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Vol. 19 No. 8
April 2005
Community Colleges
Moving to Center Stage
DO YOU HAVE STUDENTS considering
local community colleges this spring? Don't be surprised. Counselors
throughout the country are seeing more students opting to enroll
in community colleges in their own backyards to save tuition
dollars, to find more career-focused programs and to stay closer
to home. And researchers are finding statistical increases to
back up this observation. Consider these facts:
- 40 percent of traditional-age students who entered postsecondary
education in the 1990s started out in community colleges.
- 42 percent of credit-seeking community college students are
now under the age of 22, and 75 percent of all credit-seeking
community college students are under age 24;
- And over 60 percent of traditional-age undergraduates attend
more than one school.
These are just some of the findings in a new report from the
U.S. Department of Education called "Moving into Town-and
Moving On: The Community College in the Lives of Traditional-age
Students." The recent federal study tracked 25,000 eighth-graders
in U.S. schools in 1988 and followed them through 2000. Federal
researchers also noted:
With the exception of Latinos, minority students are no more
likely to first enter community colleges, as has been the case
for the last 30 years. Neither gender nor race/ethnicity, nor
second-language background nor first-generation status ends up
playing a statistically significant role in explaining who starts
out in a community college.
But socioeconomic status does play such a role. Lower-income
students are more likely to attend community colleges. And the
more oriented a twelfth-grader was to majoring in an occupational
field, the more likely the student was to start out in a community
college.
Yet, at the same time, while there has been some improvement
in mathematical skills, 44 percent of entering first-year students
did not reach Algebra 2 in high school, compared with 11 percent
of those who entered four-year colleges.
These statistics "drive home the importance of community
college relations with secondary schools," said the report.
And, "the extent to which cooperative and outreach programs
can move more high school students to the level of Algebra 2
and beyond in mathematics would signal a major change in academic
momentum of the entering community college population."
NEW ATTENTION
In his State of the Union Message in January, President
George Bush noted the importance of community colleges and called
for a budget to strengthen and increase access to community colleges.
The new U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings gave a
talk in Washington in February called "Community Colleges
in the 21st Century."
Likewise, organizations, states and foundations are now also
paying closer attention to community colleges. For example, to
bolster the academics in community colleges, the Lumina Foundation
based in Indianapolis recently initiated Achieving the Dream:
Community Colleges Count giving $50,000 to 27 community colleges
in five states to enhance their programs.
States throughout the country are rethinking their community
college offerings. For example, in 1999, the late Frank O'Bannon,
then governor of Indiana, created the Community College of Indiana.
According to the Indiana Alumni Magazine, there's been
a 40 percent growth in the last four years. The initiative utilized
resources from Vincennes University and the Ivy Tech campuses
located throughout the state.
In Florida, some community colleges are beginning to offer
four-year degrees. Edison Community College for example, recently
became Edison College. Other community colleges throughout the
country are forging new partnerships with high schools in their
area at one end by allowing high school students to begin college-level
courses and four-year institutions at the other to enhance transfer
options.
State appropriations though have had a hard time keeping up
with the new demands. A survey last fall of the National Council
of State Directors of Community Colleges found that "the
competition is fierce for scarce state tax dollars" and
94 percent of the state directors surveyed predicted tuition
increases. Rural community colleges face the greatest budgetary
strain.
And, according to an April 30 Chronicle in Higher Education,
175,000 students could not enroll in California's community colleges
this year because of space limitations. In North Carolina 56,000
students were reportedly turned away.
The American Association of Community Colleges periodically
conducts surveys of "hot programs." (Its latest survey
found allied health program identified with registered nursing
the most prevalent "hot" program cited.)
A recent report though called "Pathways to Persistence"
by Thomas R. Bailey and Mariana Alfonso argues that more research
is needed about ways to strengthen community colleges. Among
the practices they state will increase students' likelihood of
graduating or complete their educational goals: advising, counseling,
mentoring and orientation programs and developmental education
and other services for students academically under-prepared.
The key to success for students opting to enroll in community
colleges appears to be an effective state transfer policy, according
to the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
"The success of community college-baccalaureate transfer
is central to whether students enroll in and complete college
in a timely manner," IHEP said, "as well as whether
college is affordable to students and taxpayers."
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Admissions Watch
Yale's New Deal. In order to encourage more applications
from lower-income families, Yale U. has announced that parents
earning less than $45,000 a year will no longer have to take
out loans to send their children to New Haven. Reduced loan loads
will also affect families earning between $45,000 and $60,000.
Yale's president, Richard C. Levin, said the university took
note of how applications from lower-income students increased
when Harvard made a similar move for families earning $40,000.
Only 15 percent of Yale students currently fall into the $45,000
and under category.
Other well-endowed schools have also taken this step, including
the U. of North Carolina, which exempts families earning $37,000
or less, Rice U., which set the limit at $30,000 and Princeton
U. which started the trend.
The Harvard Watch. There are "more students in
the applicant pool this year who are likely to be eligible for
the new Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, which requires no parental
contribution from families earning $40,000 or less and a greatly
reduced contribution from those who earn from $40,000 to $60,000,"
Sarah C. Donahue, director of financial aid, told the Harvard
University Gazette last month. And this year's applicant
pool included a 45 percent increase from those seeking an application
fee waiver due to financial hardship.
A record 22,717 students applied to Harvard for fall 2005,
up 15 percent over last year's 19,752. Nearly 11,000 of the applicants
scored 700 or above on the SAT Verbal section while 12,000 scored
that high on the SAT Math portion. About 2,100 had a perfect
800 on the SAT Verbal test and 3,100 scored 800 on the SAT Math
test. Applications from African American students rose by over
28 percent. Hispanic student applications increased by over 15
percent.
Public Universities Pitch Afar. According to a recent
New York Times report by Greg Winter, public universities
in various sections of the country are looking well beyond their
borders for new students. With an eye on the declining demographics
of the traditional-age students in their states, universities
in Alabama, Maine, Vermont and even New York are looking to states
where the student population is growing such as Georgia and California.
But the universities say they are selective, visiting high schools
in areas where they feel students have heard of them or who share
their "values." UMASS, for example, banks on its athletic
reputation in Atlanta, Stony Book U., is betting its research
laboratories are known in Tennessee, U. of Vermont pitches its
location and "ethos." For more info, see the February
5 New York Times.
Texas B-on-Time. The boom in college-age students is
putting new pressure on available space at some state universities.
Only 39 percent of students graduate in four years; another 24
percent take five years to gain a degree; and 10 percent take
five to six years. So, some states are examining ways to make
sure students graduate "on time."
Texas is leading the way with an innovative loan forgiveness
program for students who get good grades and leave on schedule.
The Texas-B-on-Time program rewards students who take a college-prep
curriculum in high school, maintain a 3.0 grade point average
at four-year colleges and complete 75 percent of their credit
hours each semester. The program also discourages students from
taking more courses than necessary. The only problem is that
there is not enough money in the state budget to meet demand.
Finish-in-Four Scholarships. Southern Illinois U. in
Carbondale announced last month that undergraduate students who
enter the university as freshmen and graduate in four years will
receive $500 in their last semester of study. The university
will also offer guaranteed scholarships for teachers and is creating
new Community College scholarships. "Finish in Four Scholarships,
which will begin in fall 2005, are designed to encourage more
students to complete their studies sooner, saving their families,
SIU, the taxpayers and the State of Illinois considerable sums
of money," SIU President Wendler explained.
Top Colleges for Latinos. Hispanic magazine
released its annual list of best 25 colleges for Latino students.
In order, they are: Stanford; MIT; Harvard; Duke; Cal Tech; Columbia;
Brown; U. Chicago; Rice; Notre Dame; UCLA; U. Texas, Austin;
U. California, Berkeley; U. Florida; U. Southern California;
U. California, Santa Barbara; U. California, Davis; U. California,
Irvine; U. California, San Diego; Texas A&M; U. Miami; Rutgers;
U. California, Santa Cruz; NYU and Florida International U. For
further info see: March 2005 Hispanic.
The Secrets to Getting In? It's really no secret. High-level
college oriented content in core courses at a level beyond most
state and district standards; qualified and experienced teachers
certified in their subject area and with a master's degree or
higher; teaching that is flexible with teachers who frequently
ask and answer questions, and help students make connections
to the content using current events and popular culture and outside
classroom support for students through tutors, teachers and other
helpers.
At least, this is the conclusion of the ACT and the Education
Trust in a new report "Crisis at the Core" that studied
nine high schools across the U.S. already meeting high standards
and overcoming the odds with a diverse student population. For
a copy, see www.act.org/news/releases/2005/2-23-05.html.
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Rising Droput
Rates
The high school completion rate has not been accurately
reported, and has been falling since 1969, concludes a new report,
"One-Third of a Nation: Rising Dropout Rates and Declining
Opportunities," from the Educational Testing Service in
New Jersey. The actual completion rate ranges between 66 and
71 percent, according to the estimates of different researchers.
And unless the problem is addressed, the U.S. faces increasing
dropout rates, declining assisted second-chance opportunities
and a deteriorating economic position for those who dropout,
researchers concluded.
Nationally, the graduation rate peaked at 77 percent in 1969.
From 1990 to 2000, the completion rate declined in all but seven
states. In 10 states, it declined by 8 or more percentage points.
Recent completion rates range from the high of 88 percent in
Vermont to the low of 48 percent in the District of Columbia
and 55 percent in Arizona.
The report concluded that ways to increase retention have
been demonstrated, including 11,000 Alternative Schools, 33 Talent
Development High Schools and Communities in Schools.
But the report also found "a scarcity exists of guidance
and counseling personnel."
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THE COUNSELOR'S CORNER
Strategic College Matching
IT HAS BECOME ALL TOO CLEAR
that we have entered an era of radically increased college entrance
difficulty. For the first time, Ivy League schools are taking
fewer than 10 percent of their applicants (Yale accepted 9.9
percent this past year and Harvard accepted 9.8 in 2003). That
means in the not too distant future, it will be statistically
improbable for most students to be admitted to one of these colleges.
While top students still can apply to these schools, they too
need to consider viable alternatives that will meet their needs.
They must, at a minimum, demonstrate the tangible results
of college preparation: good grades, high test scores and strong
extracurricular activities. But the score-oriented, quantitative
approach to admissions, prevalent in the last decades, needs
now to be replaced with a more strategic approach to gaining
admission to quality schools.
THE STRATEGIC PROCESS
This strategic approach utilizes a student's good
grades and test scores, but then goes well beyond to identify
and communicate each student's unique profile to college admissions
officers. It focuses on each student's distinct qualifications,
but within each particular college's applicant pool. And it means
preparing and delivering college applications that sharply focus
on why a student would be meeting the needs of a certain college.
Good colleges have always wanted student bodies with intellectually
curious students, and base their selections on proven academic
abilities and intellectual track records, special abilities,
including arts and athletics, as well as socio-economic background
and legacy status.
But strategic matching or "positioning" is a focused
process that unites each student's core values, goals and unique
attributes, while at the same time matching these with what specific
colleges need, but aren't getting. (For example, at Stanford
University science, engineering and pre-professional students
abound, but there's a need for writers, musicians and fine artists.)
It considers the strengths and weaknesses of the competition
in the applicant pool. "Positioning" aligns a student
with the stated needs of the college by delivering an application
that matches the college's unmet needs with what a particular
student offers the college.
How is strategic matching different from traditional education
consulting? The approach is more data intensive. Counselors track
quantitative statistics such as admittance rates, test scores,
geographic and minority representation. They conduct qualitative
interviews with current college students, administrators and
experts to determine the current "unmet" needs of a
particular college in a given year.
Students are individuals. But unfortunately colleges can't
admit everyone who looks worthy. Students must communicate what
it is about them that will be of possible value to a specific
college. This means managing the "hard" data-grades
and test scores. But it also includes positioning the "soft"
interests such as a hobby or activity outside of class. For example,
a high school junior volunteers in a community soup kitchen and
also has a penchant for designing and building architectural-model
houses. A student can begin to see that these seemingly unrelated
activities could be positioned into one theme: Here is someone
who could create homes in the community for low-income residents.
Then, after talking with a student about what type of skills
and education he or she would need to reach such a goal, it is
necessary to determine which colleges could actually advance
those goals. What are the likely matches? Then students must
highlight their strengths on each application for an admissions
committee, illustrating their special talents.
Here are just a few of the essential steps in this strategic
process:
1. Interviews with the
student, but also the parents, coaches, teachers and others describing
the student's personality and attributes.
2. Identity development
of the student's vision, values and desired goals. This may lead
them to say they want to "create something new through science"
or "change our political system to improve people's lives,"
"make a difference in my community" or "live a
comfortable and happy life."
3. Identifying colleges
that fit these values of a student. This requires performing
data analysis, such as a college's needs assessment to identify
any potential weaknesses or needs that are not being met by existing
applicants; psychographic profiling of a current applicant pool;
admissions data tracking over a 10-year period; outcomes-based
assessments of colleges including but not limited to Ph.D. productivity,
jobs, graduate school admission rates and qualitative interviews
with current students, administrators, alums and experts on particular
colleges.
4. Collecting and examining
all extra-curricular activities and classifying them in order
of importance for getting into one of the selected colleges be
it athletics, leadership, art or music talents, intellectual
projects (research papers and science experiments), community
service, academic awards and honors work.
5. Advising students on
how to use these activities to describe themselves to appeal
to the unmet needs of each college.
6. Advising students about
specific scholarships and research projects they could apply
for to signal to colleges that a student is better prepared than
others.
7. Identifying and highlighting
special talents such as sports or music or storytelling. Making
sure that the student "proves" this ability is the
key to showcasing these abilities.
8. Developing a market
position for the student that is based on his or her general
"comparative advantage" versus other students, and
based generally on what colleges are looking for, but not getting.
Then making sure the application supports the positioning.
9. Offering a college
interview preparation, so students are natural and stay "on
theme" with their main arguments reflecting their strengths.
10. Writing a letter to
those writing recommendations that highlights the student's strengths,
key skills and "proof points." Then the recommendations
can support this theme in their letters to the college.
With a strategic focusing, admissions officers quickly get
a picture of who the applicant is, even if it doesn't tell the
whole story. And in an age when there are so many applications
for admissions offices to read, it helps an individual student
stand out.
David Montesano is director
of college planning at College Focus in Seattle, Washington,
and can be reached at david@collegefocususa.com.
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SCHOLARSHIP SCOOPS
Young Heroes. The Gloria Barron Prize for Young
Heroes is not a college scholarship, but each year 10 outstanding
young leaders who have made "a significant positive difference
to people and our planet" are awarded $2,000. To nominate
a young person, go to www.barronprize.org.
Minority Iowa Teachers.
Wartburg C. in Waterloo, Iowa, offers free tuition and books
for minority students who want to earn their teaching certificates
and who agree to teach in the Waterloo schools. The program began
in 1991 and is continuing with a new grant from the McElory Foundation.
Nearly 30 percent of students in Waterloo's public schools are
minority students. For more information, contact leslie.huth@wartburg.edu.
Young Authors. Elder &
Leemaur publishers recently launched a scholarship program for
promising young authors to help "bring awareness of the
employment opportunities in the field of writing." Students
submit an essay of less than 500 words on academic topics. College
and high school students headed for college in 2005 are eligible.
For info see: http://www.elpublishers.com/contest/uwsotherscholarhips.php.
Make A Difference Dollars.
The Microsoft Corp. is challenging secondary school students
around the world to design technology-based projects to benefit
charitable organizations with its second annual You Can Make
a Difference scholarship program. Previously it was available
only to students from the United States and Canada. But this
year the program includes high-school and secondary-school students
around the world.
The You Can Make a Difference scholarship awards a total of
$50,000 (U.S.) in grants to 10 students -- five male and five
female -- who create the best proposal for a software project
designed to benefit a charitable organization. Winners will receive
a personal scholarship of $2,500, as well as a budget of up to
$1,500 to implement the proposed project. A $1,000 technology
grant also will be awarded to each winning student's school.
In addition, the 10 finalists will be paired with a mentor from
Microsoft to help them implement their project. Each student
who submits a proposal will receive a free copy of Microsoft's
award-winning Visual Studio® .NET 2003 Academic development
tool.
Entry proposals in English can be submitted starting March
15 via theSpoke.net, Microsoft's online community for technology
students. The deadline for entries is April 30. Students can
submit their materials in Chinese (Simplified and Traditional),
French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean,
Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian or Spanish by visiting
one of the localized versions of theSpoke.net.
Questions about the program should be sent to ycmd@thespoke.net.
To apply, submit an online application by April 30, 2005.
Web Link. For help in figuring
out scholarship options, try www.scholarshiphelp.org.
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TESTING
TABS
Double Test Takers.
With anxiety rising about the new SAT and its mandatory essay
section, more students in traditionally SAT-strong states are
hedging their bets by also taking the ACT, which offers but does
not require a writing sample. According to the March 4 New
York Times, the number of East Coast students taking the
February ACT increased by 22 percent over last year. (Last year,
1.4 million seniors took the SAT; 1.2 million took the ACT.)
Does it really matter to admissions officers which test an
applicant submits? "We accept ACT and SAT scores on an absolutely
equal basis," the Times quoted William Fitzsimmons,
director of admissions at Harvard. "They're all imperfect
measures, and there's always a lot we don't know, like whether
a student has had an SAT tutor ever since seventh grade,"
he added.
Merit Scholar Destinations.
Who had the most Merit Scholars in 2004? Here's the top 20: Harvard,
312 students; U. Florida, 259; U. Texas at Austin, 242; Yale,
224; Stanford, 217; U. Chicago, 198; Washington U. St. Louis,
197; Princeton, 192; U. Southern California, 183; Rice U. 173;
U. Oklahoma, 170; Arizona State U., 162; Northwestern U., 152;
New York U., 150; Vanderbilt U., 144; U. North Carolina Chapel
Hill, 135; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 134; Texas
A&M U., 128; Brigham Young U., 118; U. California at Los
Angeles, 115.
Colleges on the national list included: Number 25. Carleton,
82 students; 40. Oberlin, 52; 44. St. Olaf, 50; 45. Harvey Mudd,
48; 47. Dartmouth, 47; 47. Grinnell, 47; 51. Macalaster, 46;
and 58. Whitman, 38 students.
Study Underwater? For decades,
music students have sung in the shower. Now students studying
for the SAT have a similar option. The Intuitive Learning Company
is manufacturing a shower curtain with 100 SAT-worthy words with
definitions and their parts of speech to study while lathering
up. No kidding. Students can find it at www.amazon.com.
A Novel Idea. And Wiley
has published an "adventure" novel called The Marino
Mission by Karen B. Chapman that uses 1,000 SAT-level words
complete with definitions at the end of each page. ($12.99).
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NEWS YOU CAN USE
Student Violence. The American College Health Association's
"Campus Violence White Paper" says colleges must do
more to cope with campus violence. It charged that last year,
nearly 6 percent of college women were victims of rape or attempted
rape and that 1,400 students die each year from alcohol-related
injuries. See the full ACHA report at http://www.acha.org/info_resources/Campus_violence.pdf.
Visa Changes. The Department
of Homeland Security is relaxing visa restrictions on foreign
students and scientists working in sensitive technical fields.
International students with F visas will be allowed to maintain
security clearances for the full length of their academic programs,
up to a maximum of four years. And, according to International
Student News, the U.S. State Department recently announced plans
to relax their visa regulations for the Visa Mantis Clearance
Program.
"This program is designed to provide easier visa allocation
to international students who are coming to the USA to study
in certain fields," it said. For more info: http://travel.state.gov/visa/laws/telegrams/telegrams_1425.html
and http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=17628.
The Final Four. According
to a March 14 Time, Illinois, North Carolina, Michigan
State and Syracuse universities are the academic powerhouses
among college basketball teams. The rankings were scores using
the 2004 NCAA graduate rates.
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COLLEGE BOUND's Publisher/Editor: R. Craig
Sautter, DePaul University; Chief Operating Officer: Sally
Reed; Contributor: Marc Davis; Circulation: Irma
Gonzalez-Hider; Illustration: Louis Coronel; Board
of Advisors: Rosita Fernandez-Rojo, Choate-Rosemary Hall;
Claire D. Friedlander, Bedford (N.Y.) Central School District;
Howard Greene, author, The Greenes' Guides to Educational
Planning Series; Frank C. Leana, Ph.D., educational
counselor; Virginia Vogel, Educational Guidance Services;
M. Fredric Volkmann, Washington University in St. Louis,
Mary Ann Willis, Bayside Academy (Daphne, Ala.).
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