Archive for October, 2011
What’s scarier than the Saw series? More frightening than Freddy Krueger? For colleges and universities, it’s…DISGRUNTLED ALUMNI!!!
(Cue the Psycho music.)
College rankings, like those issued by U.S. News & World Report, have always held a controversial spot in the higher ed world, usually because no one but the staff of USN&WR truly understands the basis of those rankings. That’s why entrepreneur Tom Benghauser has decided to go rogue with College Straight Talk, his unprecedented system of university rankings that involves input from college alumni. And as a result, college administrators across the country find themselves foolishly running back into their houses as the crazed killer is on the loose.
Why are colleges running scared? Well, for one, it makes SENSE to ask the opinion of recent graduates. Most will probably have at least something good to say about their home campuses, but unfortunately for colleges, there will always be alumni who will hold grudges about something during their college years–not to mention that unemployed graduates may hold their alma mater in contempt for their lack of jobs, rather than the depressed economy.
Benghauser himself is a graduate of Princeton University and The University of Pennsylvania, so he got started by using his own alumni databases. UPenn noticed the inordinate amount of searching he was doing, found out why, and so the alumni office shut him down. (Boo, UPenn.) Benghauser labels himself a consumer advocate, but so far, colleges and universities aren’t buying it and are refusing to work with him.
Provided that Benhauser can access alumni to get their feedback, College Straight Talk will plan to calculate the results of its extensive surveys and put the data on one website for college-bound students and their parents to access.
Just like car shoppers can look up ratings on Consumer Reports, it seems as though college-bound students will soon be able to look up ratings from alumni on College Straight Talk. Good idea or ghastly idea? Leave a comment below.
–Barbara Bellesi
October 31st, 2011
There’s no easy way to break this news, so here goes: Public university tuition has increased by 8.3 %. State schools are still the affordable option when you look at private school price tags, but for a growing number of people, a public college education is now starting to slip out of their grasp.
The fact that protestors are now in Month 2 of “Occupy Wall Street” speaks volumes about how people feel about government bailouts. An often-asked question is if the banks got help, why can’t debt-riddled college students get some, too? After all, college graduates these days now carry an average of $27,000 in loan debt, so it comes as little surprise that the rate of default on college loans has increased by 25%.
President Obama recently announced that he will push for lenders to allow student loan consolidation for easier payoff, as well as cap the monthly loan payments at 10% of a graduate’s current salary. Since most entry-level jobs don’t command high paychecks, this would indeed be a coup for many college graduates, who are finding themselves remaining on the ramen noodle diet long after they have left the dorms.
Are staggering student debts altering your college dreams? Let us know in the comment section below.
–Barbara Bellesi
October 26th, 2011
So many people admire Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who passed away last week, for his innovation and impact on our culture and even education. And though he didn’t finish college himself, he had a connection – through his wife – to helping students make it to college.
Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, is a co-founder of College Track. College Track is an after-school program that since 1997 has helped more than 1,100 high school students in California, Colorado, and Louisiana get into college. The first group of minority students it worked with headed off to college in 2001, and hundreds have followed since then.
Will.i.am speaks at a College Track event.
The organization even drew Justin Bieber, who performed at a College Track benefit concert in June 2011 (that event and other fundraisers helped College Track raise $2 million). Will.i.am also spoke in May 2011 to graduates assisted by College Track. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Jobs family provided “significant” financial donations to found and run College Track. Jobs’ wife remains chairwoman of the board.
College Track assists mostly low-income students who would be the first in their family to go to college. The organization starts working with students before their 9th grade year in these cities – California’s East Palo Alto, Oakland, and San Francisco, as well as New Orleans, and Aurora, Colorado. It provides all types of resources – academic, social, and financial (student earn up to $1,400 for each year they participate to go toward college) – to help students find a way to go to college. Here’s how it has succeeded:
• 100 percent of its seniors graduate high school
• 90 percent go to a four-year college
• 85 percent are the first person in their family to earn a college degree
• 70 percent graduate from college within six years
Many college students helped by College Track (see these videos with students’ stories) are serving as interns and volunteers, sharing their knowledge with current high school students.
Of course, many people are wondering which philanthropies or organizations will receive some of the billions of dollars that was part of Steve Jobs’ fortune. We’ll see if College Track is a beneficiary. In the meantime, if you know of someone in any of those cities in middle school who want to commit themselves to graduating and going to college but need a little assistance, they can apply online.
A student who graduated from high school in 2007 posted a comment on College Track’s website: “To succeed, you need to find something to hold onto to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you. That place for me is College Track.”
–Lori Johnston
October 12th, 2011
Students of all ages have been known to contract a case of the back-to-school jitters. Fear of the unknown can even lead to some serious pre-college stress. But take a deep breath — every fear has its foil….
Enter The CollegeBound Network! We may not have a cape or a stake to take to the heart of college admissions, but we are equipped with weapons of mass information!
After all, the more you know, the better off you are. (Just think about how the “smart” girls are the only ones to usually survive in all those horror films!)
Sign up now for our daily blog feed to arm yourself with the knowledge you need to ward off any college-bound evils, and then download our FREE guide to “Surviving the College Jitters!”
U. Got It? Get It! Good…
You don’t have to look far on a college campus to see how Steve Jobs (ironically a college dropout himself) has helped revolutionize higher education.
During just two hours today at the University of Georgia, where I am an adjunct journalism professor, I saw many students serving as living reminders of Jobs’ creations:
• A female student jogging on the perimeter of campus, with an iPod attached to her arm under a T-shirt and those omnipresent white Apple earbuds sticking out of her ears.
• A group of students huddled in a classroom hallway watching a video on the small iPhone screen.
• Groups of students texting or reading Facebook or Twitter messages from their iPhones while waiting for campus buses outside the football stadium and student center.
• A guy sleeping in the student center with a MacBook Pro in his lap and iTunes piping music into his earphones.
• Students with MacBook screens open, finishing assignments or assigned reading from their laptops, able to squeeze in the work before class begins.
• Mac desktops lined up on workstations in classrooms, where students are learning video editing using Mac software, updating class blogs, working together on group projects and completing other assignments.
• Professors and students toting iPads loaded with apps, textbooks and assigned reading, often making it more affordable to buy the downloadable version instead of a traditional textbook.
The technology advancements that defined Jobs’ career help make the college learning experience more vibrant, in the moment, and even affordable. When I required my magazine writing students to subscribe to a magazine this semester, one iPad owner discovered the iPad subscription was cheaper.
Earlier this week, I sent a message to students about a class assignment, and within seconds, a student responded via iPhone. That accessibility is something that professors and students often appreciate, turning learning into a 24-7 experience.
Many students are bringing Apples to classes these days–and they’re just not giving them to the teachers.
–Lori Johnston (Photos by Michael Barone)
October 6th, 2011
I can imagine the excitement Amanda Knox must have felt on her flight to Italy at the start of her study abroad program four years ago. But I can’t even begin to imagine the emotions she is feeling today as she awaits her fate in an Italian courtroom. As the prime suspect in the murder of her roommate, British student Merdith Kercher, in Perugia, Knox has professed her innocence, but that hasn’t stopped an Italian prosecution team from convicting her and the judge handing down a 26-year sentence.
The Amanda Knox trial should have a verdict later today.
I’ve followed Knox’s appeal, and I’m not convinced she is a murderer; it’s a combination of a gut feeling and the more logical fact that the DNA evidence is inconclusive. So I’m truly pulling for her to be released.
But here’s what scares me: I was CONVINCED Casey Anthony was guilty and…well, we all know how that story went.
A good friend of mine who has been more closely following the case than I have (I call her my personal CNN correspondent) offered some good advice to future students looking to study in a foreign country: “At the very least, students should familiarize themselves with the laws of that country.” She used jaywalking as an example: It’s common occurrence here in New York City, and it’s one that’s usually frowned upon, though it can result in a citation. However, try jaywalking in another country and you could find yourself behind bars, in a jail where they don’t take kindly to foreign prisoners.
Granted, being a murder suspect in ANY country is pretty bad, but when the language you need to defend yourself is not your own, well, it’s a nightmare–or incubo in Italian. Knox was fully intent on learning some italiano while she was in Perugia, but she probably figured she’d learn phrases such as “How much is that gelato?” and “Where is the train station?” Certainly not “I did not kill; I did not rape; I did not steal; I was not there,” which is indeed part of the statement she gave today, in Italian, to the court, in what sounds to me like fluent, flawless Italian.
Italian is the language that she’ll need to use for the rest of her life if she is not released today. If she is released back to her family in Washington State, then I, as an Italian-American, wouldn’t begrudge her one small bit if she decided never to speak another word of Italian in her life–provided, of course, that she is truly innocent.
I’ll stay tuned…
–Barbara Bellesi
October 3rd, 2011
