they make their payments on time.
  1. Senator Marco Rubio and Oregon propose “paying it forward” instead of paying loans back.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio spoke about his own efforts in his home state of Florida, and perhaps on a federal level, to make college attendance a shared cost. Rubio is no stranger to college debt. When he arrived at the U.S. Senate, he still had $100,000 in outstanding student loans. Rubio has been upfront about his modest upbringing and also the power his education gave him but he has acknowledged that the cost is too high. The basics of his college plan would allow private investors to pay for the tuition of college students in exchange for a portion of their earnings later on. This would mean the students acquired no traditional debt and would not start out their careers in the hole – at least not in a typical way.

Another college payment idea that is arising across the country is a state-run repayment program that is similar to Rubio’s private investor one. Already in Oregon the Pay It Forward program has been approved (though not yet enacted) that will give students their public college education upfront, free of cost, in exchange for paying the state a portion of their earnings post-college. Supporters bill it as a “debt free” alternative to a college education, but like Rubio’s plan there is still money owed at the end of the college term that does impact actual earnings. It will be interesting to keep an eye on Oregon in the coming years to see how the program impacts the first groups of students who take advantage of it.

  1. Tennessee and Bernie Sanders want to make education free.

What if a public college education were completely free, though? That’s the approach Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam wants to take when it comes to the state’s community colleges. At his State of the State address, he called for free tuition at Tennessee’s community colleges in order to improve the state’s reputation as one of the least educated. Haslam proposed that the money to pay for it come from the state’s lottery earnings that would be placed in a $300 million endowment fund. While a short-term solution, I’m not sure that this is a sustainable payment plan. But if even one class of students in the state are able to take advantage of it, that may make a huge positive impact on Tennessee’s long-term economic outlook.

Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has proposed trying to ease the student loan debt burden that many college graduates now carry and he’s proposing something even more radical: free college tuition to students who attend four-year colleges and universities.

Sanders plans to present his proposal later this week as a way to encourage future labor participation and to combat the ever growing problem with student loan debt.

In his press release about his college tuition bill, Sanders also said that he believes passage of this legislation will help place the United States back at the top of the world in the percentage of people who graduate from college.

According to the Boston Globe by way of commondreams.org, the class of 2015 will carry a student loan debt of $56 billion and is “the most indebted class in history.”

Sanders’ bill has a close to zero percent chance of passing. Still–one has to admire his way of thinking. Student loan debt is out of control and so is the price of tuition at many of the country’s best colleges and universities. For lower income students, they are usually preyed upon by for-profit institutions with promises of attaining a college degree and future job placement.

What do you think about the current affordability of college in the United States? Do you think that any of the proposed solutions come close to hitting the mark?

 

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Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education

Why HBCUs need alumni more than graduates (and financial literacy, too)

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Anwar Dunbar

Being highly involved in the Washington D.C. Alumni Chapter for Johnson C. Smith University (JCSU), I’ve become keenly aware of the issues facing Historically Black Colleges and University (HBCUs).  As an education advocate and writer, I’ve helped promote the Quotes for Education collaboration between Allstate and the Tom Joyner Foundation the last two years.  In numerous interviews with Allstate’s Senior Vice-President and Florida A&M University alumnus Cheryl Harris, the importance of HBCU alumni giving back to their alma maters was stressed.  In addition to the other pressures these institutions are facing, one of the more significant problems is the lack of alumni giving.

At an Executive Board meeting, our Chapter President Robert Ridley shared with us an idea he read stating that; “A graduate is someone who gets a degree from an institution and never looks back.   An alumnus is someone who gives their time and money back to their alma mater.”  This was an important distinction that I had never heard before, not even when I was a student at JCSU.  It’s an important concept that arguably should be introduced from day one.

Why is it important for graduates to give back to their alma maters?  The main reason is to give future generations a fighting chance to succeed.  This is particularly important for Black America.  Secondly, institutions of higher learning rely on state, federal and extramural funding from private donors.  Many HBCU’s are “Land Grant” institutions and their funding has been decreased ironically under the Obama Administration.  Thus donations from alumni have become more important.

As unofficially told by an insider, for the 2014 fiscal year, less than 15% of my class of 1999 gave anything back to JCSU, a staggeringly low number.  When our school President Dr. Ronald Carter gave an overview of the current health of the University here in Washington, DC, he cited low alumni giving as one potential threat to the University’s future.  A key piece of that evening was encouraging alumni to consider cutting back on certain luxuries to free up money to give back.

Why don’t HBCU Alums give more to their Alma maters?  Why would only 14% of my class give back to the University?  One reason is that many students who’ve attended HBCU graduates feel as though they’ve given enough of their money to their alma mater when pursuing their educations, and don’t feel inclined to give anything else after graduating.  Another is hard feelings towards one’s alma mater.  Many graduates feel bitter about their experience at their alma mater for one reason or the other as well.  I’ve heard this personally and read about it in other articles.

Another piece to this puzzle though is socioeconomic.  Of the many curses to being born black in the United States, a key one is starting from lower rungs on the economic ladder than our counterparts of other ethnicities.  If for example, your parents planned ahead and saved a college fund for you, your economic burden will likely be lessened or non-existent upon graduation as discussed by Georgette Miller, Esq. in Living Debt Free.  You’ll have less debt and more disposable income (some to donate) after starting your career.

“They just weren’t thinking that way,” my father said in a discussion about my grandparents in a discussion about mortgages.  I stumbled upon the basics of financial literacy by accident (from books like Rich Dad Poor Dad and the Millionaire Next Door), and wondered why my parents didn’t teach me more about the vital knowledge shared in these books.  They didn’t know themselves and I think this is true for a lot of African American families in the United States.

Likewise I hypothesize that many other college graduates from my community have a low level of Financial Literacy and that in part drives this lack of giving that we see from alumni.  If my hypothesis is true and many students are matriculating into our HBCU’s with a low level of Financial Literacy, HBCU’s may do good to start educating their students on these topics from day one.  A good place to start would be Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (FPU), or something similar.

I didn’t seriously start giving to either of my alma maters until going through the FPU class taught at my church.  In FPU I learned that the greatest misunderstanding about money is that one of major keys to building and maintaining wealth is blessing others.  Put another way, sustained financial health and giving are a function of one another, and in order for one to be able to give, one’s own financial house must first be in order.

Student loan debt can help explain the lack of giving, but my suspicion is that there’s a percentage of graduates that once they get established, their finances aren’t situated so that they’re able to give back, or giving back just isn’t a priority.  Coming from the African American community, there is truth to the myth that we as a community often collectively make poor financial decisions, particularly keeping up with the Joneses and trying to portray a certain image.  For this reason, and because so many of us don’t get it at home, HBCUs once again may do good to expose their students to a financial literacy a curricula such as FPU which ultimately stresses sound financial decision making and ultimately charitable giving.

So why give back?  Giving back to our alma maters, especially HBCUs, is important if we want to see future generations grown and thrive.  One of the keys to advancement of the African American community in the United States is financial stability and advancement as a group.  Likewise the community itself has a responsibility to give its younger generations a fighting chance to participate in our new global economy.   In the United States, economic power influences everything else.  Regarding my own graduating class of 1999, we can do better than 14% giving back to our alma mater, as can graduates from other institutions.

_____

 

Anwar Y. Dunbar is a Regulatory Scientist in the Federal Government where he registers and regulates Pesticides.  He earned his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Michigan and his Bachelor’s Degree in General Biology from Johnson C. Smith University.  In addition to publishing numerous research articles in competitive scientific journals,  he has also published over one hundred articles for the Examiner (www.examiner.com) on numerous education and literacy related topics in the areas of; Current Events and Culture, Higher Education, Financial Literacy, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).  He actively mentors youth and works to spread awareness of STEM careers to minority students.  He also tutors in the subjects of Biology, Chemistry and Physics.  He is a native of Buffalo, NY.  He can be contacted via email at [email protected], and can be followed on Twitter @anwaryusef.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, International Education, Teachers

Online students need more face-to-face time, not less

Shanna Smith Jaggars, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University and Thomas Bailey, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University

Higher education, we’re told, is rapidly heading towards huge transformation and technological disruption.

Advocates of online education promise that advances in online learning technologies – by permitting course enrolments in the tens of thousands and leveraging crowd-sourcing for peer review — will make a high quality, low cost higher education accessible to any student.

In the meantime, in the US and elsewhere, universities and colleges are swiftly expanding their offerings of what one might call “old-fashioned” online courses: classes designed by individual instructors with enrolments of 25 or so students.

In 2011, almost seven million American undergraduates were enrolled in such courses.

For the sake of these online students, as well as those yet to enrol, it is important to withdraw our gaze from the glow of what could be, and direct it for a moment toward what is. Only by examining the actual experiences of students in online courses today can we understand both the potential of online learning, and its pitfalls.

Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, recently concluded a series of studies that took a close look at online courses
in one American state’s community college system. We found that most consisted of
readings and assignments placed online, along with “chat rooms” where students were
asked to hold discussions with their peers.

While the technologies deployed varied in
sophistication, in almost all classes one quality remained more or less constant: there
was little meaningful interaction between students and their teachers.

Students were acutely aware of this absence. They told us that if they expected to
struggle in a subject or really “wanted to learn something,” they preferred a traditional classroom where they had more contact with their teachers.

Interestingly, an analysis of the factors that predicted student performance in online classes — factors that included course design and use of technology, among others — found that only one predicted better grades: the depth of interpersonal interaction among students and instructors.

Another team of our researchers examined the role that non-academic factors play in the ability of students to successfully complete a qualification. Interviews with students and faculty made clear made clear that many students arrive at college without possessing or understanding the skills and strategies necessary for academic success.

These skills are as basic as time management, taking notes, using a library and recognising when, how and whom to ask for help.

Interestingly, interviews with online faculty made clear that they expected their students
to be relatively adept and independent learners: students had to be able to manage
their time, take initiative, and generate their own approach to mastering course material.

In other words, to be successful, online learners needed precisely the skills we found to be so deficient in entry level students.

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that our studies have found that students fail and withdraw from online courses at a higher rate — in some subjects, up to twice as frequently — than they do from “face-to-face” classes. Even more troubling, this decline in performance is steeper for groups of students, including minorities, that
are already lower performing.

In other words, existing achievement gaps between, for example, whites and blacks or females and males are exacerbated in the online classroom.

Together, these findings suggest that large numbers of college students need more, not
less support from their teachers; yet, perversely, many online courses ask students to teach themselves.

This request may be reasonable when it is aimed at well-prepared students who have the habits necessary to succeed, and most discussions about the potential benefits of online learning are held with these college-ready students in mind.

For the millions of students who arrive underprepared, however, many from families
with no higher education experience, college or university is a place they go to learn how to learn. It is unlikely that even the most responsive technologies can replace the kind of student-teacher interaction that both hard data and anecdotal evidence indicate are vital in motivating and inspiring such students to succeed.

Online learning will continue to make significant inroads in the post-secondary sector; it may even lower costs. But it remains an open question as to whether this trend will increase access to high quality higher education, or further accentuate glaring gaps in educational advantage.

To ensure the latter does not happen, universities and colleges will have to rethink their approach to online learning.

To start with, the sector should spend fewer resources expanding online offerings, and more on preparing students and training faculty for the demands of online classes.
They should be more deliberate about which courses to put online, and expend greater
effort in evaluating and enhancing student preparation.

Finally, they must require faculty
training in methods that support meaningful interaction with students in the virtual
space.

These adjustments will require time and money, and there is the possibility that truly effective online learning will not cost significantly less than traditional classroom
learning.

However, if online learning is to achieve the purported goal of helping all students attain a quality higher education, now is the time to make these investments.

The Conversation

Shanna Smith Jaggars, Assistant Director, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University and Thomas Bailey, George & Abby O’Neill Professor of Economics and Education; Director, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

 

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education

Students aren’t customers…or are they?

Geoff Sharrock, University of Melbourne

With the rise of mass higher learning, tight public funding and intense competition for students, universities are often encouraged to see students as “customers”. But should they?

Commentators who criticise them for “poor customer service” seem to think so.

But others object that these are social institutions, not businesses selling commodities to consumers. What’s more, if you commercialise higher education, you corrupt it.

To this, others say that all universities, public or private, create private benefits along with public goods. Yes, society benefits from the learning embodied in graduates. And students gain too, from credentials that offer them access to jobs, careers and social mobility.

So why not aim for “customer satisfaction” in the name of better quality, better value for money, or both? Whoever pays?

This seems logical; but the analogy has problems. As the angry professor in Hannie Rayson’s play Life After George says to the cash-strapped dean, “Students aren’t customers! We can’t just give them what they want. They don’t know what they want until after they’ve heard what we have to tell them!”

If it works in business…

Studies of successful businesses may have led to some cognitive dissonance in this debate. A century ago, American and English department stores succeeded with the slogan: “the customer is always right”. French hotelier Cesar Ritz had the same idea: “Le client n’a jamais tort”.

More recently that 1980s bestseller In Search of Excellence found that the best-run US companies stayed “close to the customer”.

Then came “Total Quality Management”. Its focus on process improvements aimed at boosting “customer satisfaction” made consumers the final arbiters of quality.

Meanwhile consulting firms engaged in “Customer Intimacy”, designing solutions for complex client needs, even if the “customer” couldn’t say exactly what they wanted.

Even in business the concepts of “consumer”, “customer” and “client” are not clear-cut. They are shorthand for a spectrum of simple products and complex services, brief encounters and extended engagements.

A “customer focus” spectrum. Source: author

As customers, are they “always right”?

Ideas such as these, tried and true in the commercial world, are hard to reconcile with the student/teacher relationship.

To a lecturer marking assignments, the notion that the “customer is always right” soon gets mugged by the reality that “the student is often wrong”.

The analogy seems to miss the fact that students co-produce what they learn, not just with books and lectures and tutors, but with peers.

For students, study may entail heavy workloads, challenging tasks and uncomfortable interrogations. Knowing this, many lecturers lament the use of short, sharp student surveys as blunt instruments to assess their course or teaching quality.

A spectrum of student experience

In fact, as they engage with the university, students step through a spectrum of identities. Do they ever occupy the role of customer or client? Yes, but with caveats.

The “student as customer” idea is not as novel as it seems. University of California president Clark Kerr observed 50 years ago that as study electives proliferated in US universities, patterns of student choice shaped academic programs: “Their choices, as consumers, guide university expansion and contraction, and this process is far superior to a more rigid guild system of producer determination…”

But here, as part of the bargain, the “consumer” had obligations: “The student,
unlike Adam Smith’s idealised buyer, must consume – usually at the rate of fiftee hours a week.”

We can add other caveats. In the marketplace, payment alone entitles the consumer to the product or service on offer. But most students must pre-qualify to enter their chosen course; and to graduate, they must show that they’ve earned their degree.

Student support and professionalism

Cocooned for a time as citizens and subjects of the university, students assume “membership” rights as well as responsibilities. These rights include access to facilities, advice and support.

The more study options there are, for example, the more guidance they may need, if only to avoid a timetable that even Hermione Granger couldn’t handle.

If they want to switch courses, can students find help that is responsive, respectful and reliable? Or must it be time-consuming, cranky, and confusing?

If the 1990s Melbourne film Love and Other Catastrophes is a guide, student administration can be chaotic, and academic supervision unprofessional, due to a lack of service commitment (or “customer focus”).

While the term is not used, a “customer focus” rubric informs the new national University Experience Survey. As a road-map to quality assurance, it shows how multi-faceted student life can be.

Along with what they think they’ve learned, it asks students to rate their experience of social engagement, teaching quality, student advice, administrative support, campus facilities and IT resources.

Limits to “customer satisfaction”

Yet clearly, students can’t finally dictate what universities do. Cambridge University’s David Howarth observes (in an essay on whether law is a humanity, or more like engineering) that academics, like judges, often serve a “virtual client”.

In court, a lawyer must act in her client’s best interests. But in determining the merits of the case, the judge must consider the interests of absent third parties: a whole society may be the “virtual client”.

Scholars are there to help individual “clients” succeed, up to a point. But when giving a grade that leads to the award of a degree, they must keep absent third parties (such as employers) in mind.

As graduates, students become “products” of the university. When assessing student work, a lecturer who gets too “close to the customer” (and here we include “customer intimacy” in its biblical sense) must take steps to avoid bias.

So, does it ever help to see students as “customers”? Yes, if this means ensuring they’ll be well advised and well supported, so they can make informed choices, use their time well, and benefit fully from study.

And no, if this means distorting the teacher-student relationship, failing to uphold course standards, or undermining the institution’s integrity and the reputation of its degrees.

The Conversation

Geoff Sharrock, Program Director, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Higher Education, Matthew Lynch

Diverse Conversations: Recruiting a Diverse Student Population

Diversity is immensely valuable to any higher education institution. Not all universities and colleges, though, are successful or even aware of how to go about recruiting a diverse student population. Fortunately, this is an area in which John LaBrie, dean and vice president for Professional Education, Northeastern University College of Professional Studies, is a veritable expert. I recently sat down with him to find out about the types of strategies that are helping universities ensure that they recruit diverse student populations.

Q: First, we agree that diversity is a very valuable thing for any higher education institution but would you say that there are particular reasons that it is especially important in today’s modern world?

A: The first thing we need to understand is the reality that we live in a more diverse world. Given that, it’s important that our classrooms reflect this. Students, as part of their educational experience, need to understand how to navigate the cultural and diverse aspects of a modern classroom which is also reflective of the larger society.

One of the fundamental cores of education is to encourage students to be critical thinkers. In order to understand critical thinking, you need to understand different perspectives. Cultural diversity inherently brings into the classroom a cultural perspective that is fundamentally diverse and thus forces students to understand issues from different points of view.

Secondly, as a learning model, a culturally diverse classroom is a great pedagogical tool that allows students to understand critical thinking regardless of the discipline.

So for those two reasons, from a cultural and pedagogical standpoint, it’s highly important for us to pay attention to this and it’s exciting that the classroom is, in fact, becoming more diverse in student opinions and backgrounds.

Q: As a starting point, what would you say are the features most common to higher education institutions that are successful at engaging a diverse population?

A: The institutions that have been the most successful in engaging diverse student populations have been urban institutions. These institutions have the proximity of different cultural institutions and populations that come together and inform the curriculum, the faculty and even the institution itself.

Institutions that have struggled to identify what that means from a pedagogical perspective are those who have little exposure to diverse communities; urban institutions have done considerably better in this regard than more rural institutions.

The second attribute is that institutions that are financially more secure have been able to understand the importance of diversity and have had the privilege of engaging with a diverse student population. Many students from diverse backgrounds and so-called “non-traditional” backgrounds are new to higher education and need financial incentives and financial support. So, affluent institutions have had greater capacity in identifying those students and recruiting has been easier for them.

At the other end of the spectrum, community colleges, because of their price point, have been a phenomenal resource for incorporating students from diverse backgrounds into higher education. Again, many of the students from underrepresented communities don’t have the financial resources to afford high tuition institutions and so community colleges have really been an effective entry point for them.

The irony here is that the lower-price institutions, the community colleges, and the higher- price institutions, have been the two types of institutions that have been successful in engaging diverse populations. Those schools caught in the middle have really struggled in being able to recruit and maintain a diverse student population.

Q: Northeastern University College of Professional Studies has been very successful at not only developing but maintaining a diverse student population. What are some of the strategies that the College has used in particular?

A: First and foremost, Northeastern University has always seen itself as an urban institution and the very nature of an urban institution is that it has access to a diverse community. But beyond that, Northeastern University College of Professional Studies has a number of attributes that have made access more attractive to students from diverse backgrounds.

While we are a nationally recognized research institution, and are considered to be a selective institution, the price point that our College has been able to use for our education model has made our type of higher education affordable to many diverse student populations.

Additionally, our College offers special programs like Foundation Year, a first-year intensive program that prepares high school graduates from the City of Boston for university studies regardless of family income or ability to pay. In 2013, 96 students enrolled in Foundation Year. And, Balfour Academy provides students, starting in the 7th grade, the necessary skills, individual growth and confidence to prepare for and succeed in college through after-school tutoring and summer enrichment programs.

And finally, the emergence of online technologies and the capacity for us to deliver education to working adults means that students, who otherwise would not have had access to an institution like Northeastern, can now participate in our form of education. Students who find themselves in a geographic area where no other institution can meet their educational needs, and who may also be coming from a culturally diverse background, are afforded access because of our quality online programs. In 2013 alone 7,272 students were enrolled in our online courses. We offered 1,787 online courses in over 70 areas of study at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral level.

We recently launched a new online experiential learning pilot project that provides an opportunity for online students who are working professionals to do a so-called “internship” with their current employer, bringing what they learn in their studies into a valuable and needed project in their current workplace. This program will be expanded in 2014.

All of these approaches add up to a different way of thinking about access to higher education that addresses what students need from multiple perspectives.

Q: For institutions that have not been particularly active about recruiting a diverse student population, what are some of the most important steps to get the process started, to actually change their image in this area and start appealing to a more diverse population of students?

A: One of the more powerful ways of changing and becoming much more appealing to a diverse population is to reflect that population in the faculty as well as the staff who represent the institution. Students from underrepresented minorities will often look for mentors and colleagues that come from a common experience. They will see themselves within the institution if they see members of their community represented within the institution, and this has a snowball effect where a more diverse student population mandates a more diverse staff and faculty.

And, it’s important for an institution that is interested in recruiting a diverse student population to have an appreciation for the various communities it wishes to recruit in and to understand the role of the recruiter. The recruiter not only needs to have a deeper appreciation of the communities he or she is talking to, but often needs to be a member of that community.

Q: What, in particular, would you say that diverse students are looking for in a higher education institution? There is inevitably a particular vibe or brand of higher education institutions that appeal to a diverse population of students? Can you pinpoint what it might be?

A: Students from underrepresented minorities are looking for the same thing as everyone else in higher education: a better life. That is why it’s quite important to make sure our academic programs are, first and foremost, relevant to students from an employability perspective. Students absolutely need to be able to enter the workforce with the confidence that the education program that they participated in has prepared them well for a promising career path.

Beyond that principle, however, there are a number of attributes that institutions can bring to the table academically that will help make students see themselves in the program. One strategy is making sure that courses, assignments and assessments are designed in a way that allow students to use their cultural background. This will help them begin to translate the academic principles in a way that is relevant to their cultural context, allowing them to see themselves from an employability perspective. It will also allow them to see themselves giving back to their community through their assignments and their overall educational experience.

Institutions also need to be clear about their interest in serving all students. For example, some students who come from diverse backgrounds may not have a tradition of writing in a particular fashion; therefore student support systems need to be put into place. Other communities may have de-emphasized mathematics, so becoming accessible to these communities means that the educational enterprise needs to support students through math and the sciences. This is not so much a factor in cultural diversity, but certainly is a factor in economic diversity, which is important to higher education.

Q: Finally, what are some of the trends we are likely to see going forward when it comes to recruiting diverse student populations? Students are consumers, after all, and their wants and needs change. What is your advice to institutions looking to sustain their diverse student populations?

A: Simple demographics tell us that a homogenous population that existed, at least in our minds, 50 years ago, is gone forever in the United States. The trend is clear that the classroom will become increasingly more diverse – the emergence of African-American, Latino and Asian students require institutions to understand these populations better than they have historically.

But the emergence of international student mobility means that this is not only an American phenomenon, but a global phenomenon. The international student mobility rates continue to grow at an astounding pace and although the United States is very well positioned to understand a diverse cultural and ethnic classroom, the diversity of the classroom, globally speaking, will continue to change and will become much more dynamic.

Here at the College of Professional Studies, we teach thousands of international students every year. In 2013, our students came from all 50 states and from 90 countries. We also offer programs to international undergraduates and graduate students abroad, such as learning or improving English language skills and taking academic courses in preparation for undergraduate or graduate studies at a U.S. university, while they live and learn in Boston.

For those institutions that would like to understand this phenomenon better, I would encourage a strategy for engagement, exploration and celebration of those populations rather than a stance that you see in many institutions: a very conservative and apprehensive approach to these student populations.

In the end, these will be our students and we have always done our best work with students when we have celebrated all of their facets, all of their accomplishments, and all of their backgrounds.

Thank you very much for your time, John. That concludes our interview.

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Higher Education, Matthew Lynch

It’s Tough to Trail Blaze: Challenges of First-Generation College Students

College attendance has become less of a privilege and more of a necessity in the contemporary workforce. This cultural shift is a reflection of President Obama’s goal of having the largest percentage of college graduates out of all the countries in the world by 2020. With this push has come an influx of students that may not have been part of the college scene as early as a decade ago. Availability of courses online and expansion of options at the community college level have paved the way for non-traditional students to earn degrees and a better living. A growing demographic in college attendance and graduation is first-generation students.

More “Firsts” Than Ever

A 2010 study by the Department of Education found that 50 percent of the college population is made up of first-generation students, or those whose parents did not receive education beyond a high school diploma. The National Center for Education Statistics released numbers in 2010 that broke down the educational levels of parents of current college attendees. Minority groups made up the largest demographics of students with parents that had a high school education or less, with 48.5 percent of Latino and Hispanic students and 45 percent of Black or African-American students included. The parents of students of Asian descent came in at 32 percent with a high school diploma or less and Native Americans at 35 percent. Of students that identified themselves as Caucasian, only 28 percent were first-generation college students.

Though higher in minority groups, these numbers show the overarching trend of first-generation college attendance in all American demographics. While an education is viewed as an advantage in the job marketplace, the degree alone does not automatically lead to better opportunities and pay. In order to ensure optimal career success in the growing group of first-generation college students, the specific needs of these young people must be addressed – beyond what lies in textbooks.

Challenges Facing First-Generation Students

The simple assumption is that a higher number of educated first-generation college students will translate to better jobs for these graduates and a better quality of life. The answer to the equation is just not that simple, however. Even with a college degree, first-generation students often come from low-income, minority or immigrant families and do not have the same set of life skills and personal capital of middle-to-high income bracket students.

Parents of first-generation students also do not have the life experience to adequately guide their children to the next step in succeeding in the college-educated workforce. A 2004 report in the Journal of Higher Education put it this way: “first-generation students… may be less prepared than similar students whose parents are highly educated, to make the kind of informed choices… that potentially maximize educational progression and benefits.”

The transition from a college setting to a full-time career is often bumpy for all college students, especially first-generation graduates. The things learned in a classroom simply cannot adequately translate to the real-world; in addition to “book smarts” colleges and universities have a responsibility to prepare attendees, particularly first-generation ones, for the challenges of the modern workforce.

What Can Be Done

There are some federally funded programs in place to address the specific issues that face first-generation college students, like the TRIO and Robert McNair programs that lend academic and tutoring services to this group. The problem with these programs, and others like them, is that they are not required for college graduation and are vastly underutilized. A better approach is proactive mentorship and advising that mandates interaction between students and professors or other staff members that can provide real-world guidance. These programs would focus on the translation of knowledge to marketplace settings from people that know the ropes.

Colleges and universities should also place continued focus on developing skills and employability among students. Schools with especially high numbers of first-generation students, like California State University Dominquez Hills, have implemented workforce “101” courses to up the social and intellectual skills of future graduates. It is not enough to assume that students inherently know how to apply classroom skills to a real-world environment, particularly in the case of first-generation ones. Researching the needs of these students should be a priority of all institutions of higher education as it would help them form a better-prepared student body and strong workforce.

photo credit: CollegeDegrees360 via photopin cc

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Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education, International Education

How competing for students will transform universities

Duncan Bentley, Victoria University

Historically, universities were privileged institutions for the “intelligent elite”, almost exclusively male communities, where great thinkers lived and worked and passed on their wisdom to fellow scholars and their students. Imagine Oxford, Harvard and the University of Melbourne before 1960.

Today, universities remain institutions in which groups of scholars contribute to the world’s knowledge and pass it on through teaching and exchanging ideas with the wider community. The difference is they try much harder to serve as many people as they can.

Institutions of distinction

The power of the university community is that it has never been bound to an institution or a country. Many academics and their students are more closely tied to their colleagues across the world in their own discipline than to an academic across the corridor in another field.

Demand tends to follow prestige.
Aleksandar Todorovic / Shutterstock.com

Traditionally, groups of scholars have banded together to compete in the race for new knowledge. They have not based their work on their institutional affiliation.

Universities, on the other hand, bundle their best groups together and claim a reputation. This has been the major driver of distinction and competition for universities and is reflected in the different world rankings.

Reinforcing this approach to competition is that student demand continues to follow elite status in the different rankings. This means that countries building their university systems are increasingly entering the “brain race”. Elite scholars are attracting lucrative incentives and contracts, similar to elite sport.

New competition

In Australia, competition will continue to transform universities. Australia has followed the world in democratising university education. The last 50 years has also seen a significant increase in the scope of degrees offered, particularly as universities have incorporated training for the growing number of professions.

Uncapping of places following the Bradley Review of higher education led to a significant growth in demand and university revenue. As the rate of growth has slowed, universities have sought to maintain revenue by trying to attract different types of students using a range of delivery methods.

While different university groupings exist, it is difficult to see much difference other than in positions on the research rankings. Many universities have regional presence. All universities are trying to “innovate” and this includes different levels of online delivery. All universities are working internationally.

Many universities were, until relatively recently, polytechnics or technical colleges and the pecking order among universities and therefore the demand from students largely reflects the research rankings, which favour the established elite.

The student experience: a new way universities compete
Nils Versemann / Shutterstock.com

Newer universities are therefore trying to re-invent the student experience and to develop links with industry and specialised degrees to generate the revenue they need to maintain their relative positions. Revenue pressure has increased as international student demand remains inconsistent and government funding for domestic places does not maintain pace with university ambitions.

New competition is also entering the field. TAFEs and private providers don’t need to research and they get more money for degrees than they can get from vocational qualifications. Degrees are also normally longer, which provides a more secure revenue stream from each student recruited. New entrants make more money too, as they generally have a lower cost structure than universities.

Add to this the fact that some 87% of the workforce in Australia is employed in the services sector, where a bachelor degree is increasingly becoming a base requirement for a job. It is an attractive market in which to operate.

Universities have responded by partnering with TAFEs and private providers to access markets or improve their productivity in ways they cannot achieve on their own. It makes sense to provide curriculum, quality assurance and a degree for a fee, and let the TAFE or private provider focus on teaching students who might not otherwise have gone to university. The results are often as good or better for the student. It provides a new revenue stream for both parties.

Specialise to succeed

As growth in demand for universities slows, particularly outside Queensland and Western Australia, competition for students will heat up. The lowest tier of universities will have to focus on only highly specialist areas of research, simply for lack of funding.

All universities are likely to look to improve their productivity so that they have sufficient funds to maintain their world-leading research. Those who succeed will be those that get rid of unnecessary costs and drive new opportunities to increase their revenue.

How will competition develop? Increasingly, universities and higher education providers will follow the example of the scholars in a global market. They will specialise in what they do well and partner with anyone who is like-minded and can help them compete effectively in their race for achievement. For most universities their goal will remain excellence in teaching and learning and research for the betterment of humanity.

Competition will continue to transform universities. Some may lose the battle and fail, while others may partner to achieve higher rankings. The real winners are likely to be the students – and the elite scholars and teachers.

The Conversation is running a series on “What are universities for?” looking at the place of universities in Australia, why they exist, who they serve, and how this is changing over time. Read other articles in the series here.

The Conversation

Duncan Bentley, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Victoria University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education

Fulfilling Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream: the role for higher education

Roland V. Anglin, Rutgers University Newark ; David D. Troutt, Rutgers University Newark ; Elise Boddie, Rutgers University Newark ; Nancy Cantor, Rutgers University Newark , and Peter Englot, Rutgers University Newark

Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote “Why We Can’t Wait” to dispel the notion that African Americans should be content to proceed on an incremental course toward full equality under the law and in the wider society. King observed,

Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse, and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.

Yet waiting and whispering, rather than raising their voices for genuine inclusion, is what many seem to expect of the children and grandchildren of King’s generation even today.

At stake is the perceived legitimacy of American institutions, not just educational but those that we educate for: the police, the courts, government, the media, cultural institutions, banks and so on. These institutions are under scrutiny over their failure to evoke trust and to show that they are visibly open to the public – especially those groups, who too often and for too long have been left out.

Arguably, we are not the “land of opportunity” for most first-generation, poor, black, brown, Native American, or immigrant children. Gaps in educational achievement persist, and at every level: from kindergarten through to the years after high school.

The label applied to so many immigrant youth, Dreamers, might well be adopted more broadly, capturing as it does both the aspiration and perhaps the unreality of educational opportunity for so many.

And the students are right to worry.

The question is: what role can our universities play so the dividing lines can be crossed?

‘Baked-in’ privilege

Consider some statistics from Essex County, New Jersey, where our city, Newark, a college town with over 50,000 students, is located:

  • 47.54 percent of black third graders attend schools that perform at the bottom 10 percent of schools in the state compared to 0.04 percent of white third graders.
  • About 4,000 high school students in the Newark Public Schools are “missing” during the school day, not in their seats; often labeled as “disconnected youth,” it would be better to consider them as youth connected to a pathway to prison.
  • Another 3,000 are off-course from graduating.
  • Only 36 percent of Newark residents have finished high school and only 17 percent hold any kind of post-secondary degree.

This story is not unique to Newark.

Economists such as Raj Chetty and his colleagues note that nationally “the consequences of the ‘birth lottery’ – the parents to whom a child is born – are larger today than in the past.”

We – the universities – are the ones sitting in the midst of these realities, facing the choice between being walled citadels that separate the privileged from the uninvited other or being welcoming hubs connecting young individuals with opportunity.

Universities’ responsibility

The uncomfortable truth is, that we, in some very real sense, have contributed to this winnowing of opportunity.

Chancellor Nancy Cantor speaking at the “Rally in Solidarity” organized by Rutgers Newark students in support of students at University of Missouri in November 2015.
Rutgers University Newark, Author provided

For too long, the traditional measures of student potential have relied on standardized – and therefore narrowly framed – merit selection processes, such as SAT and ACT scores.

These tests have been grossly inadequate, measuring only a narrow band of potential, while missing wide swaths of our talent pool whose excellence is not readily detected through the use of such “blunt” instruments.

They neglect whole communities whose students don’t have access to the test preparation industry, prompting legal theorist Lani Guinier to implore us to redefine the merit in meritocracy.

Intergenerational privilege is rooted in place – in the home values and tax base, the schools and transportation networks available to people because of where they are fortunate to live. Decades of white flight, suburbanization, the abandonment of urban centers and regressive housing policies have contributed to a pervasive disconnection across racial, ethnic and class lines.

This segregation has reinforced the corrosive effects of historical prejudice and biases that already divide society and make Americans, in effect, strangers to each other.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the social landscapes of university communities are just as divided.

Crossing boundaries

Diversity is growing explosively and redefining American society before our eyes.

Yet lines of class, gender, ethnicity and race continue to redraw themselves in dorm life, lunch tables and indeed the classroom.

Indeed, it is hard to erase them.

How do you cultivate connection to another person’s future and commitment to their success when you don’t live together in the same neighborhood, reside near each other in the same city or at least share some similar daily experiences such as rush hour on a crowded subway?

As higher educational institutions, we should be the place where dividing lines can be crossed. And that includes crossing the boundaries of our communities.

Our work in the city of Newark is just one illustration of crossing these boundaries.

Newark’s story

In this postindustrial city of 280,000 people, 29 percent of residents have incomes below the poverty line.

Newark’s social and economic challenges are common among cities that have lost their tax base and whose residents have fled to the suburbs since the 1960s. The resulting economic and racial segregation has produced structural inequalities in health, education and other public services.

Today, Newark, a proud, resilient city, is coming back from years of disinvestment. As an engaged “anchor institution”, we are partnering with the community on many fronts.

The future home of Express Newark – the historic Hahne Building
Rutgers University Newark, Author provided

We are investing in spaces for local artists and the community to collaborate, as we develop nearly 50,000 square feet in the iconic former Hahne & Company department story as an arts “collaboratory” – dubbed “Express Newark.”

We are working with small and midsized entrepreneurs and firms and taking an active role in helping Newark’s police address crime hotspots through data collection and analysis.

Organizations – public and private – have banded together in the Newark City of Learning Collaborative (NCLC) to raise the post-secondary attainment rate of residents of Newark to 25 percent by 2025.

For the higher education partners in NCLC like us, this means working with Newark Public Schools to help their students continue their education past high school, beginning in community colleges, the institutions where the vast majority of first generation students will have their first taste of higher education.

At Rutgers University – Newark, for example, we are providing tuition support to low-income residents of Newark and to any New Jersey community college transfer with an associate degree as of fall 2016.

We are recruiting these students based on assessments of leadership, grit and entrepreneurial skills – not just grades – into a residential Honors Living Learning Community (HLLC). In addition to gleaning information about applicants from the standard application form, the HLLC team engages with applicants in person and in groups to see how they collaborate with one another to solve problems. Their on-the-ground knowledge of urban life has much to contribute, as we see it, to the HLLC’s curriculum focus of “local citizenship in a global world.”

The first cohort of HLLC students
Rutgers University Newark, Author provided

Ashlee is one of the inaugural class. Born and raised in Newark, she speaks openly of “being a product of my environment…exposed to so much just by walking outside of
my house…[including] murder at the age of 12.” Her options, she says, were two: “conform to what’s going on in society or try to make a difference.” She is now a criminal justice major keenly interested in issues of social equality and inequality.

Academic ‘farm teams’

Rutgers-Newark is not alone in looking to build on the assets of this fresh talent pool for America.

There is an increasing number of so-called collective impact initiatives across the higher education landscape, including STRIVE, a nonprofit started in Cincinnati, and three large city-wide initiatives in Syracuse, Buffalo and Guilford County, North Carolina mounted by Say Yes to Education.

Collective impact projects like these can be taxing and messy, but by bringing so many different partners together – from education institutions to businesses and faith-based centers – to focus on enabling the talented next generation to thrive from school to college and beyond, we put a stake in the ground together for social justice. It’s admittedly still one step at a time, but one step in many places.

When higher education bands together to support and recruit talent from these regional hubs, it gives a new meaning to the notion of “farm teams.”. After all, if major league baseball can do it, why can’t higher education?

The impatient students protesting a sense of exclusion today have undeniable facts to support their argument. Our institutions, we believe, can help them overcome the barriers they, and others, face in their search for economic opportunity and a sense that they are valued.

How could anyone continue to “wait and whisper” while witnessing the enormous and cumulative effect of disparity unfold for another generation, with so many children never even getting to first base and some starting out on third?

The Conversation

Roland V. Anglin, Director, The Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies, Rutgers University Newark ; David D. Troutt, Professor of Law and Justice John J Francis Scholar, Rutgers University Newark ; Elise Boddie, Associate Professor of Law, Rutgers University Newark ; Nancy Cantor, Chancellor, Rutgers University Newark , and Peter Englot, Senior Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs, Rutgers University Newark

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in International Education

4 considerations before applying to schools abroad

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Brooke Chaplan

Attending school overseas is an exciting idea for any prospective student. But when push comes to shove, there are numerous practical decisions you have to think about before applying abroad. From the travel, cost, and even just the application itself, going overseas can mean a lot of time and work put in from you. Considering every detail is important to getting the best deal and finding the perfect program for you. Of these numerous considerations, the four most important are listed below.

Consider the Cost
Analyze the marketability of the degree you’re thinking about, the chosen school’s prestige, the availability of student loans for foreign students, and the exchange rate between the local currency and the currency used in the country where the school is located. If you fail to factor in the financial burdens associated with going to school abroad, you may be financially crippled for life. Keep in mind that many foreign locales have excellent programs for a fraction of what a degree would cost elsewhere, you just have to be sure. If your degree program isn’t going to guarantee you a job or internship back home, the cost of going to school may not be worth the reward. Look at students who have succeeded in the past and talk to faculty who can help you find out where you can use the degree to your advantage.

 

Consider the Housing
Specifically, does the university provide housing for foreign students, what is the cost of living on campus vs. off campus, is it safe to live off campus, and what type of public transit is available to ride to the school? If you find an economical apartment in a nice neighborhood but with no access to public transportation, then living there may be impractical. If they do provide student housing is it included in tuition costs? Are there any ways you can save money or get financial aid here as a foreign student. Look at all your options and find out what you can live with.

Consider the Travel
A U.S. citizen will need a passport to leave the U.S. and vaccinations for local diseases may be needed before you can safely enter a foreign locale. Certain students may need a student visa in order to enter a foreign country as well. For example, if you wanted to attend medical school in an exotic location like the Caribbean, a visa would be required for those staying in the country more than 90 days. Schools like St. Martinus University often offer a lot of student financial aid for travel and visas as well. If you are going to a more exotic country you might need to think about language barriers. If you will have a lot of fellow foreign students to help you around and if you are familiar with the culture it may not be such a shock.

Consider the Local Government
Utilize websites such as the CIA World Fact Book to evaluate the governmental stability of the country in which the school is located and research how locals are reputed to treat students of your own nationality. It would not be ideal to attend a school in an area where you don’t feel safe or welcomed. Look at reviews of the school from alumni and past foreign students. They can help you navigate your way in how life is after graduation and during the school semesters.

Wherever your educational goals take you, the most important thing to remember is to work hard and enjoy the country you’ve chosen to visit. Immersion into a foreign culture exponentially broadens your horizons and will provide you with a completely different perspective on life.

_______________________________

Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most her time hiking, biking and gardening. For more information contact Brooke via Twitter @BrookeChaplan.

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