tagged w/ higher education
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As a witness to the impending debt of higher education this comes as no surprise to me. The question is - what is the Nation going to do about it? How can continuing your education be more affordable? How do we move away from College Education as "service industry?" Perhaps we should take a look at the European system where students choose a focus of study early on and must pass a series of exams to continue to higher education, as opposed to the American system that is often criticized as hosting the token "party school" mentality and College as "babysitter" for those who aren't quite ready to go out into the "real world."
Thoughts on this from Graduates and those in school and looking at attending school?
From the article:
The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.
“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education.
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“When the economy is good, and state universities are somewhat better funded, we raise tuition as little as possible,” he said. “When the economy is bad, we raise tuition and sock it to families, when people can least afford it. That’s exactly the opposite of what we need.”
More at link. . .As a witness to the impending debt of higher education this comes as no surprise to... more
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Competition is good.
Choosing a four-year undergraduate college is one of the biggest decisions a typical American family can make. And for too many years, information about the quality of American higher education has been monopolized by one publication, U.S. News & World Report.
We offer an alternative.
In conjunction with Dr. Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University, and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, Forbes.com inaugurates its first ranking of America's Best Colleges, an annual list. In this report, the CCAP ranks 569 undergraduate institutions based on the quality of the education they provide, and how much their students achieve.
The best school in the nation? Princeton University, followed closely by the California Institute of Technology, Harvard, Swarthmore and Williams. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point came in sixth on our rankings, spearheading a generally strong showing by all the service academies.Competition is good.
Choosing a four-year undergraduate college is one of the... more
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On September 11th, 2008, the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, Wofford College, a small liberal arts college in South Carolina that had been segregated up until 1963, paid honor to Vernon Baker. Baker is the only living African-American to have been awarded the World War II Medal of Honor.
For his acts of valor during WWII, Baker had earned the Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, The Distinguished Service Cross and The Medal of Honor. However, it took 52 years before those heroics were recognized. Baker, because he was an African-American, was not honored for his bravery until 1997, when he and six of his comrades were finally awarded the Medal of Honor from then-President Bill Clinton at a White House ceremony. Baker was the only member of the group of honorees who was still alive.
Wofford College President Bernie Dunlap presented Vernon Baker with the college's third annual Sandor Teszler Award for Moral Courage and Service to Humankind to a thunderous standing ovation during Wofford's 2008 Opening Convocation Ceremony. Dunlap and Wofford College Dean David Wood also presented Baker, who is now 89-years-old, with an Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree and Spartanburg's Mayor William Barnet followed by giving Baker a key to the city.
This detailed article includes a number of photographs, three videos and a documentary about Vernon Baker's acts of valor during WWII.On September 11th, 2008, the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks,... more
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“American Stories of Hope” is a remarkable and touching new series of short films by Qasim Basir. Qasim is a young filmmaker living in New York City who has been inspired by Barack Obama. He wanted to produce a series of short films to capture the quality that he most admired about Obama.
It was by no means easy for Qasim to achieve his vision. It took everything that he had to pull together enough resources to be able to finish the series of films. Along the way, he received free assistance from a number of usually highly paid professionals and raised most of the financial support for the film series through friends' donations.
Entitled The Inspiration of Barack: "Yes We Can" Film Series, Qasim refers to them as "Seven American Stories of Hope." Each of the short films is about different people who, in the face of hardships in their lives, have become inspired by Obama to confront their hardships and take an essential step forward. The first public screening of "The Inspiration of Barack: 'Yes We Can' Film Series” takes place on Friday evening, September 12th at The Tribeca Cinemas in New York City.
This article includes a number of wonderful photographs, as well as one of the very touching and inspiring short-films from Qasim's “Seven American Faces of Hope” film series.
Please have a look at this short film. No matter what your own particular political stance might be, I think that you'll find it to be inspiring.“American Stories of Hope” is a remarkable and touching new series of... more
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A four-year college degree, seen for generations as a ticket to a better life, is no longer enough to guarantee a steadily rising paycheck.
A college degree may not take you as far as you'd expect. However, WSJ's Jennifer Merritt reports on a few fields where a bachelor's degree still remains a worthy investment.
Just ask Bea Dewing. After she earned a bachelor's degree -- her second -- in computer science from Maryland's Frostburg State University in 1986, she enjoyed almost unbroken advances in wages, eventually earning $89,000 a year as a data modeler for Sprint Corp. in Lawrence, Kan. Then, in 2002, Sprint laid her off.
"I thought I might be looking a few weeks or months at the most," says Ms. Dewing, now 56 years old. Instead she spent the next six years in a career wilderness, starting an Internet café that didn't succeed, working temporary jobs and low-end positions in data processing, and fruitlessly responding to hundreds of job postings.
The low point came around 2004 when a recruiter for Sprint -- now known as Sprint Nextel Corp. -- called seeking to fill a job similar to the one she lost two years earlier, but paying barely a third of her old salary.
In April, Ms. Dewing finally landed a job similar to her old one in the information technology department of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., where she relocated. She earns about 20% less than she did in 2002, adjusted for inflation, but considers herself fortunate, and wiser.
A degree, she says, "isn't any big guarantee of employment, it's a basic requirement, a step you have to take to even be considered for many professional jobs."
MORE DATA
Trends in Education, SalariesFor decades, the typical college graduate's wage rose well above inflation. But no longer. In the economic expansion that began in 2001 and now appears to be ending, the inflation-adjusted wages of the majority of U.S. workers didn't grow, even among those who went to college. The government's statistical snapshots show the typical weekly salary of a worker with a bachelor's degree, adjusted for inflation, didn't rise last year from 2006 and was 1.7% below the 2001 level.
College-educated workers are more plentiful, more commoditized and more subject to the downsizings that used to be the purview of blue-collar workers only. What employers want from workers nowadays is more narrow, more abstract and less easily learned in college.
To be sure, the average American with a college diploma still earns about 75% more than a worker with a high-school diploma and is less likely to be unemployed. Yet while that so-called college premium is up from 40% in 1979, it is little changed from 2001, according to data compiled by Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank
A four-year college degree, seen for generations as a ticket to a better life, is no... more
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Thousands of students from California's public higher education institutions marched to the state's capitol to protest the budget crisis in higher education, which delay graduation for some and deny access to others. This video follows San Francisco State University students and other Bay Area delegation on their trip to Sacramento.
From Golden Gate [X]press, http://xpress.sfsu.eduThousands of students from California's public higher education institutions... more
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Starting today, a national independent inquiry that will look at how the use of new technologies by the "Google generation" will shape higher education has been launched.
Top of the list for research are 'social networking' sites said Kent University's Prof. Melville who is leading the inquiry said: "We will focus on those newest technologies and the way the web enables students to take part in whatever they are involved in."
They aim to investigate the behaviour and attitudes of learners who are approaching or have just arrived at university, and the subsequent issues this poses for universities and colleges.
Prof. Melville, has said that the inquiry seeks to determine if higher education facilities can use the new technologies to help in the process of self-directed learning, as well initial networking for newcomers.
"Students used to sit around late at night and set the world to rights. Now they can do that on a global scale as part of a discussion group in chat rooms."
They can indeed, but isn't going to university all about getting out there in the 'real' world and making 'real' friends? Starting today, a national independent inquiry that will look at how the use of new... more
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"The school prepares people for jobs in California's thriving medical marijuana industry. For $200 and the cost of two required textbooks, students learn how to cultivate and cook with cannabis, study which strains of pot are best for certain ailments, and are instructed in the legalities of a business that is against the law in the eyes of the federal government.
'My basic idea is to try to professionalize the industry and have it taken seriously as a real industry, just like beer and distilling hard alcohol,' said Richard Lee, 45, an activist and pot-dispensary owner who founded the school in a downtown storefront last fall."
Is there any financial aid available?"The school prepares people for jobs in California's thriving medical... more
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This is a political story that touches the heart. Prairie View A&M is a historically Black university in Prairie View, Texas. For the students of Prairie View, Republicans gerrymandered the state so that their early-polling place is more than seven miles from the school.
Includes a photograph and video showing the students on their seven-mile march to vote.This is a political story that touches the heart. Prairie View A&M is a... more
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American cities have been ranked to create a list of the "smartest" cities in the country, the "best-educated" metropolitan areas. The common denominator among most of them is that they're college or university towns. Other locations are associated with some of the biggest high-tech centers in the country or are locations that tend to attract well-educated people who have the money to pay for high-end real estate.
The article includes photographs and a photo-gallery of the Top 25 Listing.American cities have been ranked to create a list of the "smartest" cities... more
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"Sandor Teszler: The Story of a Passionate Life." This is the story of Sandor Teszler, a Hungarian man whose dramatic life story arcs from the Holocaust to the American Deep South of the 1950s. His life provides us with some deep and moving lessons about justice and the power of lifelong learning.
Photographs and a video are included."Sandor Teszler: The Story of a Passionate Life." This is the story of... more
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Millions of pounds which could have funded thousands of students through top universities went unspent last year as some institutions failed to allocate an average of 19% of the money put aside to provide bursaries for state school pupils. Eight - including Cambridge University - underspent on bursaries by between £190,000 and £855,000. Opposition MPs said universities were not doing enough to open up admissions to poorer students.
Separate research conducted by academics on behalf of educational charity the Sutton Trust reveals that poorer students are being put off applying to university for fear of getting into debt and very few understand the bursaries on offer.
I don't really see how they can write this off as missed opportunity on behalf of the students. Do you think that this is deliberate classism on the part of prestigious uni's to keep their student body at a higher socio-economic level? I know that's extreme, and I hope that it's not true. But seriously, how do you mistakenly fail to allocate £3million in funding? Millions of pounds which could have funded thousands of students through top... more
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Jeremiah Pasternak, 24
Rye NH / Rockland ME
Phillips Exeter Academy '01
St Andrews University Scotland '05
*Please check out my other questions for the candidates*
This is my question for all of the presidential candidates regarding welfare reform and healthcare.Jeremiah Pasternak, 24
Rye NH / Rockland ME
Phillips Exeter Academy '01
St... more
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As belts are tightened at academic institutions around the country, it is no surprise that staffing cuts are being made at Ohio University. But who pays the true price for balancing the budget?
Union leaders, community members and students are up-in-arms at the unfair treatment received by the University's facilities maintenance staff in the face of rising salaries for university administrators. Quality of life is the first casualty in this battle of the budget.
This pod was created by:
RICHARD CHARNEY
MICHAEL GILLESPIE
LEON RUDZIN
EVAN SMITH
As belts are tightened at academic institutions around the country, it is no surprise... more
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