The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

End Of Open Admissions At CUNY Creates Demographic Shift

More than a decade after the City University of New York ended open admissions to its four-year colleges, a marked shift has occurred at its top institutions as freshman classes now enter with far better academic credentials and also a different demographic mix. The ethnic changes at CUNY’s top colleges confirm the predictions made during the battle over ending open admissions, one of the city’s most charged political disputes of the 1990s: Proponents said the colleges would rise in status, while opponents said black and Hispanic enrollment would fall. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/nyregion/at-cunys-top-colleges-black-and-hispanic-freshmen-enrollments-drop.html?_r=2&hpw

Students Perform Better In College After Taking A Gap Year

Sam Helderop received an acceptance letter from Michigan's Hope College this spring, but has no intention of going -- at least not in the fall of 2012. The college has allowed him to defer his admission, and Helderop will take a gap year to teach English with the DaLaa project in a remote village in Thailand. higher education experts say that giving students an opportunity to explore the real world helps them mature. And early research reveals that once they restart their academic studies, they actually perform better than those who go straight from high school to college. Read more at:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/gap-year-momentum-grows-studies-show-higher-performance/story?id=16339935#.T7JpL-hYun9

Parent Of Prospective Student Asks What College Is For

There’s also a bigger debate raging that hovers over all our concerns. What exactly is a university education for? Is it, narrowly, to ensure a good job after graduation? Or is the point of a university degree to give students a broad and deep humanities education that teaches them how to think and write critically? Or can a college education do both? Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/your-money/career-or-deep-learning-pondering-the-purpose-of-college.html?pagewanted=2&ref=business 

 

Out-Of-State College Students Are One Solution For State Budget Cuts

Pinched by state budget cuts, the University of California system has set its sights on a lesser tapped resource: well-off students from beyond the Golden State. The system accepted nearly twice as many non-California freshmen for this fall as it did two years ago, opening its doors to students willing to pay a premium to attend the state's top universities. UC officials are aggressively courting non-resident students through college fairs and highschool counselors.  The UC Students Association says the push robs in-state students of access and prioritizes affluent families who can afford private-school tuition levels. Read more at:
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/03/4461864/uc-looks-beyond-california-to.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/03/4461864/uc-looks-beyond-california-to.html#storylink=cpy

 

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/03/4461864/uc-looks-beyond-california-to.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/03/4461864/uc-looks-beyond-california-to.html#storylink=cpy

Juggling Kids, Jobs And Courses Make It Tough For Women To Return For Degrees

Her story exemplifies an issue that seems unique to Utah and doesn’t bode well for the state’s economic prospects. Facing a range of cultural hurdles, Utah women have not entered or completed college at the same rate as men for years. Just 26 percent of Utah women held a bachelor’s degree in 2008, versus 32 percent for men, according to a 2009 Utah Foundation study. While women are a 55 percent majority of undergraduates nationally, in Utah they are closer to a 45 percent minority. The gender gap in higher education has caught the attention of administrators and policymakers who want to learn why and how to get more women through college. Read more at:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53987346-78/college-utah-women-didn.html.csp

Consumer Groups Critical Of Colleges Over Confusing Acceptance Letters

As many high school seniors face a May 1 deadline to decide where to go to college, families are struggling to understand financial-aid letters, which can be murky and confusing. While the federal government requires banks and mortgage companies to disclose interest rates and total payments on loans, financial- aid letters for college -- which can cost as much as $240,000 for four years -- are unclear about how much families will have to pay. The Education Department, consumer groups and guidance counselors are pushing for a standard format for award letters to make them less confusing. Read more at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-24/colleges-confuse-students-with-letters-offering-aid-that-s-debt.html

For Many Prospective College Students The Waitlist Grows

While no one tracks the number of college applicants nationwide who are wait-listed, admissions experts and high school guidance counselors agree that the ranks have swelled in the last five years. That leaves more students consigned to the halfway house of admissions, where they are unable to celebrate an admission or mourn a denial. The number of schools using waitlists is on the rise, according to the National Association for College Admissions Counseling. Read more at:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-wait-list-20120423,0,5864844.story 

 

For-Profit Colleges Spend Over $3 Billion A Year On Advertising And Recruiting

Where do for-profit colleges get the money they spend on all those highway billboards and television and radio ads? Mostly from the government, at least indirectly. Federal money, most of it through the financial aid that students get, accounts for up to 90 percent of for-profit colleges' revenue -- even more in some cases if veterans attend the school on the GI bill. A recent Senate report on 15 large, publicly traded for-profit education companies said they got 86 percent of their revenue from taxpayers and have spent a combined $3.7 billion annually on marketing and recruiting. Read more at:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2012/04/18/recruitment_ads_by_for_profit_colleges_targeted/

Documentary Chronicles The College Application Process Of First Generation Students

In the documentary “First Generation,” which had its New York City premiere at New York University on Wednesday night,  four such teenagers forge their way to become the first in their families to go to college. The film, narrated by Blair Underwood, chronicles the actions and anxieties of these diverse students, all living in California, from their junior year, when the college admissions process begins in presumptive earnest, until they are freshmen in college.In the film, one of the student’s mothers is depicted as having no idea how to pay for college, and not knowing whether the cost is required to be paid in full upfront. The students, themselves floundering through the process, make misinformed financial decisions that limit their college choices and may even stifle their academic potential. Read more at:
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/first-generation-chronicles-students-difficult-path-to-college/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Student Paper Is Removed To Shield Prospective Students From Negative Article

With prospective students on campus last week for tours of Christopher Newport University, a story in the student newspaper about a suspected meth lab in a residence hall wasn't the sort of publicity some administrators wanted. So they ordered the removal of The Captain's Log, which had a front-page story last Wednesday recounting the evacuation of Wilson Hall on March 30. The removal was later overruled by the dean of admissions, who had the newspapers returned to the distribution stands. Read more at:
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2012/apr/11/tdmet03-cnu-removes-student-newspapers-from-campus-ar-1833078/