Educated Quest

Teaching Artists versus Drama Teachers, an interview with Melissa Friedman, co-founder of the Epic Theatre Ensemble

2011-06-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

For the past five months I had the privilege of working on a volunteer consulting assignment for the Epic Theatre Ensemble through a placement made by the New York-based Taproot Foundation. Taproot organizes teams of experienced professionals to work with non-profits,including arts organizations, in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. Taproot set up our team to help Epic with board recruitment and development.

I enjoyed working with Epic, not only because of the people, but because of their contributions to arts education in New York City public schools. Melissa Friedman, a co-founder, actor and teaching artist leads Epic's initiatives in arts education. In 2009, Epic's after-school Shakespeare Remix was one of fifteen after-school programs in the country to receive a Coming Up Taller Award presented by First Lady Michelle Obama on behalf of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

As our Taproot project came to an end I asked Melissa about the concept of teaching artists and the future for arts education in New York City.

What is the difference between a teaching artist and a drama teacher?

A teaching artist uses theatre to explore issues or questions throughout a curriculum so that the arts may be used to reach out to all students. For example, history and literature can be explored through theatre.

A teaching artist and a drama teacher have different responsibilities. Drama teachers are either 'artsy' or 'taskmasters' while teaching artists try to maintain a balance between teaching and rigor. You have to find artists who are willing to bridge both worlds. Teaching artists also challenge their students to take risks. Teaching artists expect a lot of their students but they also love and care for them

How does a teaching artist work with the school where s/he is assigned?

The assignment partly depends on the school's priorities and requirements. Chelsea High, for example, is not an arts school, but every student takes drama in the 10th and 12th grade. There we will work with the drama teacher and an assistant principal. At Urban Academy, an arts school, we work with a Partnership Coordinator .

Have many of your students gone into careers in the theatre?

Epic is still a young company. We're going into our tenth year. In 2001 we started with ninth graders, and in 2005 our first classes graduated. While several students have gone on to pursue careers in theatre, that is not our goal, nor is it a measure of success. We are more interested in the skills that theatre builds in students. We have former students in college,in the air force, and even pursuing careers as teaching artists.

What are some of your concerns about arts education in New York City?

Public policies should reflect that the goals of theatre education should be more central to all education. The question now is: are schools working? Test scores are only one way to know. Creative problem solving questions often come up in job interviews, and theatre education helps form a basis for creative problem solving.

I have a four year-old son, and I can say, from looking at schools that parents do not want to lose the arts; children become more engaged in the lower grades. The Obama Administration seems to understand the importance of the arts to education. The arts are not likely to disappear from New York City schools; the city is the arts center of the world.

Barack Obama is a pretty smart guy

2011-05-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

One of Donald Trump's biggest blunders was questioning President Obama's educational credentials, and I don't understand why he did it.

President Obama attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years. Long considered one of the leading liberal arts colleges in the country, Occidental has approximately 1900 students. In 2009, enrollment spiked to nearly 2,000. Occidental, or Oxy as it is called, was one of the first colleges in the West to have a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. The 25-75 SAT range is between 1200 and 1380, according to the U.S. News Guide.

Even if the SATs needed to get into Oxy in 1979, when the future president started college, were 100 points lower than they are today--not an unusual trend with all selective schools--it was still an extremely competitive school.

Trump made hay that Obama transferred to Columbia as the result of an affirmative action program. If so, the program must not have had many students.

Columbia College, the undergraduate division of Columbia University in New York, has approximately 4,200 students. The enrollment has not grown very much over the past thirty years though the college has also become co-educational. It admitted only men while sister school Barnard, still in operation, enrolled all of the women.

However, most of the 1,400 students who make up a freshman class at Columbia stay at Columbia, and there are few spots for transfer students. According to the university Web site:

We typically admit fewer than 10 percent of those who apply for transfer admission each year. Though the number varies from year to year, in recent years, we have admitted roughly 150 transfers from over 2,200 applicants.

That's not great odds for any applicant from anyplace. Barack Obama might have been given some consideration on the grounds of diversity, being from Hawaii and of mixed heritage. But he would have still needed excellent grades in high school as well as college. According to Columbia's site:

High school grades, rigor of program and standardized test scores are all important in the evaluation of transfer credentials, especially for students applying for sophomore standing.

I seriously doubt that Columbia's standards in 1981, when Obama transferred, were lower than they are today.

It's very funny that these critical comments about the president's education came from a man who also transferred to an Ivy League school. While The Donald proudly calls himself a Wharton graduate, he spent his first two years of college at Fordham in New York. I wonder what he would say if Fordham claimed him as an alumnus. Or if he'd sue.

Book Review--The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School by Alexandra Robbins

2011-05-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

As I read this book, I saw myself in high school. I never really fit into any of these stereotypes. I wasn't smart enough to be a Nerd, nor was I talented at gaming or music. I spent a lot of time by myself through half of high school, though I also achieved "civil" relations with most of the groups by the later half of my sophomore year. By civil, I mean that people who found it fun to bother me in grade school no longer had the time or inclination to bother me as our class moved closer towards graduation. Everyone had to take care of themselves.

But in this book, the stereotypes seemed to linger longer and they remain tied to a person well into their senior year. The author has students, including The Gamer, The Nerd and The Band Geek, all worried about getting through their senior year, all praying that they would get into colleges where they could leave the stereotypes behind and start over.

I'm not sure if the Millenials, subjects in this book, are longer-lasting victims of bullying due mainly to the Internet and the new forms of public expression it started. While the Internet, especially through Facebook, allows high school students to organize "hate" campaigns against classmates, it also helps the bullied find friends outside of school. Gossip has always been a part of high school life. Technology has always taken it beyond the school day, only the technology of the past was the telephone that parents paid for.

Also interesting were the sections about teachers and their cliques, which are little different than those of their students. A teacher who is a non-conformist is shunned, just like a student who is a non-conformist, too. Only the teachers have to keep that information to themselves. A teacher who is unpopular with students and colleagues has to hide a lot of hurt, while a teacher who is popular with students, but unpopular with colleagues is branded a trouble-maker or viewed with cynicism. It makes you wonder how many teachers know how to be effective in a school setting.

This is one book I hope parents of high school age children read no matter if their son or daughter is bothered by bullies in school. It is the first book that makes sense of the reasons why seven types of people: The Loner, The Popular Bitch, The Nerd, The New Girl, The Gamer, The Wierd Girl and The Band Geek all have a difficult time in high school and the coping mechanisms they have developed with the help of the author or others. It might keep other high school students from learning too late.

And a follow-up, charters and their future in New Jersey's cities. Takeovers not out of the question.

2011-05-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

As follow-up to the last post, I'd like to touch on charters in the cities versus the suburbs. During last week's panel comments were made that charter schools have been set-up to be, in part, agents of educational innovation in areas of educational need. In other words, lets test an idea on a small set of students before we roll it out on an entire school.

The more effective charter schools start small, usually with one grade in the first year, partly because they have limited funds and also because they need the opportunity to be sure of the capabilities as well as the collegiality of their teachers and administrators. An effective school grows an effective faculty, and an effective faculty allows the school to advance and welcome new students.

However, I am concerned about a practice that has happened outside my home state of New Jersey in cities such as Detroit and Los Angeles, which is to ask charter operators, among others, to "take over" existing schools from the public school district. This politicians may claim that they lowered educational costs, managed change, provided for better schools and rid citizens of bureaucratic waste.

One book: Stray Dogs, Saints and Saviors by journalist Alexander Russo helps to show what happens when a district, in this case Los Angeles Unified, transfers ownership of a public school to a charter operator, in this case Green Dot schools. Green Dot operates schools in multiple states, including most recently New York Coty, where its teachers will work under a union contract.

In the case of the school in this book, Locke High, Green Dot managed a transition from the old faculty to the new. Older students were taught by faculty that had been there before the transition while entering students were taught under the Green Dot Way. As the older classes graduated, a new ninth grade. New teachers would come into the school, though some of the faculty on-site would be asked to stay.

Russo tried to show that a transition like this could not be abrupt when it affects the same students. Locke was to be a charter school, but not a charter where students had to enter a lottery. This was the local school and the union and school system administration viewed the new operator with cynicism. This also happened system-wide when private firms tried to run schools in Hartford and Philadelphia, and failed.

My concern is that Newark, with the pledged $100 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, as well as the additional $43 million raised by Mayor Cory Booker, might be swayed in this direction while Chris Christie remains governor and while the state remains in control of the school system.

Such an aggressive act would be popular with suburban voters, not to mention Newarkers and their supporters who have supposedly asked the administration for any choice that would replace the existing schools and state control. Christie has already pushed for vouchers as one means of choice, though the existing public, private and parochial that are in a position to accommodate new students under the state's proposed tuition rates can take too few of them.

In addition to advocating vouchers, this governor keeps insisting that charter schools are better than the traditional public schools. So does the mayor. Both have little time to show results while neither cares about concensus and both want to lower costs. A push for takeovers fits well within such politics. But it may not lead to the overnight changes that parents want for their children.

Public participation and transparency, but not local votes, are necessary to authorize new suburban New Jersey charter schools

2011-05-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended a conference on charter schools sponsored by NJ Spotlight. While I have followed charter school issues in the state for a couple of years, the event was an eye-opener. It was a discussion along the lines of: "Now that we have had charter schools for more than ten years, how do we make sure we manage them right, in terms of authorising new schools, providing sufficient funding and managing enrollment?"

Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf was one of the panelists. As the first speaker he took it upon himself to say that charter schools are public schools, and that charters are not always "the solution." He also added that children go to schools, not school districts. Then he was challenged when he said that Newark's approved charter schools were out-performing the traditional public schools by a wide margin.

Unfortunately, the panel format did not give Cerf enough time to present further evidence. However, continued challenges, including quantifiable ones, could have turned into the main part of the event. Thankfully, they didn't, for the issues around charters go beyond Newark.

New Jersey, as I've written many times, is a "home rule" state. Politics is local, and local politics in the 'burbs, as well as the larger cities, can be brutal. Yet, the state's association of school boards has called for local approval as part of the authorization process for charters.

This is aupposed to mean that the approval process would center on: will this new school fill a local or regional need that existing public schools are unable to fill? However, the battle is likely to shift to "adult issues" in the suburbs: why remove students--and funding--from the good schools we already have? Not to mention why remove good students and put our school's ratings at risk?

Lets consider situations where parents across a single suburban district or more than one may wish to see a charter school, instead of paying tuition for a private school

+ Advanced academic academies or "magnet" schools. There would need to be a process where parents prove that there is a demand, and demonstrate that they do not have the income to pay private school tuition. They also need to play a hand in finding the right teachers and administrators. If there is local approval, the battle becomes "my kids versus your's."

+ Language immersion schools. Here one battle becomes reinforcement of ethnic identity versus voluntary segregation by ethnicity, even if the school does not discriminate in enrollment. Would advocates of the enthnicity that would benefit from the school be, in effect, asking for "their own school?" Intentions can always be tested under law. A second battle comes over cost. Which is less expensive? Add new teachers paid under a union-negotiated contract to teach language and ethnic studies, possibly at the expense of other academic programs. Or, allow a charter school, where teachers are not under contract, and the school pays rent to the district, to provide such instruction?

+ Special needs schools. There are cost considerations, but also issues of educational philosophy. Should students in of certain special needs, for example, autism, be given their own school where they may be instructed by specialized teachers? For me, this is the area where I have the least objection to charter schools, and where I believe fiscal equity with traditional schools is most important.

In all of these cases it is not certain that the expertise lies within every voting school district to make a decision on a charter school application.

However, a neutral body--educators based at publicly supported colleges of education has been suggested--needs to be capable of managing public participation in the debate over the need for a new school. Evidence: demographics, available space, budgets, staffing must be transparent for the public as well as the panel of experts and the state's Department of Education.

Parents may not always be educational experts, but the thoughtful ones do not want to be left out of the process. Neither do the adversarial ones. The decisions of a state-appointed panel that go against the grain would be exceptionally difficult to overturn, and political rifts would be very difficult to mend. Locals resent a "solution" being "forced" upon them by a state. Such resentments would be worse with no public participation and no transparency.

Colorado State University's admissions and financial aid strategy aggressively targets disadvantaged residents and out-of-state students

2011-05-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting story about changes in admissions practices at five colleges, including Colorado State, a large state university with approximately 20,000 full-time undergraduates.

According to the latest U.S. News Guide, sixteen percent of Colorado State's undergraduate student body comes from out-of-state. According to the Chronicle story, this percentage has risen with successive freshman classes; the most recent class was 21 percent non-residents.

While each non-resident student pays more for their space in the class, their enrollment takes spaces away from resident students who might have been admitted to the university a short time ago.

Colorado State charged in-state students approximately $7,000 for this past school year,including campus fees. This will increase by at least $1,000 for the 2011-12 academic year, according to the Chronicle story. However, resident students who come from families hat earn incomes of $55,000 or less will pay only around $4,000 for tuition.

The story mentions nothing about an increase in out-of-state tuition, which is approximately $23,000. This was an increase of slightly less than $1,000 from the previous year, according to U.S. News and the university Website.

This year, there were approximately 7,300 applications for an estimated 900 spots for non-resident students in the freshman class. Last year, using data from U.S. News and the school's Web site, Colorado State's yield rate--the share of accepted students who choose to go--was 41 percent, so the school would admit approximately 3,600 of these applicants, maybe more, maybe less, depending on the scholarships awarded.

According to the Chronicle story, out-of-state applicants may receive grants that range from $3,000 through $9,000 depending on their academic records and how well they maintain their grades. The university is also a member of the Western Undergraduate Exchange. Out-of-state freshman who reside in any one of 14 states who major in one of 63 subjects at Colorado State pay 150 percent of in-state tuition. This reduces their tuition and fees to an estimated $12,000 for the coming academic year. This is an $11,000 discount from the out-of-state charges--almost half-off the sticker price.

For out-of-staters, the better student starts out with a financial advantage and possibly an academic one as well. The university has an Honors Program that admitted approximately 350 freshman last year. More money and special treatment can't hurt in bringing better students to campus.

As I read these numbers I see that Colorado State is becoming an academic bargain for disadvantaged students as well as out-of-state students if they qualify for scholarships. Not to mention, the school has not been impossible to get into. According to the U.S. News Guide, Colorado State accepted 72 percent of all applicants.

Last year, this school attracted a record freshman class with nearly 4,500 students so the aspects of this strategy: out-of-state enrollment increases, scholarship programs and the Honors Program, among others, must be working. This year's class likely comes from a larger applicant pool as tuition and fees have become more competitive while the scholarship programs have become more ambitious.

In an ideal state, a state university would be the near-exclusive province of in-state students who would face an exceptionally competitive admissions process, but would pay an exceptionally minimal fee for their education, a fee low enough to avoid major debt. Obviously, those days are gone in many states, Colorado certainly being one of them. But so far, Colorado State's admissions strategy is working in terms of bringing new freshmen through the front gate while helping the school make-up for lost revenues from state budget cuts.

However, one critical question cannot be answered until the members of the freshman classes of 2010 and 2010 get closer to graduation: If we got a larger and better qualified student body, did our graduation and retention rates go up?

The U.S. News Guide reported that 82 percent of Colorado State freshmen, on average from 2005 through 2008, continued on to their sophomore year. The same source also reported that 64 percent of the students who entered Colorado State in 2003 had graduated by 2009. The numbers are quite close to those of a sister school, the University of Colorado-Boulder (84 and 67 percent), but higher-rated state schools have freshman retention rates that are better than 90 percent and graduate more than three-quarters of their students within six years.

If the various scholarship programs lead to a highly qualified and highly satisfied student body, then Colorado State has developed a model that other state schools may use to raise revenues while getting better students.

The administrations of state schools with exceptionally low percentages of out-of-state students--the University of California system and Rutgers-New Brunswick are two prominent examples--will be following Colorado State's efforts closely. If Colorado State succeeds, other schools will follow with similar strategies. In-state students will be less likely to take their state schools for granted.

Why are southern states celebrating the house divided?

2011-05-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

This morning's USA Today ran a story: Confederate group fights for state specialty plates. The story is partly about the efforts of a non-profit organization, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), to market Confederate-inspired license plates through state divisions of motor vehicles.

According to the story, SCV has succeeded in marketing these plates in nine states: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi,North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. A Florida program was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge because it gave "unfettered direction to engage in viewpoint discrimination. The state legislature there has not made a decision to rework their statutes to allow the plates. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Board did not approve a Confederate-inspired plate, though the SCV has grounds to appeal the decision; only eight of the nine board members were present. The SCV's Kentucky office wants to collect all monies towards Confederate-inspired plates in advance of production, as the state permitted the sponsor of a Lincoln Bicentennial plate to do four years ago.

I grew up in New Jersey and admittedly I have never lived in a state that was once a member of the Confederacy. Aside from the obvious issues that led the nation into civil war--secession and slavery--it bothers me when people want to celebrate a nation that was a house divided, especially now, during very difficult economic times. It bothers me more when a group asks state governments to be a complicit partner in the celebration.

I am not a lawyer, but I believe that there is a difference between private speech and government-sponsored speech. If the SCV sold license plate frames or produced front bumper plates to be sold in states where a front bumper plate is not mandated then there is nothing a citizen could do to stop them. This is protected speech. It may offend many, but still it is privately funded.

But in this case the states are seceeding, not from the nation, but in their endorsement of the Confederacy by allowing their motor vehicle offices to manufacture and help market the plates, especially in states that have a large African American population.

According to the recent U.S. Census, there are slightly more than 39 million African Americans living in the country. Of this total, more than 14.1 million reside in the nine states that have permitted the issuance of these plates.

The additions of Florida, Kentucky and Texas would permit the marketing of these plates into three states with a total of 6.1 million African American residents. These plates would thus be sold in the states where the majority of African Americans live. Equally significant: Florida and Texas have the second and fourth-largest African-American populations in the country.

I also find it interesting that, with the exception of Maryland and North Carolina, these states are led by Republican governors. I wonder what history books those governors have been reading. In the early years of Reconstruction free blacks helped bring the Republican Party into power in the South; it was the Democrats who took a more conservative view on civil rights and voting rights for nearly a century.

Supporters of the Confederate plates say that their intention is to honor the service of military veterans who served the Confederate cause. While it is not fair to make inferences, I have to ask if these same people also want to honor the rights those men fought for. I leave it to them to answer that question.

In the meantime I would hope that no more state governments join in to celebrate an era of a house divided, an indentured class, and a lost cause by permitting the manufacture, sales and issuance of these plates.

Some interesting facts about athletic scholarships

2011-05-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid and FastWeb, both comprehensive resources on scholarships and student financial, released a brief, and very interesting paper with some facts about athletic scholarships.

This paper has come in the wake of public comments by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who has called for the replacement of athletic scholarships with need-based aid, which is done at the lowest level of NCAA competition as well as the Ivy League, and by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has asked the NCAA to limit eligible schools to those that have a six-year graduation rate of 40 percent or better.

Among Kantrowitz' findings:

+ Total athletic scholarship funding went gone up at a rate of 4.5 percent per year, lower than the rate of tuition increases from 1992-93 through 2007-08. A total of $1.1 billion is spent on athletic grants in aid.

+ The average institutional grant in aid for athletes in 2007-08 was nearly $4,000 more than the average awarded for a non-athlete. Institutional grants are sources of funds that come directly from the school.

+ Cumulative debt after graduation for athletes is lower than it is for non-athletes.

+ While the gendar split among athletic scholarship recipients has weighted less heavily upon male athletes--from about 68 percent in 1992-93 to 54 percent in 2007-08, women have made up the majority of the student body during the entire fifteen years.

+ The recipients of athletic scholarships tend to come from somewhat wealthier families than those of non-recipients.

+ The average GPA for athletic scholarship recipients in 2007-08 was slightly under 2.9, while for non-recipients it was slightly below 3.0. The difference, from reading the report, does not appear significant considering that athletes entered college with slightly lower grade-point-averages and lower SAT and ACT scores.

+ Athletic scholarship recipients are less likely to come from a city and more likely to come from a rural area than non-recipients.

+ Nearly 73 percent of athletic scholarship recipients who entered college in 2003 earned their bachelor's degree within six years versus 63 percent of non-recipients.

These pieces of information, among others, help to justify athletic aid as a worthwhile form of scholarship. However, it must be added that scholarship recipients were not broken down by sport nor were revenues for a particular sport mesaured against expenses. It is less expensive, for example, to field a track team versus a football team, however track is not usually viewed as a revenue sport. I chose this comparison because these are also the two sports that involve the largest number of scholarship athletes; neither become the targets of cuts.

My greater concern comes when athletes, especially football and men's basketball players, are admitted into situations where they are not prepared to succeed, nor appear to care. This does not represent every football or basketball player, only those with the most blatant disregard for the school, their teammmates and fellow students. The sctions of these few do not justify taking away the scholarships of the many who use them appropriately.

Public college payrolls should be studied as thoroughly as government payrolls

2011-05-05T08:20:00.000-07:00

Tuesday's USA Today ran a story: Who's Making $180,000+? as an analysis of the highest paid positions within the federal government. A similar story ran on Sunday about employees in New Jersey state government. I have no doubt that reporters are making requests for information from publicly supported colleges and universities. They employ similar personnel.

For example, according to the USA Today story, eight of ten federal employees earning in excess of $180,000 are physicians; the vast majority, nearly 13,000, are employed by the Veterans Health Administration. Other agencies that employ physicians include the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Indian Health Service and the U.S. Army Medical Command. The highest paid employee in a New Jersey state agency is also a physician; the medical director of the state's Department of Human Services earns just under $217,000.

The American people, including New Jersey's citizens, should not be upset about the wages paid to physicians, especially those who treat those who have served our country at war. They risked their lives in battle and a nation that values its military highly must make the expense to restore its former soldiers to good health so that they may become working citizens. The thought of cutting veterans medical care is ridiculous since the nation is at war and veteran's advocates are very well organized.

If public agencies, even those known to do good, can be placed under such scrutiny by reporters and politicians, then so can the payrolls of publicly supported colleges. And maybe they should. It is not unusual for a university president or even a campus provost to earn more than the governor of the state where his university is located. It is probably impossible to find a state where a football coach does not earn more than the governor or the university president.

However, football coaches can justify their salaries through their record, the graduation rates of their players and their ability to work with an athletic director, who raises the money to pay their salary. University presidents are becoming more subject to performance standards, though the academic portion of their work may be protected through tenure. Their direct reports, who may also earn more than the governor of their state, are not always so fortunate.

The larger colleges and universities, especially those that have medical schools, also employ high-salaried physicians. They also employ tenured faculty whose longevity has been rewarded by high salaries. Those schools that manage campuses must provide services commonly found in cities, including security, property maintenance and information technology that are not practical to outsource.

If the news media continue to investigate public payrolls it is only logical that they look at faculty salaries. Untenured faculty are, of course, quite vulnerable to termination, and so are adjuncts who are hired to teach when resources are pinched. However, tenured faculty who do not teach many students and/or receive little in the way of grants or outside support for their research should also fall under greater scrutiny.

A college exists first to provide an education to students and second to facilitate breakthrough research in various fields. Faculty who contribute to neither mission are a cost center. At least a football program has fans and donors to help pay its bills.

Merit scholarship awards not the best reason to choose a law school

2011-05-03T10:16:00.000-07:00

This weekend the New York Times ran a story about law school merit scholarships. One example, Golden Gate University in San Francisco, provides scholarships valued at $30,000 to first year students. The scholarship is renewable, contigent on maintaining a 3.0 or B average during the first year and the year after.

I was a poli-sci major in college and I considered going to law school. I considered it while I was in college and after I started working. I passed the first time because I was more interested in urban planning and real estate than I was in being a lawyer. I have no regrets. I got the jobs I wanted. I also got enough financial aid to make the graduate degree worthwhile.

After I had been working in the public sector for two years I considered law school again. Had I remained with the agency where I was employed, I would have been reimbursed for tuition--if I got a grade of B or better in each class. But then I asked around. I spoke with co-workers who were going to law school at night. They warned me that B's were very hard to come by; law school would be nothing like college or even graduate school in planning or public policy. Law school, I was told, was best meant for people who really wanted to be lawyers.

The people who are offered these merit scholarships have to make the same decision: do they want to be lawyers so badly that they would borrow so much money and study so hard to pursue the dream?

The way I understand the law school world, it is best to go to the best law school you can get into in the place where you would most like to work. This may not always be the highest ranked school or the least expensive, but it will be the one where you can become best acquainted with the legal community you want to join without having to worry about carrying double rents or finding a sublet while paying for school. So if I wanted to work in DC, I'd look at law schools there. If I wanted to work in New York I'd look at schools in the city. I would pass on conditional scholarships to schools that would be of less help in securing work. The money provided for those scholarships should not be at the expense of my ability to find a job.

Some might not agree with my strategy but it is one that worked for me when I went to business school instead of law school. I worked part-time, first at my old job, then at an internship I got through the school. I figured it was easier to build a resume and show commitment to a field through work than to try to get the top grades in my class. I would have felt the same way had I decided to be a lawyer.

Did UC-Riverside get image boost from Undercover Boss?

2011-05-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

This weekend I watched Undercover Boss as Timothy White, chancellor of the University of California-Riverside disguised himself as Pete Weston, a visiting administrator from a small private college attempting to learn the ways of the big public university.

During the show, White moved out of his home into a hotel near campus and worked in four different jobs: teaching assistant in a chemistry lecture class, assistant track coach, library book stacker and desk worker and tour guide. He had difficulty doing all of the jobs. However, he had no difficulty rewarding the professor, the track coach and two students for the work they did, and he rewarded them in very significant ways. The professor has a scholarship named after her, a full year's tuition for a woman interested in a career in the sciences. The track coach is being sent to school, plus his facilties will be upgraded, so that his team will be able to host a home meet. The two students had student loans forgiven and were have been provided with scholarships as well. All of these people must feel very lucky to have run into the chancellor. I certainly would.

More interesting to me was the perspective I got of UC-Riverside. Ranked 41st among public universities in the 2011 U.S. News Guide, this is an extremely diverse school. Asians represent 40 percent of the student population. Twenty nine percent of the student body is Hispanic and eight percent is African-American. Practically every student ranked in the top quarter of their high school class.

And, unlike the flagship campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles, none of the spots are reserved for football players. UC-Riverside does not play football. However, the school competes in Division 1 in 17 sports, so athletic scholarships are available.

While UC-Riverside is not the most selective of the University of California campuses--it recently accepted 78 percent of all applicants, almost all from California--it graduates more than two-thirds of its students within six years. Considering both numbers together, this is a very good school. Looking at the U.S. News numbers, they are better than those for the flagship campuses at universities in 24 states.

It seems like Chancellor White runs a school that Californians should be proud of, although it is more expensive--about $12,000 in state--than it probably should be. Those who work on behalf of education in California can only hope that Undercover Boss made for good publicity for a school that is representative of not only the diversity of the state, but also the quality of the students beyond the flagship schools. They deserve better than a bare-bones education. California still educates more fine students than most nations. The state's citizens and politicians should take more notice.

Nebraska 'un-recognized' as a prestigeous research university

2011-05-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

On Friday I read in the Chronicle of Higher Education that the University of Nebraska is being kicked out of the Association of American Universities (AAU). The university has been a member since 1909.

The news coverage of the AAU's decision mentions that Nebraska's departure is in part due to the medical school's presence outside of the flagship campus. Yet, the most recent admit to the AAU, Georgia Tech, does not have a medical school. Neither does SUNY-Stony Brook, which was invited in 2001. In addition, other members including Brandeis, Cal Tech, Iowa State, MIT, Princeton, Purdue and Rutgers, among others, do not.

Being a school to this association is like being a five-star general who gets a sixth star. You've done a tremendous amount of service to the country, more than your peers, so now you get an extra reward. You don't really need the recognition to be respected, but it's very nice to have. According to their Web site:

AAU member universities are on the leading edge of innovation, scholarship, and solutions that contribute to the nation's economy, security, and well-being. The 60 AAU universities in the United States award more than one-half of all U.S. doctoral degrees and 55 percent of those in the sciences and engineering.

That first sentence is a very broad statement of what constitutes an AAU school. It says nothing about the types of innovations member schools must pursue, only that they be of public benefit. However, I'll take the second statement to mean that advances in STEM--science, technology, engineering and mathematical subjects.

What is interesting about Nebraska's situation is that the school has been a member longer than most. In 1900, according to the organization's member page, the original AAU members were the Ivy League schools (excluding Dartmouth, which is still not a member) Johns Hopkins, Stanford, the University of Chicago, the University of California-Berkeley, University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin. The University of Virginia was admitted four years later. During the years 1908 and 1909, five land grant schools that were also flagship schools, the universities of Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Nebraska were invited to join, as well as Indiana University.

So, the University of Nebraska, then and still one of the best agricultural universities in the nation was among the first 25 members of this great body--and now they're being asked to leave? It was not like Nebraska has become less of a research university. In fact, the school has attracted more research dollars than eleven member schools, including Princeton and Brown.

What will this mean to an undergraduate student at Nebraska? Probably nothing, unless s/he decides to go to a graduate school in a STEM subject. There may be someone at an AAU school who questions the Nebraska pedigree, even if the student has excellent grades and test scores. But there will always be admissions committees that appreaciate a good student with a commitment to their field.

But it will mean more to current and prospective faculty members as well as candidates for scientific doctorates. Academia, from my exposure to it, is a very small fraternity--and word gets around when a school gets black-balled. Prospective science doctorates are more likely to be directed to AAU member schools and members schools are more likely to hire new faculty who have graduated from member schools. The school's rating determines an academic future.

Nebraska also loses a voice. The AAU is a national voice on scientific research budgets as well as education policy. The more associations that represent your interests, the better your chances for your voice to be heard in Washington.

I don't know what inspires academics to make decisions like this. They compromise the research future of a school, while reducing the size and their membership. The people who kicked Nebraska out deserve a dunce cap for this decision.

NJ elections provide more reason to eliminate suburban school boards

2011-04-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

Today I'm reading a story on NJ Spotlight that approximately 80 percent of New Jersey school district budgets were approved by voters throughout the state. Last year 59 percent of them were rejected. Part of the reason for the passage of so many budgets was that increases fell below a two percent cap supported by Governor Christie and passed by the state legislature last year.

With a cap in place, and school administrators diligently working within it to develop a budget, there was little reason for people to vote in school board elections. And that is precisely what happened. Turnout was higher than 20 percent in only one of New Jersey's 21 counties.

There has been talk of ways to get out the vote for school board elections, such as moving them to November, when voters vote in other races . However, unlike races for state or local office, school board elections are non-partisan. Mixing partisan and non-partisan races together could prove confusing--imagine designing the ballot and the display for the voting machine--and this would not necessarily mean that more people would take notice of their school board race.

But after reading about this week's voting, I still go back to a core belief: suburban communities should get rid of school boards. Let parents participate in the governance of the schools their children attend and designate a county or local government to make the non-academic business decisions.

School board members are ill-equipped to manage multi-million dollar budgets and negotiate expensive labor contracts. They are even less capable of making education decisions--for example, special education placements--on behalf of families. Parents could better resolve these issues by working with the principal and teachers in their neighborhood school. This is what they would do if they sent their children to a private or parochial school.

Aside from their capabilities, suburban school boards are so heavily regulated by the state board of education that they have little latitude to make decisions about budgets and curriculum. The two percent cap is state law. So are requirements on the numbers of days schools must be open to receive state aid. The academic programs are state mandates and so are high-stakes tests. While a school board provides a forum to complain about state-mandated policies, its members cannot vote to ignore them.

New Jersey is unique among the fifty states because it has more school districts than local governments, and they act as their own governments, too. This creates more confusion without necessarily enhancing local control. If most, if not all, of these boards went away, it is doubtful they would be missed.

The best educational buy might be a private liberal arts college

2011-04-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

I've been going through a book called Liberal Arts on the Brink. Written by Victor Ferrall, an attorney and former Beloit College (WI) president, this book discusses why some liberal arts colleges struggle while others, mainly the more selective, continue to thrive.

Liberal arts colleges, according to Ferrall's findings, are primarily in more isolated locations and enroll an average of approximately 1,600 students. However, some such as Calvin College (MI), which offers engineering degrees, enroll as many as 4,000.

Ferrall makes several points throughout this book about liberal arts colleges that are worth noting:

+ The 225 colleges considered to be liberal arts schools represent only about five percent of all students enrolled in all colleges today.
+ The top 51 liberal arts colleges enroll approximately 105,000 students, or less than one percent of all students enrolled in all colleges.
+ In 2008, these top 51 schools discounted tuition and fees to admitted students by an average of nearly 34 percent. Ten of these schools discounted by more than 40 percent. With an endowment of over $1 billion, Grinnell College (IA) gave students an average discount of more than 57 percent.
+ These top 51 schools are, on average, dependent on tuition and fee revenues to cover less than half of their expenses. Amherst College, regarded as one of the top three liberal arts colleges in the country, relies on tuition and fee income to cover less than fifteen percent of the college's revenues.
+ The schools two tiers below discount tuition even more.
+ The lower the school is ranked, the more likely the school has leaned in the direction of offering vocational majors including business, education, health sciences and nursing. These schools have become more like pre-professional schools--and have been acquistion targets of for-profit education corporations wishing to add vocational offerings.

Depending on the education a student wants, the leading liberal arts colleges, meaning the top 51, plus a smattering of schools in the next tier, could be a better value than attending a public university as an out-of-state student.

For example, today it would cost a student from New Jersey approximately $25,000 in tuition and fees to attend Penn State, the University of Maryland or the University of Delaware; all have been popular destinations for Garden State residents. However, the average costs of these liberal arts colleges in Pennsylvania and Maryland may be lower, if the student qualifies for the average discount:

Tier One schools:

Bryn Mawr College
Dickinson College
Gettysburg College
Lafayette College
Haverford College
Swarthmore College

Tier Two schools:

Allegheny College
Goucher College
Juniata College
Muhlenberg College
Susquehanna University
Ursinus College
Washington and Jefferson College
Washington College (MD)
Westminster College (PA)

All of the schools in Tier One are exceptionally selective, though three, Dickinson, Lafayette and Gettysburg, accepted at least 40 percent of their applicants. The three most selective schools: Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore all appeared on U.S. News 2011 list of Great Schools at Great Prices.

Among the Tier Two schools above, Westminster College also appears on the U.S. News Great Schools at Great Prices list. Allegheny, Goucher, Juniata, Susquehanna, Ursinus, Washington and Jefferson and Washington appear on the list of A-Plus Schools for B Students. Ursinus and Washington also appear on the 2011 Up and Comers list.

While U.S. News is a commercial publication and Liberal Arts on the Brink is more of an academic study, both show considerable overlap. They both also show that the more academically rigorous and fiscally stable liberal arts schools may be an excellent value--when that is the education you want.

The best liberal arts schools are showing no sign of decline in prestige or academic respect, and they sometimes pool resources to offer shared services such as job fairs in major employment centers and study abroad programs to try to collectively offer what the larger schools offer on their own. The key is to seek out the right information about the right schools.

Past legacy admissions practices thankfully long gone--or are they?

2011-04-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

I am reading this series of essays entitled: Affirmative Action for the Rich. Issued by the Century Foundation, this series addressed legacy preferences in college admissions. While legacy practices, where children of alumni receive preferential treatment, are less prevalent today, they were once quite commonplace.

I thought it would be interesting to share some of the past practices and policies that were mentioned in this book in an essay by Peter Schmidt, who is a senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education. For example:

+ Between 1900 and 1920, as more Jews emigrated into the United States and their children performed well from outside the elite prep schools, the percentage if Jewish male students at Harvard rose from seven percent of the undergraduate student body in 1900 to 21.5 percent by 1919. Jewish male students accounted for two percent of the senior class of 1903 and nine percent of the class of 1921. It would be more than half a century before either of these schools would admit women. However, the growth in the Jewish population of these schools brought out anti-Semetic beliefs in alumni and administrators, since Jews did not attend the traditional feeder schools.

+ In 1946, following the end of World War II and the availability of educational benefits to veterans through the G.I Bill, Princeton accepted 82 percent of alumni sons who applied for admission that year, compared to less than 38 percent of the 2,000 applicants who had been recently released from military service. This was at a time when less than half of adult Americans had a high school education.

+ By 1958, legacies accounted for about 20 percent of all Princeton students, but about half of the bottom quarter of the admitted applicants. Throughout the 1960's, just before co-education, legacies made up more than half of the Princeton undergraduate student body. This was helped by a school committee network across the country that involved 1,400 alumni.

+ As late as 1974 Yale admitted 49 percent of legacy applicants.

+ The U.S. News rankings, which started in 1983, led schools across the country to increase their outreach to attract legacy applicants. The reason: the magazine based school rankings on the school's financial resources (10 percent), alumni giving (5 percent) and yield, the percentage of accepted applicants who attend. Improvements across all of these numbers would raise school's ranking.

+ As late as 2003, Texas A&M University awarded an additional four points, on a 100 point scale, to legacy applicants. That year, the Houston Chronicle reported that 312 white students, as opposed to 27 Hispanic students and six black students, would not have been admitted had they not been legacies.

+ Thanks to the efforts of a well-organized alumni council and legacy student buddy program, the University of Pennyslvania admitted approximately 42 percent of all legacy applicants who applied early decision in 2008 as well as slightly more than one-third of all applicants who applied through the regular admissions process.

Schmidt and the other authors in this book were selected not only because of their expertise, but also because of their opposition to legacy policies. As I read these essays and find examples such as those listed above, I wonder how far we have really gone to avoid providing spaces to legacy applicants who could have never gained admission on their own. However, even assuming the total removal of legacy admissions, the rich schools--those with the strongest reputations and most bountiful resources--will still get richer.

Toni Morrison packs Rutgers house at exclusive book preview

2011-04-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you are glad to be proven wrong after you have written a post.

This morning I read on NJ.com that Pulitizer Prize winning author Toni Morrison addressed an overflow crowd as part of a writer's series on the Rutgers University-Newark campus.

Professor Morrison, who read from a stack of typewritten pages that will be part of a new book, addressed a packed house of 600 people. Another 150 watched via a TV monitor in another room nearby.

In a previous post I had asked who would be a larger draw, the event being equal, Toni Morrison or Snooki of the television show Jersey Shore. Snooki supposedly did two shows at Rutgers main campus that drew 2,000 people. However, I was also informed that only about 500 showed at one of them.

But I also said that Toni Morrison was noted long before Snooki was born and that her writing will be remembered long after the last episode of Jersey Shore has gone off the air.

On one score, audience size, I was glad to be proven wrong. Morrison drew an impressive crowd, as do other writers, such as Junot Diaz, who have previously participated in writer's talks at Rutgers-Newark. I could only believe that a main campus audience would be larger and fill a larger room. And that the audience, including students, would remember her more than Snooki. You don't need to be an English major to appreciate great writing.

On the other score, respect for the speaker, I was glad to be proven right. The news coverage of Snooki's appearance at Rutgers drew critical comments about the university and its students, many undeserved. A person's individual decisions to attend an event should not be a basis for judging their intellect. The coverage of Toni Morrison's appearance last night, by contrast, was quite positive.

Morrison, who will be paid $30,000 to be the university's commencement speaker through a corporate contribution by PepsiCo, was given a $2,000 honorarium to speak yesterday. Half the honorarium was paid by the university’s "Writers at Newark" program. The rest was paid by Rutgers’ Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience.

It appears that Morrison gave them more than their money's worth last night.

Romeo and Juliet remind me why the arts belong in the schools

2011-04-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I attended a high school performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Harlem School of the Arts. I have been to high school productions before, even participated in them a long time ago, but they were all musicals.

Our high school musicals were very big productions. I went to a high school that had 1,800 students, and I would guess that 200 to 300 were involved in these shows whether they were in the cast, band, stage crew or helping with publicity. The only other activities that brought more people together were the football games.

But musicals discourage students who would like to act, but cannot sing, and not every school can afford to have a music teacher and a drama teacher in these times of austerity.

The Epic Theatre Ensemble works with four New York area high schools, including the Urban Assembly School of the Arts, which put on the production that I watched, are part of an ongoing series called Shakespeare Remix. Working with a professional actor/theatre educator, a playwright, a costume designer and a lighting technician, the students study a Shakespeare play, rewrite about a fifth of the text and perform it live.

I arrived about half an hour before this production to see Melissa Friedman, an Epic co-founder who leads the ensemble’s educational programming, take twenty students, and their principal, through a warm-up including tongue twisters and limbering exercises that are used to help professional actors get into character before the show.

While the tongue twisters were quite funny, and also quite provocative if said incorrectly, the students followed Melissa’s lead and took their job seriously. In one drill, each student says a line that stands out in their part. They cannot say that line again when the exercise is repeated. This helps each student remember the line, but also the proper way to enunciate it, especially important if the line was in the original Shakespeare text.

The group had made an urban adaption of Romeo and Juliet where the apothecary, a minor role in the original play, shares the narration with the officer who has arrested him. Drugs were important to the actors, as poison kills in the end. But what blew me away was the way the actors stepped into their roles and stayed in character through the entire production and through the post-production photo book work afterwards.

Probably few of these students will become actors, but acting has given them important skills that they can take with them to college and then to work. It builds confidence to stand up in front of others, teaches diverse people how to work in a group regardless of personal feelings and attachments, and in this case, improves reading and language skills.

Yet too many schools have sacrificed the arts in favor of other objectives such as better test scores or whatever elected leaders believe is necessary to help students keep up with their peers in places such as China, Finland or Singapore. Yet programs like Shakespeare Remix give students an appreciation of reading and writing that complements what they learn in a traditional classroom and gives them an experience they are less likely to forget.

Besides, schools are better off when they have activities other than music or sports that bring large groups together. While much time has been spent talking about individual achievement, students do not grow up to work as individuals. They need to learn how to lead, follow and listen, too.

The best questions to ask about an undergraduate business program

2011-04-26T07:59:00.000-07:00

Both the New York Times Education section and the Chronicle of Higher Education have run very similar stories about the "dumbing down" of undergraduate business education at four-year colleges. While these stories are largely anecdotal, they raise several points:

+ Business majors represent approximately one-fifth of all bachelors degrees in the U.S.
+ Business majors spend less time studying outside of class--approximately 11 hours per week--than students in other majors.
+ Business majors score lower on tests of college-level proficiency in reading, writing and critical thinking than students in other majors.
+ Business majors also--and this was a surprise--have the lowest mean scores on the Graduate Management Admissions Test, a nearly mandatory examination to apply to graduate business schools.
+ Business education has become less rigorous, almost as a silent agreement between teachers and students.

I have a MBA, but I do not believe that a business education is necessary to succeed in many areas of business. A bright student with an economics major, strong writing and communications skills and a high comfort level with statistics could become a fine financial analyst. Substitute psychology for economics and that student could potentially do well in market research or management consulting. Substitute any other major and that person could be effective in sales. There are only two areas where specific education is necessary: accounting and information systems.

However, as I make these points and academics make similar arguments, this logic goes against the on-campus recruitment practices of employers of choice. Unless an applicant comes from one of the most selective universities or liberal arts colleges, s/he will need a pre-professional major such as finance, human resource management or marketing. It is very difficult for an employer to ignore enthusiasm for the field.

With this in mind, I would like to share some questions that students and parents should ask when comparing undergraduate business programs. Obviously, a long list of recruiting employers will make a very strong impression. However, the academics should become more challenging and engaging as one gets further into their major.

+ How many students are enrolled in courses past the introductory class in the major? A junior-senior level class with over 100 people is likely to be a lecture class; a smaller class will be more interactive. However, lecture courses rely on tests that can be graded faster by a machine or a teaching assistant. These favor students with the best memories. Memory does not always mean proficiency.

+ How many classes offer case work versus group projects. A good business course should offer a mix of cases where students may work together, but each one turns in their own assignment, as well as a group project where students learn to work as a team. Some students will excel in problem solving while others are better team players. The best can do both, and it will show in a final grade. The rest still have a chance to learn their weaknesses as well as their strengths.

+ Are there opportunities to work on projects with real businesses? There is no challenge like making an impression on an employer or managing serious money for investors. Knowing that a problem is a real real-world problem sharpens thinking.

+ Is there a senior project or a capstone course that revolves around a major business problem that a student is likely to be asked to help solve in their first three years on the job? Employees are routinely assigned to work in teams whose members have different levels of expertise in different fields and asked to bond with people they do not know very well. Group projects come and go early in a business program, but task forces work for several months. Those experiences are tiring, but they are also tests of followership and leadership.

+ What percentage of the students graduate within four years? Business programs, like any other degree program on campus, add and remove courses all the time. Sometimes students must attend for an extra semester,or even an extra year, to complete all of the required classes. This is not something they appreciate after they have invested in two or three years of their education.

My impression, as I read the news stories, is that there is an over-supply of graduates with business-related majors. Dumbing down the coursework will only increase that, not to mention the schools continue to live under accusations of grade inflation. This is a losing proposition.

The solution for students is to find the school that will ask you to do a lot, but will put you through an experiential and rewarding education. The only way to find the right school is to ask the right questions early.

Did Rutgers president Richard McCormick make the right decision to cancel RutgersFest?

2011-04-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

Today I read in my local Trenton Times that Rutgers University president Richard McCormick has decided to cancel RutgersFest, a student-organized, campus-wide musical and carnival event that had run for 30 years. McCormick made the decision in the wake of two unrelated shootings near campus that involved college age persons who had no connection to the university.

RutgersFest, according to the story, did not even take place on the New Brunswick side of the campus. Divided by the Raritan River, the university's flagship campus is located in two towns: New Brunswick and Piscataway. The university acquired much of its land holdings in Piscataway when the U.S. Army deeded Camp Kilmer, a former military base, to them. The football stadium is perhaps the only building on the Piscataway side of the river that dates back more than half a century. This year's RutgersFest was held on the Piscataway side. Students and guests were bussed to and from the program, which attracted a reported audience of nearly 50,000 people.

But while the main event, a concert, ended at 8 PM, and it did not take place on the same side of the river as the shootings, the New Brunswick police chief blamed the university for inadequately addressing the city's security concerns. The reactions can best be described as over-reactions.

I understand why President McCormick decided to cancel the event for future years. Concerns about safety may or may not have stemmed from RutgersFest and he has the responsibility for the lives of the people who live and work on campus. This could be interpreted as doing the right thing.

However, RutgersFest is not the only campus event that attracts large audiences. The university plays six or seven home football games every season; in good years the average attendance has exceeded 40,000, just like RutgersFest. The alumni relations office runs a Rutgers Day held in late April in conjunction with several class reunions. Lastly, but not least, the university plans to host commencement in the football stadium next month, and Rutgers is a school that hands out a lot of degrees. All of these events are connected to informally organized social activities. Which leads me to ask: why was RutgersFest more difficult to secure than, for example, a football game?

But public relations-wise this school year has not been a good one for Rutger's main campus, which had become a more spirited place in recent years. The Tyler Clementi suicide; Eric LeGrand's spinal injuries; the poor record of a football team that was expected to have a promising season; Snooki-gate; and now these shootings are a lot for one campus community to face over two semesters. The university community came together over the tragedies, however the other incidents have embarassed the school in ways that put its profile in front of the state legislature at risk and likely hinder what has been a successful capital campaign. Cancelling RutgersFest was a decision that was within the president's control. So, he also did the right thing for different reasons.

Then there are the questions over student fees that have come out of Snooki-gate and RutgersFest. Should students be allowed to opt-out of them, as one legislator, Joe Kyrillos, a Republican, has proposed? Or should adults step in and set tighter conditions over how the monies collected from students are to be spent?

I would argue no, to the first question. the fees cover numerous student services and activities. While each and every student may not use each and every thing covered under their fees another student will. In addition, individual students should not be allowed to opt-out of all fees because the activities board brought in a speaker they didn't like.

While Snooki is no example of a scholar, she was an entertainer many students wanted to see. Toni Morrison will speak before a larger audience, but that is because the event is commencement. But, had the university offered a chance to hear her speak in a less formal setting, would she have drawn a larger student audience than Snooki? I've read many comments about the quality of the student body--if they invited Snooki, that says it all--but those are short-sighted and unfair. Anyone who took the time to look would see that Rutgers attracts many speakers on various topics and viewpoints, and the student affairs office handles any protests, as appropriate.

Should wiser adults step in and provide more direction on where student money should be spent? It depends. If these efforts are part of a marketing strategy that will still draw audiences, then sure. If they are intended to ban speakers that students would like to hear, then no, unless security cannot be provided for the speaker and the audience, while the event remained free of charge to the university community.

The Rutgers community probably could have re-designed RutgersFest to allay some of the security concerns. But the New Brunswick police chief might have been so adament about non-cooperation that nothing could have swayed him. Further, he would be free to speak his mind on any other matters of town-gown relations and campus security, and that would have been far more damaging to the reputation of the university in the eyes of many, including future prospective students and their families.

That, to me, was a risk that Richard McCormick could not afford to take. There will be no future RutgersFest because a police chief could not account for crimes in the neighboring community that did not involve students. It was not because Rutgers did anything wrong.

Jay Berwanger and the first NFL Draft

2011-04-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

I follow the NFL Draft more closely than I probably should because it is still the most interesting recruitment process for finding entry level talent that I know of. However, that was not always the case. Until the late 1950's, pro football did not have the same cache' as major league baseball or college football.

In 1936, the year of the first profssional football draft, the National Football League had only nine teams, eight of which still exist as franchises today: the Boston (now Washington) Redskins, Chicago Bears, Chicago (now Arizona) Cardinals, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Steelers). Only the Brooklyn Dodgers have been consigned to history.

In 1936 there was little air travel, nor televised college games, so reputations were made via radio and the print media. Aside from contacts with reporters and college coaches, professional football coaches had no better access to information about college players than the fans. The voting for the Downtown Athletic Club Trophy, later renamed the Heisman Trophy, upon the death of a famous coach, John Heisman, was done regionally, as it is today. No doubt the voters had as little information to rely on as the pro coaches of that day.

Eighty one players were selected in the original draft. Four: Joe Stuydahar (West Virginia/Chicago Bears), Tuffy Leemans (George Washington/New York Giants), Wayne Millner (Notre Dame/Washington Redskins) and Danny Fortmann (Colgate/Chicago Bears) would be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. One, Gomer Jones (Ohio State/Chicago Cardinals) would become a successful college coach at the University of Oklahoma, while another, Paul Bryant (Alabama/Brooklyn Dodgers) would become the winningest coach in college football for a long time.

While many of these players came from schools that have become traditional college football powers such as Notre Dame, Alabama, Ohio State and Stanford, others came from schools that have not attempted to qualify for the major bowl games for the last forty years. St. Mary's (CA) had three players taken in the first-ever draft. One, Eddie Erdelatz, later became the head coach at Navy as well as the first-ever coach of the Oakland Raiders. NYU's Ed Smith, taken in the third round by the Redskins, is the model for the running back figure that appears atop the Heisman Trophy.

Most significantly, the very first pick, Jay Berwanger, taken by the Philadelphia Eagles out of the University of Chicago, decided not to turn professional. He believed that a more lucrative career awaited him in the business world, so he became a foam rubber salesman while also writing a sports column for the Chicago Daily News. He also help coach players at Chicago and refereed college games.

After World War II, when he served as a naval officer, he set up Jay Berwanger, Inc., a manufacturer of plastic and sponge-rubber strips for car doors, trunks and farm machinery, based in a Chicago suburb. The business still operates today; its Web site still mentions Berwanger's athletic accomplishments.

While the University of Chicago has not been a sports-playing member of the Big Ten since 1949, and dropped football ten years earlier, Berwanger was awarded an Alumni Service Medal in 1984. He served as a member of the College Visiting Committee, chair of the President's Fund in 1993, and chair of his 55th and 60th alumni reunion committees.

Jay Berwanger might have never played a down as a professional football player, but he did set a good example for what a smart first-round pick could become, if he used his mind and managed his money right. There are far more opportunities in professional football than there were sixty five years ago, and a better chance for the best players to make money early in their working lives. Jay Berwanger did not start with those advantages, which makes his example all the more important.

Book Review-Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy by Ross Perlin

2011-04-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

With all of the employment problems in this country, Ross Perlin has managed to uncover issues with a class of workers that has never been previously researched: student interns. While this book is not exactly an expose, the author has done a thorough job of explaining how the public and private sector offer illegal unpaid internships, sometimes with the complicity of colleges and universities.

The book begins with a look at the Disney College Program in Orlando where college students live (and pay for) company-financed housing and work in low-wage jobs for college credit (which the students also pay for). Disney also attracts international students to work during the school year, arranges for H1-B visas and matches them with U.S. colleges that will offer credits in exchange for work. While students employed through this program earn nothing after housing and educational costs--classes are taught on the premises--and some earn negative incomes, this has become the primary pipeline by which Disney hires its permanent employees.

But Disney is by no means the only employer of low wage labor or free workers labeled as interns. Government agencies, elected officials, employers in supposedly glamorous industries like entertainment and sports, non-profits, Internet start-ups, and even financial institutions such as Merrill Lynch and Smith Barney rely heavily on free labor. In the public and not-for-profit sector, such work has been misleadingly described as volunteerism. In the private sector, such workers are described as "in training," although they may receive little to no training at all. Worse, they are not protected through employment insurance, workman's compensation or any labor laws.

Internships are also increasingly brokered not by the colleges, but by clearinghouses such as the Washington Center, which matches students with available internship positions in the federal government and the legislative branch and also arranges partial scholarships to defray the costs of attendance and living in the nation's capital to Dream Careers, a less reputable firm that purports to arrange college credits through Menlo College, a California-based business school. In the book, the president of Menlo calls the credits continuing education credits and not academic credits; the former are not accepted towards a degree by any college,including Menlo. In either case, legitimate or not, the clearinghouse charges tuition, arranges the work assignment and housing, and coordinates any additional academic instruction. The problem with these arrangements, while convenient for the employers, is that students cannot easily afford to pay for work.

Internships have also been auctioned for charity by noted employers such as Southeby's and American Vogue. These arrangements also favor students from well-to-do families. The author has quoted professionals from politics and the non-profit world who are often asked by their well-to-do contributors to find jobs for their sons or daughters. The problem is not just access, but that the children of the well-to-do are quite often given nothing to do.

The problem of free labor runs in conjunction with issues of student disengagement on college campuses. For example, this week's New York Times ran a story: The B-School Blahs, criticizing the lack of academic rigor and student work effort at undergraduate business schools. Business students spend less than eleven hours per week studying outside of class, and this population represents just over a fifth of all bachelor's degrees. Combine the lack of academic rigor in the classroom with more limited access to internships, and their more limited rigor and you have a less prepared managerial class. Hardly a prescription for sending knowledge workers into a modern economy.

Worse, employers ask colleges to become partners in this process by asking their career services offices, cooperative education programs and academic departments to certify their positions as being credit-worthy. This is a dangerous practice when the employer has no plans to tie the student's free employment to any academic objective. The employer promises exposure to a work setting. The vast majority of professionals at the colleges want promise of a work product. However, it is unfair of employers to ask college officials to certify a position as credit worthy to help an employer avoid paying the minimum wage, or any money at all.

These problems are not recent. Over the time of attending and paying for college and two graduate degrees I held seven internships; all but one was a paid position. However, the cost of education was much lower and the wages covered a greater share of my educational expenses. However, this was at a time when internships were easier to get if you had decent grades and a commitment to a major. There were also opportunities where students could act as consultants to employers to solve a business problem. These are actually better than unpaid internships because student remain on-campus, work under the guidance of a faculty member and still get the opportunity to develop and deliver a professional presentation.

Today, when a year at a state university costs over $20,000 and student loan debts easily exceed that amount, the thought of paying to work in a job related to a major is more absurd. While there are major employers and organizations such as Inroads that attempt to arrange good jobs at a fair wage, there is far too much emphasis on a pay-to-work model.

The audience for Intern Nation appears to be career counselors and human resource professionals, but the problem is more serious for students and their families. While it is true that people need to invest in a career--there is so much talk about a 'Brand-Called-You'--the author points out that we have reached the time where parents and students have been asked to invest too much.

An expert system helps students choose college courses--and inadvertantly helps improve their grades

2011-04-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

Today I read a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education about an "expert system" used at Austin Peay State University (TN) and also used at the University of Colorado flagship campus in Boulder to help students choose their courses. The use of this system has supposedly improved student grades while making course selection more convenient.

The expert system makes recommendations for students based on their intended major, past academic performance, and data on how similar students fared in that class. I would also presume that time required to graduation, course availability and degree requirements are factored in.

This is a brilliant use of technology to help students complete their degrees and while reducing the burdens on faculty who serve as academic advisers. The student keeps up with their progress while the adviser can lend his opinion on the courses s/he knows best. The story mentioned concerns that students would be led to "gut" courses, but so far that has not been the case. The school's tools can also be used in conjunction with sites such as RateMyProfessor.com to get a more complete picture of every course option.

I hope this is a concept that expands to other schools. It can work very well in any type of academic setting, from a liberal arts school where few courses are actually devoted to a major and complementary classes are highly desired, or to a highly structured business or engineering degree program where students become less aware of the large choice of courses that are available outside their major, but still required to earn a degree.

The same is true for community colleges where there are students interested in transferring to a four-year school as well as students who are interested in a pre-professional degree program.

When I was involved in software development, I learned that projects often follow a series of decision questions, including:

+ Can the tasks that will be addressed by the software package be eliminated without developing it?

In this case the colleges would be dropping academic advising. While a recently and positively reviewed book, Academically Adrift, mentioned that students rarely consulted professors at all but the most selective liberal arts schools--which oddly enough makes a justification to eliminate academic advising from faculty workloads--students do need and often appreciate direction when it is thoughtful and well-presented. So, the answer here is no; students still need advising.

+ Can the tasks that will be addressed by the software package be simplified?

This was possible at Austin Peay, the lead school in the storybecause the school had access to student information as well as the student evaluations and grades in every faculty member's classes, class schedules and degree program requirements. If the package was never developed, students would be forced to chase down all of this information and juggle catalogs, past evaluations and class schedule forms.

The school used all of this data to develop an automated and personalized course catalog that works much like Amazon.com. It takes your past history of "purchases," in this case previous courses and past "customer satisfaction," in this case evaluations and grades from students similar to you and comes up with a personalized set of recommendations. This simplifies course selection, respects the student as an individual, and respects the faculty adviser's time.

So, the answer to the second question is yes.

+ Can the tasks that will be addressed be performed by the software in such a way that human interaction is not required?

This is very hard to answer. I would guess this is possible at a larger school where pre-professional degree programs are highly structured with very few electives. The number of courses that a student can choose from would be smaller. As these students got further into their major they would lack pre-requisites to take many advanced courses in subjects outside their major.

This, by the way, is the reason that many schools offer the so-called "gut" courses. The "guts" are considered to be more entertaining than the introductory lecture classes while also having the course numbers that are assigned to advanced classes.

But I don't believe that an expert system could completely replace academic advising in a liberal arts school. There are too few courses needed to complete a major, and not all of them have pre-requisites. And the choice of electives is far too large.

However, the right mix of technology and good advice is a win all around at any type of school. Kudos to Austin Peay, Colorado and other schools that have gotten on this bandwagon.

Online education can work in elementary and secondary schools--if the right conditions are in place

2011-04-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

During last week's Education Writer's Association conference, I listened to a panel presentation by Kristi Kipp, the national Online Teacher of the Year, who works in Jefferson County, Colorado. The Jefferson County school district offers online courses full-time to at-risk students and part-time to students who are enrolled in traditional brick and mortar schools.

Online courses and virtual schools have become more popular offering supplemental instruction as well as complete curricula to students. However, evidence that online education is working well in elementary and secondary education has been mainly anecdotal, stories of past achievements.

However, Kristi pointed out clear attributes of quality that must be part of an online class. She added that quality in an online is not necessarily less expensive than quality in a traditional class. Some points:

+ Courses cannot be online textbooks; they must have broader content that will also hold student attention. The technology and support materials, if purchased from a vendor, are not totally customizable.
+ Teachers must know the technology involved, as well as its strengths and limitations.
+ The one-to-one interaction between teachers and students cannot be lost. Neither can the opportunity for give and take in question and answer classes.
+ The teacher's personality must shine through; students must know that s/he is human.
+ Expectations for each student must be communicated early and students must be respected as individuals--just as a good teacher does in a brick and mortar class room.
+ Teachers do not necessarily need to be dynamic lecturers, but they do need to be articulate.
+ The online program must help students who cannot attend traditional classes so that they may keep up. Online courses are used, for example, to instruct students who have been hospitalized for long periods of time.
+ Teachers must interact with parents online as well as the students.
+ To make this happen, the school district must be capable of putting the right technology in parent's hands.

While online education can be effective under these conditions there are still disadvantages.

+ Students "go MIA." They can leave their desks and the teacher would not know that they left.
+ Learning, for reporting purposes, is based on traditional concepts such as seat time and in-class attendance. Since hours in an online setting are not necessarily fixed, these concepts are outdated.
+ Online schools cannot offer several of the same extracurricular activities as traditional schools such as team sports, plays or music ensembles.

I understand all of the points that Kristi made, but what I do not understand is why online education for elementary and secondary school students is perceived to be less expensive than traditional classes. While it is true that students do not need to be bussed or driven to school and that large classroom buildings become less necessary:

+ Teachers still need to use blackboard and other visual aids that they use in traditional classrooms. It's doubtful that PowerPoint is a more effective aid to coach kids through math problems or breaking down sentence structure, among other activities.

+ Teachers need to know where to place cameras so that students may see everything from distances as well as up close. For example, showing a scene where the teacher works through a math problem or a musical composition might be filmed from a longer distance than a scene showing only the problem or the musical notes.

+ Those cameras must deliver clear images and sound and so must the student computers. To be effective, every student needs to have the same equipment.

+ The best learning materials are interactive. For instance, a student who works through a math problem or a verb conjugation will need to know if they got the correct answer immediately. This is more expensive than broadcasting a lecture.

+ The one-to-one interaction between teacher and student is not limited to the classroom. Teachers would need their home offices set up to work with students via computers if they need to speak with students or their parents after-hours.

+ Because the one-to-one interactions are so important, classroom sizes cannot be larger than they are in a traditional setting.

In the end, regardless of whether a classroom is online or in a school building, the difference will be the effort and quality of the teacher. But when politicians change evaluation systems to favor testing, eliminate collective bargaining rights

Book Review--Politics and Pasta: How I Prosecuted Mobsters, Rebuilt a Dying City, Dined with Sinatra, Spent Five Years in a Federally Funded Gated Community, and Lived to Tell the Tale by Vincent "Buddy" Cianci Jr.

2011-04-13T21:29:00.000-07:00

For the first eight years of my working life, I was quite involved in the politics of downtown redevelopment in a large city, Newark, New Jersey and I still follow these issues as a writer. But good books on the art of big city politics are rare and far between. This one is good because a former mayor, now talk show host, tells all as much as he can.

A doctor's son, Vincent 'Buddy' Cianci was mayor of Providence, Rhode Island for 21 years. The second largest city in New England, with nearly 160,000 people while Cianci was mayor, Providence is considered a national success story in urban redevelopment, especially historic preservation. It is also a state capital and a major college town, led by Brown University, Johnson and Wales and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Read this book, as well Mike Stanton's Prince of Providenceto get the full picture of the behind-the-scenes negotiations that made Providence the envy of large cities. After reading both books, you'll be intrigued, but you will also want to take a cold shower.

Providence and Rhode Island politics are as nasty as things get, though the state has elected patrician governors and senators such as Bruce Sundlin, Claiborne Pell and John and Lincoln Chaffey who give it a less tarnished image than it deserves. However, Stanton's book calls Rhode Island "the Louisiana of the North" when it comes to state politics. That's not exactly a complement.

But when I read the mayor's view of things, I laugh and accept the reality of his office. I also admire him. Few mayors get elected five times to try to solve a big city's problems. Not that Cianci lacked ambition for higher office or a new job, he just never got the timing down. He lost a race for governor and backed away from opportunities to run for the U.S. Senate when Republicans asked him to step aside for another candidate.

Only 33 when he was first elected in 1974, Cianci was a Republican at a time when a Republican administration still held the White House, but had suffered devastating losses at the polls. While noted as a Democratic stronghold, Cianci developed a strong relationship with Gerald Ford, and was brought into the inner circle of his losing campaign. But he delivered the state for Ford and he would help to put Rhode Island securely in the Reagan column four years later. He wanted to become a U.S. ambassador after Reagan was elected, but later resigned from the party when he was asked to come up with a $100,000 donation to a presidential war chest.

While his first term got off to a shaky start, including a snow storm, Cianci worked the art of politics, of deals and compromises, better than any northeastern mayor. He banned discrimination against homosexuals in local businesses and public hiring because he needed the gay community as a voting bloc. He also won favor with numerous ethnic groups, important as Providence is extremely diverse. But his greatest victories involved reshaping the city's waterfronts.

In the book he denies ever taking payoffs, though he cites others who did. However, the FBI was able to use RICO predicates to send him to jail during his last term. He does admit, however, that patronage, the use of jobs to curry favors, was a practice he could never avoid.

When I read this book I understand the mayor and want to laugh along with him--there are many punchlines here--but I would imagine those unaccustomed to big city urban politics will cringe. All I can tell them is that the more familiar fiction, The Last Hurrah and All the King's Menis not far beyond belief. Just ask Buddy.

Better yet, read his book and read Stanton's too. Anyone who is angry at the federal government would learn how the federal money really works when it is applied properly. They might not be so quick to stop their representatives from bringing home the bacon during their time in Washington.

The Donald for President. Is that really so far-fetched?

2011-04-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

I don't see what the fuss has been over Donald Trump as a potential presidential candidate. While The Apprentice and his glibness have kept him in the public eye for more than 30 years, the nation is used to seeing wealthy men and women--I can't exclude Hillary Clinton--seek the highest office. We have even seen billionaires such as Michael Bloomburg and Jon Corzine win election; one has succeeded beyond expectations, the other failed badly in the end.

The problem with Trump is not his wealth, or even his mannerisms, but his lack of alignment with any type of political base. Hiring an investigator to pursue President Obama's birth records might seem like an appeal to the Tea Party crowd, but he has also supported Democrats when it suited his business interests. He might have conservative views on some issues--the news coverage says that he is 'pro-life' and 'pro-gun'--but he has shown that he will work with anybody who will help him get a favorable ruling on his projects. That makes him no different from any other real estate developer who operates in his arena.

But the modern Republican base is not interested in bi-partisanship, so his past business dealings and campaign contribution history could become a liability. Conservative Republicans are interested in iron-handedness whether they lead half of one legislative branch or both houses plus the White House.

I cannot see a Trump candidacy or a Trump presidency being so blatantly right wing because The Donald is about The Ask and The Deal. He doesn't care who would vote for what he wants or what party they belong to, as long as he gets what he wants. I could imagine President Trump backing both Democrats and Republicans who are running for re-election, because The Donald is not about We the People; he is about I the Donald. I don't believe he would put party before The Deal.

If Trump were to ask me what I thought about him making a run, I would tell him to declare before any of the Republicans do and run directly against Obama. Forget the primaries and make your own schedule. I would want him to grab attention early, because I know he would hold on. I would tell him to prepare for the negatives early--three marriages, the fiscal woes of the casino business, the hard-handed tactics used by real estate developers, his celebrity, and simply being from New York. Once he gets those out of the way--and he would handle his negatives better than any other candidate--he can match wits and quips with anybody, even Obama.

I don't know how voters everywhere will react to his vanity. Even when he plays golf, he is neatly coiffed, not a spec or dirt touches him, no hair blows out of place. We are used to candidates who take off their jackets and roll up their sleeves on the campaign trail, possibly to be more comfortable, but presumably to look more like regular guys. George W. Bush had this down to perfection, which is one reason he won two presidential elections when he deserved to win none. But no jacket and rolled up sleeves are so unlike The Donald. But who knows, maybe he doesn't sweat in the sun or the bright lights.

What happens as flagship state schools go private?

2011-04-12T21:14:00.000-07:00

Why is a top state university like a popular Japanese car? Answer: some people pay over list price to get the same thing. And this will be a continuing trend. More and more of the leading state universities will be opening their doors to out-of-state students, especially those who can pay close to a private college tuition for the experience of attending their school.

I understand why this is happening. State universities have continually lost state support in real dollars while state governments have also cut back on financial aid to their own residents. More out of state students paying full freight can make up the difference.

This was less of a concern when I was looking at colleges more than thirty years ago as the differences in cost between attending the home state university and going to a similar school out-of-state could be made up within only two or three years of income.

But today, for example, the difference between going to Rutgers, my state university and the University of Maryland is about $12,000 a year. I'd be wary about paying an additional $50,000 or more over four years to go to any school. I don't know if I could make up the additional debt over ten years from the "premium" of paying to go to a school that might have been better than my in-state option. And, as state schools shift the proportion of their student bodies to welcome more out-of-state students, they could shut the door on needy students in their own states.

So, here's what I wonder. Since state schools are becoming more welcoming to out-of-state students, then why not abolish the concept of a state university? Put all financial aid under a federal system with three parts: grants, loans and vouchers. Here is how this might work.

+ Each college bound student would receive a voucher equal to one-third the average tuition of all universities--public, private or for-profit. Let's say, for sake of round numbers, that this amount is $10,000. This would be considered as the public subsidy that the state provides to educate each student. No state would subsidize their schools anymore.

+ Each student who had greater need would receive an additional grant which could be as high as $10,000, depending on the cost of the college they are attending. This grant would be tied to household income. For the sake of round numbers, lets say that all households earning under $50,000 would get $10,000 and the amount goes down by $2,500 for each additional $25,000 in household income. So, a $75,000 family income means $7,500 per student; $100,000 means $5,000; $125,000 means $2,500. Over $150,000 means zero.

+ Each student may borrow the difference in the form of an interest subsidized loan; the interest is covered for a total of eight semesters or four years. After that, the student and/or their family must pay the interest.

+ Each former state school would be free to set whatever price they believe the market will bear. The school would then have the option of providing matching grants to aid those students they want the most, and also need financial aid. While state governments would not be forbidden from providing grants or work-study jobs, these would be required to be need-based. The school would still be allowed to use any scholarship money they raise on their own for the purposes their donors intended.

+ Privately supported schools would be free to provide their own match as well.

These actions would simplify the financial aid process for all students. Enter your income once and you get the amount you can work with. Less need for bureaucracy to make financial aid decisions. State governments could also take themselves out of the financial aid business as the money they now administer and award would be awarded at a federal level instead. They could still subsidize students if their voters wanted to.

As state schools welcome more out-of-state students and cease to become state-supported, they essentially become private schools. Only now, some state governments are less capable of subsidizing higher education--and some always will be, because they do not have a diverse economic base. California, for example, or Texas have major commercial and industrial centers, as does North Carolina. However, New Hampshire, Vermont and North Dakota do not.

It might actually be less expensive for the policy makers in those states to send all of their students out-of-state than it is to for them to operate a state university to keep them at home. While the thought of closing down a flagship school is beyond belief, the idea of helping a student to go anywhere they want, while encouraging the school to show their intentions, is not so far-fetched.

I know this sounds like a conservative Republican idea, but these thoughts make the more sense than status quo. Assuming they are more liberally funded than a conservative Republican would usually accept.

Q and A about the 'other' college admissions test-- the ACT

2011-04-11T19:12:00.000-07:00

Growing up in the Seventies, the SAT was the college admissions test that was most accepted by higher education institutions across the country. Midwestern and southern schools required the ACT, at least for their state residents. The more selective schools also required achievement tests--now known as SAT IIs in Language Arts, Mathematics and a subject of the student's choice.

Today, according to Ed Colby, senior media relations associate at ACT, the ACT examination is also accepted at practically every college as the SAT. I met Ed last week and asked if he could share some information about the ACT and how it compares with the SAT. I would like to thank Ed for for his time and his answers below.

+ How is the ACT structured and how is it different from the SAT? Is there
academic research behind the differences between the two tests? Do they
predict different things with respect to college admissions?

The ACT is and has always been a curriculum-based achievement exam that
measures the knowledge and skills taught in schools and deemed important
for success in first-year college coursework.

It is much like an end-of-course exam, designed to assess what students have learned in school, everything from basic to advanced skills in each subject area. The idea behind the ACT is that by measuring what students have learned so far,
we can predict how ready they are to successfully perform at the next level
-- that is, in first-year college courses.

The SAT began as an aptitude test. More recently, it has been described by the College Board as a reasoning skills or critical thinking test, but I'm not sure they use those terms to describe it today. It is not an achievement exam, but I would defer to the College Board in describing what, exactly, it is, and what specifically it is designed to predict.

There are four required exams in the ACT (English, mathematics, reading, and science) plus an optional essay-based Writing Test. The SAT has three required tests (reading, mathematics, and writing), and its essay test is mandatory. Both tests are designed to measure college readiness -- likely success in first-year college coursework.

+ How is the ACT organized to be taken on a test day?

The ACT tests are administered in the following order: English (75
questions, 45 minutes), Mathematics (60 questions, 60 minutes), Reading (40
questions, 35 minutes), Science (40 questions, 35 minutes), Writing
(optional; 1 essay, 30 minutes). The total testing time is 2 hours, 55
minutes for the ACT without writing and 3 hours, 25 minutes for the ACT
Plus Writing.

With the exception of the optional writing test (which requires students to write an essay response), all ACT test questions are multiple choice in format. .

+ Given how traditional college students take either the SAT or ACT or
possibly both during the second half of their junior year in high school,
what is the best way for these students to prepare in advance for the ACT?
Do prep courses help in any way to raise a score between the first and
second time a student takes the test?

Because the ACT is designed to measure what students have learned in
school, the best way for students to prepare for the ACT is to take the
most challenging courses they can, study hard, and learn the material.

There is simply no substitute for long-term academic preparation. The data
we have seen suggest that test prep courses have only minor positive impact
on performance on the ACT. However, the effects of taking advanced
coursework in school can be clearly and easily demonstrated in our annual
score reports.

On a short-term basis, the best thing students can do is to take one or
more practice ACT tests (available for free on our website --
actstudent.org) to familiarize themselves with the format of the tests and the types of questions asked. We strongly urge all students to take a practice test before they take the actual exam. If they want additional test prep, we suggest they focus on content-based reviews of course
material.

+ Between the ACT and the SAT, which test would be less difficult for a
non-traditional student, someone who has not been in school for some time,
to prepare for?

That question is really impossible to answer, I'm afraid. There are so many
different variables that can impact performance on the exams. If someone
who has been out of school for an extended period wants to take the ACT, we
would recommend they prepare by reviewing the types of knowledge and skills
they learned in school, as those are what the ACT measures. They can learn
a lot by taking a practice test (again, offered free on our website) to
assess their current academic strengths and weaknesses.

+ Are ACT scores a valid indicator of the quality of the student body of a
college and a high school?

ACT scores are an indicator of how much students have learned in school.
They can be and often are used to measure student learning at a particular
school, district, and/or state, particularly when all students take the
exam. However, the ACT does not measure quality. It measures only learning,
which can be impacted by a wide variety of factors.

+ Does the ACT as a corporation believe that:
--Colleges have placed too much emphasis on test scores, too little or just
the right amount?
--Parents have placed too much emphasis on test scores, too little or just
the right amount?
--College-bound students have placed too much emphasis on test scores, too
little or just the right amount?
--High school guidance counselors have placed too much emphasis on test
scores, too little or just the right amount?

The answer to these questions will vary from college to college, parent to
parent, student to student, and counselor to counselor.

What I can tell you is this: ACT urges colleges to use ACT scores as just one of many factors to determine whether or not a student applicant is ready for success at
their institution; ACT scores should never be used as the sole criterion
for making high-stakes decisions about a student. And we're not aware of
any colleges or universities that do not abide by this recommendation.

Most colleges consider test scores along with grades, courses taken, class rank,
involvement in activities, references, etc., when making admission decisions. So, students, parents, and counselors should be aware that a student's ACT score, while important, is not the be-all, end-all in college admission decisions.

Over-ambitious Louisiana state scholarship program is not the tops

2011-04-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

During the Education Writer's Association conference last week, I briefly met Louisiana State University president John Lombardi, who had spoken after a panel on degree completion rates. A conservative state, Louisiana has one of the most liberal college tuition assistance programs in the country.

Under the Taylor Opportunity Program Scholarships aka TOPS, any student who has at least a 2.5 grade-point-average and a 20 or better on the ACT can go to any public university in-state for free, depending on space available. Other assistance called Go-Grants is provide for needier students. TOPS is broken into three incentive categories based on GPA and ACT scores; the lowest performing students get only tuition and some fees, the best get as much as an extra 800 bucks. The state's brochure shows that standards for each award have had to be raised.

I asked Dr. Lombardi what the cost of a LSU education was, and he told me that "you could get it for $1.95 through TOPS." Lombardi has already gone on record in opposing the program, and he is right to do so. This is Huey Long socialism at its finest.

For one thing, this program was intended to keep the brightest students in-state after they finished college. According to Dr. Lombardi, they have left instead. Louisiana does not have a labor market that can absorb all of these graduates.

Secondly, the in-state tuition at the state schools is significantly lower than comparable schools in other states. LSU charges the fourth-lowest tuition in its sports conference after Florida, Mississippi and Mississippi State. Out-of-state tuition is slightly less than $15,000 and a significant seventeen percent of the student body comes from outside Louisiana. Other Louisiana state-supported universities, including Grambling, Louisiana Tech, McNeese State and Southern University, among others, charge even less than LSU.

Third, the incentive is not tied to academic progress in future years. It's one thing to get the scholarship as a freshman. If you have tuition free then you supposedly do not have to work as many hours, and therefore you have more time to study. Yet the lowest tier, the Opportunity Scholarship calls for a minimum GPA of only 2.3 in the freshman year and 2.5 for all other years. The other two tiers, which have tuition plus incentives, require the student to maintain a B average or better.

Fourth, I have to wonder if this structure is also a disincentive to declare a challenging major such as a STEM subject: science, technology, engineering or mathematics. Incentives are usually planned around directing students to majors where there is a high level of employer demand, but too few degree candidates. However, TOPS favors students who declare easier majors and encourages grade inflation. Professors do have a heart for those students who need a scholarship to
stay in school.

Last, while LSU, according to the latest U.S. News Guide, retains 84 percent of its freshmen and graduated sixty one percent of its 2004 entrants within six years, the other Louisiana public institutions performed far more poorly. Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana Tech, two examples, graduated less than half of their 2004 entrants within six years. TOPS support is available for only eight semesters or four years. This leads me to believe that too much TOPS money was wasted on students who could not graduate on time.

TOPS, while well-intentioned, is the result of what happens when a state goes overboard to provide college for everyone. Hand out too many awards and too many people will line up to take them. If that line gets too long, as in overcrowded classes, then everyone's education suffers. The best students who didn't need the money will leave; they can afford something better. Too many others will have been give too easy a ride.

However, you cannot just wave a wand and take away a program like TOPS overnight. Too many students are dependent on these scholarships; at these low hurdles its got to be like a crack addiction. The best solution is to allow current students who are making adequate progress to finish their degrees under TOPS support, then revise requirements beginning with entering freshmen this year. TOPS costs Louisiana citizens $139 million that could be better spent on assisting the neediest students or allocated in direct aid to the universities themselves to strengthen academics or the student life experience.

A talk by two teacher's union leaders

2011-04-11T12:21:00.000-07:00

As part of attending the Education Writers Association conference last week, I had the privilege to listen to Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers as they shared the podium.

Both argued that the changes in the political mindset, where teachers are the solution to all problems, but also the cause of all ills, are not causes about budgeting or debt, but about neutralizing the voices of professionals who have usually had a very powerful voice. "Quality," they stated, is used by opponents to justify cuts, when it should not.

Had Van Roekel or Weingarten gone into examples of where collaboration between unions and school boards and/or state government had been constructive, and devoted their time to discussing them, I would have been swayed more by their talk. Instead, they denied that reported problems in labor relations did not exist--to an audience of reporters. For example:

+ "Last-in, first-out does not exist in any public school system. Different teaching positions have different qualifications and certification requirements."

True, but the more experience teachers often switch between elementary and secondary grades, and they can rely on their past credentials to "save" them when they are in danger of losing their jobs. This is one reason why the "lemon dance," where bad teachers are constantly reassigned to new jobs, exists today. As data collection on teachers and students becomes more sophisticated and fair evaluation protocols are defined, the lemon dance should end.

+ "Bad teachers are the fault of the hiring process and the lack of effort on development on the administrative level."

If they had said that peer teachers should be part of the hiring process in any school system I would not argue. However, I also wonder if this is possible in every school, especially schools where turnover is dramatic and the principal must over-rely on permanent substitutes.

I would also wonder if traditional teachers would treat teachers sourced from alternate routes such as Teach for America with enough tact to develop a more inclusive hiring process. I don't see peer interviewing being a problem in schools in well-to-do communities.

Where I do agree is that the hiring process must also have a better firing process. Blatant and obvious misconduct should be answered with immediate dismissal. The time frame from citation to hearing should be faster. I would think that would be in the union's best interest, too. A slot once occupied by an unprofessional teacher can be filled by someone better qualified who might also be more valued.

+ "Teachers do not peak after two years." I won't argue. But the same is true of any worker in any other profession. The difference with teachers is that children are their primary customers. Understanding the mind of a child is not easier than understanding the mind of a peer adult in a workplace.

+ "Tenure has been used as an excuse not to evaluate teachers. Evaluation is more about continuous improvement than 'gotcha'."

The leaders of both unions are for fair evaluation processes, though I wish they spent some time discussing how this is working on a local level. They agree that evaluation should not be overly based on test results. I agree, too.

However, the national union exists to guide the locals, at least to share best practices. I have not seen that in New Jersey. But also to be fair, Van Roekel and Weingarten did say that the unions should have shown more leadership on evaluation in the past, and they did not.

+ "Never allow a principal to not be a teacher." This was an answer to my question about contrasts in leadership development.

Two types of school leaders stand out. The first are principals who started as teachers and pursued graduate degrees at night while they became tenured in their school system. The second are former Teach for America corps members who go to graduate school, often not in education but in fields such as law or public policy, then move into positions of authority shortly after.

I see the case for both. The traditional leader has taught with the teachers around them and is more likely to be capable of managing the dynamics than a total newcomer. However, this is not as true for schools where teachers and school leaders are frequently in transition.

Listening to this panel, I wondered about the relationship between the national and local unions. Randi Weingarten has shown a willingness to try new approaches such as union collaboration in New York City charter schools as well as realistic proposals for the Newark schools that can work with some tweaking. However, each and every local and state bargaining relationship has its unique history--and they are not all good.

In New Jersey the voters did not merely get mad about teacher's union contracts; they got even by electing Chris Christie, who is firmly anti-union, to be their governor. Other states like Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida have also elected governors who were more fiscally conservative than their predecessors. Clearly the voters in these states believed that teachers have benefits packages or pensions that are more generous than their own, and they asked their governor for a change.

I would agree that these governors, especially Christie, have gone overboard with their demands on teachers with respect to performance standards and merit, and yes, taking away the union voice. Other professions participate in the process by which their ethics, qualifications and standards are regulated, teachers should, too. However, in other fields additional credentials do not mean automatic pay raises or job protections that may be stated in union contracts.

I can understand that unions would not want to work their way backwards on hard-fought gains, but it is up to their leadership to find ways to win when conservative politics are in vogue. States must meet obligations to their retired teachers, as well as those approaching the end of a long career. However, they must redefine career paths and compensation strategies for the youngest generation of teachers. These teachers will not be satisfied with little feedback nor low annual raises such as the two percent increases proposed by Chris Christie, so they will leave.

I'd say the union leaders are on to one area, teacher evaluations, where they might be able to find common ground. Otherwise future governors will continue to announce that there are more failing schools that are also losing good teachers. And that is a losing proposition all around.

Will a former LSU football hero and New Orleans business leader fall from grace?

2011-04-09T20:45:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite sports novels is Everybody's All American. Written by Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford, who was also publisher of The National, a short-lived sports daily, it is the story of a college football player who goes downhill from his glory days.

The story, set at the University of North Carolina in the 1950's, was made into a movie starring Dennis Quade and Jessica Lange. While the book is a tale of a tragedy in North Carolina, the movie was reset as a Louisiana love story. This was due to weather when the movie was filmed and Quade's being a native of that state.

The hero, Gavin Gray, aka the Gray Ghost, is treated like a god in college and through the beginning of his pro career. His star fades after he can no longer play, though hero worshippers hang on to listen to the stories of his big games. Eventually the stories become so big, Gavin wonders who he is as an adult, and sadly, some of the people who have worshipped him have also cheated him. His best friend, who blocked for him in college, runs his restaurant into the ground and robs him blind. The local Chevy dealer who tries to lease him a car for a buck while he is a star, steals the restaurant in bankruptcy. Gavin lives the rest of his working life as an assistant manager of a golf course.

Why I am writing about an old book and an old movie? Because I have just read of a former college football player I knew personally. While not as mythical as Gavin Gray, his story is also set in Louisiana.

Recruited as a quarterback out of John Curtis High School in New Orleans, Steve Rehage played defensive back for LSU in the early 1980's. A co-captain, Steve was not only a leader on his team, he was also one of the players who had the honor of feeding Mike the Tiger, the legendary LSU mascot, during the season. Projected as a fifth round draft choice, he injured his knee and was forced to miss most of his senior season. Fortunately Steve had been red-shirted as a freshman, so he was able to complete his degree in finance within five years.

During the 1987 season the NFL went on strike. Steve had gotten tryouts from the Chiefs and the Chargers before the season, then the New York Giants called. They offered him a job as a replacement player. He started three games, intercepting a pass in his last one against the Redskins. But once the striking players returned Steve was cut. He hooked on with the Ottawa Rough Riders, playing on a horrible two-win team.

After leaving football Steve lived in Greece and he did commercials in Japan. I met him after that while he was working for an entertainment and sports marketing firm in Newark. My employer and his had considered working together on some projects, though they did not come to fruition. However, Steve was a good guy who told me many stories about playing for LSU and the Giants as well as life in New Orleans. I love to watch college and pro football, however I was far from good enough to play the sport at any age.

Steve told me everything I could possibly want to know about the game and did not make me feel inadequate about what I didn't know. But the longer I got to know him I realized that he, like Gavin Gray, probably got tired of my questions and telling old football stories. He had friends who were playing in the NFL and he shared their stories, too. But I should have been smart enough to realize that he wanted to move on.

The last time I saw Steve he told me that he was returning home to New Orleans to put on events at the Superdome. Shortly after, he formed his own marketing firm. In 1999, he created a major musical event called the Voodoo Experince, which runs annually every fall. The festival brings over a million people to New Orleans around Halloween. He has also produced the Essence Music Festival every July--until this year. Unlike Gavin Gray, Steve Rehage became a star in his life after football. LSU may remember him as a football player, but he has become a better businessman.

However, when I was in New Orleans this weekend, I read on the front page of the Times-Picayune, the local paper, that Steve had been accused of date rape. A woman has alledged that in November he slipped her a drug cocktail during a drink-heavy date. The local district attorney now plans to bring his case before a grand jury. Here are links to the November story, LSU fan reactions and the story I read this weekend.

Everybody's All American, Gavin Gray, was not a completely moral man; he had quite a love life outside his home while he was in the pro game. However, he was not a philanderer in his post-sports life. But his wife became tired of competing with his legend for attention. In the book his marriage becomes irreparably damaged. In the movie his wife decides to save him from his past.

While the recent story mentions that Steve has never married nor been a father, like Gavin Gray, I can't help but say "say it isn't so." LSU and Louisiana revere their sports heroes, probably more than they should. But Steve Rehage earned respect for more than his game.

Should he be found guilty the tragedy will impact more than the image of a school and its football team. It will resonate within a healing city and its business community, both of which Steve helped to make stronger.

College ready by 16? It might not be impossible

2011-04-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

I've been attending the Education Writer's Association conference in New Orleans for the past three days. One theme that has run through several panels is college readiness--are students as prepared for college as they should be, even if their transcripts and test scores say they are?

One panel featured, among others, the president of Pima Community College, located in the Tuscan (AZ) metropolitan area. One of the largest community colleges in the U.S., Pima enrolls over 74,000 students. This year, according to Dr. Roy Flores, Pima's president, the college faces a 55 percent budget cut and it must cut enrollment by ten percent. The college will do this by referring the students who show the poorest results on their math and language arts placement tests to their adult school--and not enroll them as college students.

This appears to be a drastic measure. Community colleges are usually regarded as open admissions institutions that serve many constituents. Most enroll for the purposes of enrichment or employment; they take only a course or sequence of courses to help with an immediate objective. Less than one in five students actually earns an associate's degree. Of those students, the majority need to take at least one remedial course, sometimes two to four, to relearn material that is taught at a high school or even middle school level. On the panel Dr. Flores said that Pima was a great community college in a America, "but not the best middle school in America."

Community college students are asked to take placement tests because they usually have no other numbers behind them. They may be non-traditional students who are returning to school after taking no coursework for several years or they may be recent high school graduates who did not take college prep courses or one of the standardized tests, the SAT or ACT, that other students take when they apply to four-year schools. According to Dr. Flores, the test results are matched to probabilities. Students who score in the lowest percentiles in math and language arts, and need the most remedial help, typically have a five percent chance of earning an associates degree.

Remedial education has not only become a necessity; it has also become an industry. There are test preparation courses for the placement examinations to help students place out of the lower level courses, or worse, to help them pass after failing on previous attempts. If college were inexpensive and jobs were plentiful the issue of remediation would not be so alarming, but in a state like New Jersey, where I live, where community college tuition is $6,000 per year, the costs of repeating courses can add up. Two-year degrees can turn into 30 month or three-year degrees. More likely remediation leads to no degree at all.

So here I wonder, after asking not only Dr. Flores, but also Bruce Vandal of the Education Commission of the States, a non-partisan policy organization, and Michael Collins, director of Boston-based Jobs for the Future, which designs blended education and job training programs for high school students, why not have high school students take the community college placement tests earlier--as in the tenth grade? State-mandated high school exit examinations are geared towards a ninth or tenth grade knowledge level. California is leading the way along these lines.

Basically, the community college placement examinations, if given towards the end of tenth grade, would replace the exit examination, sometimes known as a "high-stakes test." Students who pass these examinations would be certified as ready to attend college, at least at the community college level. Students who do not would be given remediation beginning in summer after tenth grade or at the start the eleventh grade. At the end of that year these students would be tested again. They would either receive continued remediation or they will have earned their readiness stripes.

Students who do not need remediation could continue in a college prep or pre-employment course of their choice at their high school, community college or local four-year college--at their school district's expense. There is no reason why college credits could not be applied to a high school diploma, especially at a time when more and more advanced placement courses taken in high schools are applied to bachelor's degrees at four-year colleges.

The worlds of K-12 and higher education at the community college level need to work together to turn ideas like this into "win-win-win" for students, parents and themselves. Neither system can afford to operate in its own silo during difficult economic times. Both need to manage costs better but they also need to produce better results. At the same time they must both join to create a meaningful education experience for the same students.

Pretty soon it might pay to be a top dawg in the classroom in Georgia

2011-04-06T14:03:00.000-07:00

Today I read a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education that the governor of Georgia has prepared a proposal to revise the state's merit-based Hope Scholarship program.

The proposal calls for scholarships to be set at two tiers. Public school students who rank in the top ten percent of their class will continue to receive full tuition to attend an in-state public university, while other students who have at least a B average will receive approximately 90 percent of last's year tuition. This proposal is a reaction to a shortfall of $244 million in the scholarship program. Funded by lottery revenues, the program was expected to be bankrupt within two years.

The Hope Scholarship seemed like a noble ideal: anyone who had a B-average or better could go to college for free, as long as they stayed in-state. The better students would stay home--supposedly there would be a market for their talents after they graduated. The problem is that every dollar that went to a student who did not need the money was taken away from someone who did.

Now instead of going to a need-based program, the governor is separating the smartest people from the merely smart; in effect he is saying that we want the A-list students to stay and the B-list students to find more money to pay for college. We want the people who did the best in high school to have more money before they spend a single minute in a college classroom/

That's not fair; the B-list student will have to borrow more or work more hours to get the same money as the A-list one. I would think that the B-list student would be the one who would need more help on the academic side, with less time for work, as well as fun. The solution solves a problem by making a bigger one and it does not help the student who really needs the money.

As I mentioned in a previous post, public policy should acknowledge the true cost for a bright person from a family of limited means--I previously used a $60,000 family income--to attend their flagship state university or the best public liberal arts college in their state for no charge.

This would be a need-based award as well as a merit-based one. This is less ambitious than the Hope Scholarship program, but it helps ensure that the neediest students who can do the work have an opportunity to attend a very good school. If they get a similar package somewhere else, then fine; there will always be another needy student who wants to stay in-state.

Pell grant eligibility is an unreliable indicator of a college's assistance to disadvantaged students

2011-04-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the decline in the number of Pell Grant-eligible students at the nation's most selective colleges. The story is interesting, but I wonder if it was somewhat misleading. The regulations and appropriations of Pell Grants change as often as the political winds blow.

Pell-eligible students, it seems for the purpose of this story, means either independent students of low income or dependents who are in low income families. The story does not make it clear whether the students qualified for the maximum grant, which is approximately $4700. That is a more relevant indicator, presuming that the school or the federal government collects the information.

The problem with using Pell-eligible in these times is that as the budget for the grant program grows larger and the economy weakens, the pool grows larger, too. People who were not previously eligible for grants become eligible. The demand for spots in freshman class grows. But more people eligible for grants get rejected to the college(s) where they want to go.

If the total appropriation for grants goes down, and the maximum grant decreases , as House Republicans have proposed, then the pool of grant recipients will not grow. The bottom will kick out from under the students from the best-off families. More students will gravitate to the less expensive schools as well as those that are known to provide generous financial aid. These schools will reject more applicants as well, including those who are Pell-eligible.

In either case tracking and criticizing schools based on the numbers of Pell-eligible students they have is sometimes an unfair indication of their commitment to assisting students of limited means.

Yale, as one example, provides exceptionally generous aid, enough to reduce the average cost to about $14,000 per year, but only nine percent of Yale students are Pell-eligible, according to the Chronicle story. But Yale also accepts fewer than ten percent of those who apply.

The only way Yale can admit more students is to make room for more of them, and that would be very expensive for Yale. Alumni may believe that admitting more students would devalue the degree, though I find that argument elitist and silly.

However, the costs of constructing another residential college and hiring more faculty must be less than the added revenue that would be realized from hosting the new students. That's means those students must come to Yale with money or aid that someone else has given them. Under the Republican proposal, it's more likely that Yale would take more well-to-do students. The school would not be able to count on the student who walks in with federal aid, because that aid can be cut or taken away.

My concern is not so much for Yale, which has an exceptionally large endowment, but our state universities. Being public institutions they are supposed to be affordable for the residents of their state, and residents should receive priority in admissions.

But as state government subsidies and federal grants are cut, these schools usually take the most heat for reducing access to disadvantaged students, and they should. More spaces are given to out-of-state students who can pay more--so their Pell-eligible percentage drops, too.

So, I would like to see a policy whereby every bright student from a family earning less than $60,000 a year can go to their flagship public university or the best public liberal arts school in their state--tuition free.

This would not mean that the federal government would pay 100 percent of the costs of attending the most expensive state university. Rather, it would pay the school an average of all flagship schools indexed to inflation. The schools would, in turn, consider those students as paid-in-full. They could ask and aid them to cover other expenses such as room and board or transportation, but not tuition. The student could also use the money as a credit against tuition at an out-of-state public school or a private school; s/he would need to find someone to make up the balance whether it be the school, individuals or state government.

If we are to assure affordability and accessibility we should do it for the most deserving students to help them go to a very good school. As a nation we have no obligation to send students of limited means to Yale, nor can we force Yale to admit more of them. And if Yale already discounts tuition by an average of more than seventy percent, then we have no right to scold the school because it may fail to meet ideals that stem from an indicator, Pell-eligibility, that is neither reliable nor valid.

Why the second guessing over Snooki?

2011-04-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

This past week there have been news stories about how Snooki, one of the stars of the television show Jersey Shore, earned more from an appearance at Rutgers than Toni Morrison will receive for being the commencement speaker next month. I can't understand the fuss. Snooki supposedly filled two thousand seats, so apparently some people wanted to hear what she had to say.

When I was in college, I used to see people veg out in front of the television to watch soap operas that were no less "intelligent" than Jersey Shore. I can probably say the same about South Park, which was a popular Gen-X show. However, I am quite sure that the creator of South Park or a soap opera actor from the eighties would have received no less a reception on campus in the past than Snooki. Students like to make connections with the culture of their times.

At least Snooki was not a confirmed Marxist. Then the faculty would have defended the right for her to appear on campus while conservatives would have protested 'round the clock. Governor Christie would be mocking the "liberal students," threatening to cut the university's appropriations, encouraged by the Tea Party. Instead, all he or anyone else can do is scold the students,but why? Snooki, the promotion company who arranges her appearances, and Adam Ace, a comic who played interviewer, got paid because there were enough students who wanted to see them.

Toni Morrison, by contrast, is a far more accomplished artist than Snooki. I have never seen Jersey Shore,but I have read The Bluest Eye twice. I'm sure that would make me odd on today's Rutgers campus. I don't have an opinion on the decision to invite Professor Morrison to speak. Her fee is not being covered by Rutgers, but by private funds. I'm sure she will speak very well, although far more briefly than Snooki. However, Toni Morrison is also a Princeton professor. Given the Rutgers-Princeton "rivalry" over the years, I wonder if Ross Baker, a Rutgers political scientist of high profile, or one of his colleagues, might have been a better choice.

I don't know how much mileage Snooki has left in her fame, but I'm quite confident that Toni Morrison will be writing long after Jersey Shore goes off the air. It's up to Rutgers to make their students realize why. That's what makes a great school great.

Book Review--In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic by Professor X

2011-04-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

This is a book by a author who calls himself a member of the "instructorate," a long-time adjunct professor who works at a small private colleges and a community college. He has little to no hope of becoming a member of the "professorate," a full-time professor of English, who can devote more time to research than to teaching.

As I read this, I was not sure Professor X was a man who really liked his job, as much as he accepted it as his "calling." He writes of students enrolled in community college as highly desirous of a college education, hoping it will lead to a job. Yet he has little confidence in their skills and abilities.

He has sympathy for his students, though he also wonders why they really need to go to college for the jobs they want. Why, he asks himself, must a prospective computer programmer or technician or a potential law enforcement officer take 60 credits in subjects that have little interest to them and have nothing to do with what they want to do. The emphasis on college has led these people to school, yet half of community colleges, he says, drop out before their second year. Some who are told to repeat a remedial course, however, shrug off the failure and try again, because they do not know what else to do.

However, he also says that most of his students, especially those who have not been in school for a long time, are not ready for even those most basic college writing and literature courses. They have few skills and read very little outside of school.

Yet his boss consistently tells him: "Give them the grades they deserve." And he does. There might be one 'A' in a class of twenty to twenty five people, a small number of B's as well as,in his words: "C's that should have been D's and D's that should have been F's." While Professor X doesn't give out many high grades, he does not like to fail students unless they do not do the work or their assignments do not reflect someone who had been attending class.

Professor X is also cynical about political proposals to invest more in community colleges. While they may bring more students into college, they may not raise degree completion rates unless the quality of education becomes watered down. But he also says that some employers place too much value on a bachelor's degree--and their future employees do not need, nor would they use, most of the knowledge they had paid for. Employers might be better off if they worked with the schools to develop the exact training employees need to fill positions. The employees, he feels, would be better off and less in debt.

As I read this book, I wondered who Professor X intended to be the audience. Is it the policy maker or the prospective student who is not sure about going to college? I doubt it's the latter, since he does not consider that audience to be readers. But I also doubt if the former will be deterred from their ideas or their drive by reading this book.

Book Review--Dig this Gig: Find Your Dream Job or Invent It by Laura Dodd

2011-04-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

Dig this Gig is the third book that I have read that profiles people who work in many different occupations, with a focus on twenty-somethings who are still considered Millenials. The other two books, Gigby John Bowe, Marisa Bowe and Sabin Streeter and Working by the late Studs Turkel are larger and follow workers who worked longer and developed more mastery of their talents.

This is a very timely book by an author who went through her own brief period of unemployment. While most of the recent graduates she has profiled in these stories were fine students at excellent schools, we see that even those who have the best education are not always protected in a weakened economy.

In addition, writers who follow generational patterns have noted that Millenials are more similar to the Baby Boomers for their interests in public service. This generation was strongly behind Barack Obama from the get-go, bring enthusiasm and technical competence to his campaign. The previous generation, Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1981, were a strong voting bloc for Ronald Reagan and other conservative Republicans. Even the lone Democratic president, Bill Clinton, was re-elected because he broke bread with them to save his presidency.

Being that Digis about Millenials, there are profiles of people who work in "green" jobs, government service, education, social entrepreneurship and health care as well as creative fields such as advertising and television. The law,finance and journalism are also covered, not so much from the standpoint of what it's like to work in the field, but also how to cope with crisis.

I recommend Dig this Gigto every college student,whether they have made a career decision or are getting ready to choose a major that might lead to a job or further education. Each profile concludes by asking what the interviewee would have done if they had the chance to do things again. That information will help those who have not jumped into a degree program with both feet.

However, if you're a parent who buys this book for your son or daughter, don't give it to them with a huge helping of motherly or fatherly wisdom on the side. Let them learn the lessons from those who finished just before them.

Book Review--Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs: A Midterm Report on My Generation and the Future of Our Super Movement by William Upski Wimsatt

2011-03-31T08:31:00.000-07:00

When I was doing research for my last novel, Defending College Heights, I studied some of the guidebooks of the anti-war movement including Abbie Hoffman's Steal this Book and Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radical. I wanted to be able to compare and contrast the movements to end the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq.

Please Don't Bomb the Suburbscame out a year after my novel, but I would have found it quite useful. It is a set of reflections of a Generation X activist who is now approaching forty. He considers himself to be a standout, as most of his peers supported conservative candidates and became less interested in politics and social change.

Wimsatt, who goes by Billy in the book, began his life in political activism as a graffiti artist in Chicago who was also an ardent fan of hip-hop music. In this book, he writes about the evolution of hip-hop from the prison and street gang culture, though performers were not gang members. He later goes into the activism that sprung from this artistic community. Wimsatt also shares several anecdotes, such as stories about fleeing from gangs after completing his art.

While Wimsatt ran into his share of trouble, he was also smart enough to get admitted to Oberlin College, an excellent liberal arts school that is reputed to have one of the more liberal student bodies. Here, he reports, he learns about power and doing good. He meets a political science professor who tells him that students make the mistake of trying to do good without seeking power, when power is needed for doing good on a grand scale. This insight launches the author into advocacy journalism and activism.

The author also makes effort to admit the many mistakes he had made through his career. He recommends that activists try to work within the system and understand how the system works. He suggests that they not reject candidates who run on a slate of progressive ideas, but find the lack the votes of others to follow through. While his activism began at a time before technology, he recommends the greater use of the Internet to build a mass movement of volunteers, much as Barack Obama's campaign did on the cyber-highway to win the presidency. He also advises activists to finish school; a completed education gives them not only knowledge but also credibility.

He adds that the major difference between progressive Democrats and right wing Republicans is not only ideas, but the willing of the right wing to fight harder for their views and stand behind the candidates who do. The fight is not only through money, but also hard work. Further, he believes that Republicans stood more firmly behind George W. Bush than Democrats have with Barack Obama. Organizing for America has failed to engage young voters the way Obama for America did during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Unfortunately, as the book ends, Wimsett is working with numerous groups to help Democrats in the mid-term elections. He is active, but we do not get to learn the outcome from his efforts. However, Wimsett is a prolific writer--he has published four books in seven years--so it may be only a short time before we know how things turned out on his end, as well as why Democratic efforts failed with or without his involvement.

As an author who grew up in the previous generation I found Wimsett's writing to be interesting and informative. The definitive events of Generation X--the hostages in Iran, Reagan's election, the tear-down of the Berlin Wall, as examples--honed a different set of political values than I have been led to believe. Wimsett adds the cultural overtones to the politics to complete a read that is worthwhile.

What is a fair way to better take care of scholarship athletes?

2011-03-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

Today's USA Today has a front page story that asks: should college athletes be paid more for their efforts?

I found the story interesting from two angles. One is that the NCAA makes a gi-normous $771 million in men's basketball television rights alone and that scholarships do not always cover the full cost of attendance for going to school. However, I have to consider this story against the fact that so many schools that play at lower levels of competition offer no athletic scholarships at all.

The story also cites the president of the California-based National College Players Association as saying that the best athletes should be allowed to cash in on their fame.

I see the point in one way. College teams that play the revenue sports, football and men's and women's basketball, have scholarship athletes as well as walk-ons who receive nothing but a uniform and an opportunity to be on a team. The walk-on has a chance to earn a scholarship later.

Under the player's association's idea, the best players would create a greater economic inequity between themselves and their teammates. Not to mention, all players do not have the same access to the same opportunities, even if they are among the best. Endorsement potential is judged on charisma as well as past successes in sports and not all athletes are charismatic.

Here are two suggestions.

One: Dedicate NCAA revenues from video game products to help fill the gap between scholarships and the true cost of attendance.

I would even go a step further. Add more games to increase the visibility of other sports such as baseball, lacrosse and hockey. I just read a college lacrosse magazine for the first time and had no previous idea of the following for the sport.

Why shouldn't the NCAA--especially since pro lacrosse has not matured to the level of the college game--try to cash in on the fanfare for the benefit of the players and the fans and advance the popularity of the sport? I chose video games because they feature images of all players who are members of a college team. If the game has a character meant to represent each player, then each player should benefit. And why not make games to help promote the women's sports, too? It can only help raise money for more scholarships and increase interest among younger athletes and their parents.

Two: Consider the value of the scholarship against past obligations brought upon the players.

This weekend, for example, the University of Kentucky men's basketball team will play in its fifteenth Final Four. The Wildcats are making their 52nd appearance in the NCAA tournament, more than any other school. In 1958, the Wildcats played 29 games to win a national championship. In 1978 they played 32 and in 1998 they played 39.

This season's college football champion, Auburn University, played 14 games, finishing undefeated. The previous time Auburn won a national championship was in 1957. The Tigers or War Eagles, whatever you prefer to call them, played ten games and they also finished undefeated. In addition to asking the football players to play more football games, the NCAA has reduced the number of football scholarships to help schools better comply with Title IX. While that has helped advance women's sports, it has also taken its toll on the football player's health.

So, here's my suggestion, update the value of the scholarship by a prorated value, based on the number of additional games the players are asked to play. This would raise the value of a men's football scholarship by forty percent and the value of a men's or women's basketball scholarship by approximately 22 percent. And, since the schools as collective members of the NCAA are asking these athletes to play the extra games, then the NCAA should make up this difference.

I realize both of these solutions would still favor the athletes who play the sports that earn the most revenues for the schools. However, those who play the other sports such as tennis, baseball, track and field, softball, and even soccer, among others, can renounce their eligibility at any time and turn pro. They can go to college on their own schedule while competing at their physical peak. In addition, they may be able to have longer careers, especially longer than a football or basketball player. Men's basketball players must now play at least a year in college; they usually need to stay at least three. Women's basketball players must graduate. The football players must wait at least three years to turn pro.

The problem here is not that there is no money to better aid the athletes. It's how the NCAA spends the money. The story said as much, and I agree.

D.C. cheating investigations another reason to drop high-stakes testing?

2011-03-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

During the past two weeks, USA Today has run investigative stories about the unusually high number of erasures on standardized tests used by the District of Columbia public school system. The stories basically showed that the greater the number of erasures, the higher test scores rose at certain schools. The district as well as the test publisher, McGraw Hill, are still investigating to see if there had been cheating.

There are different forms of cheating. The most obvious, of course, are when the teacher looks over your shoulder and drops hints while you are taking the test. Or the teacher gets a copy of the test in advance and goes over the questions with their students. A security firm mentioned in the stories, Caveon, went as far as to recommend specialized data-forensic analysis on suspected teachers.

If this is the climate that high-stakes tests create in public schools, then drop the tests. Responsible teachers should be capable of assessing the academic performance of each of their students throughout the school year. They should also be working with parents to make sure that each and every person in their class is making an effort to at least try to do the work.

I don't envy public school teachers who work in this climate. Politicians attack their unions; their language, however, too often implies that individual teachers are laggards who do not try to teach. They propose policies to change compensation and benefits and eliminate their academic freedom and job security. Their school systems do not have the money to pay for professional development, when it is needed to help the more experienced professionals adjust to the new realities of their profession. And teachers are quite limited in the disciplinary measures they can take to deal with unruly students. Forget about the ones they would wish to impose on unruly parents.

I am tough on unions sometimes in my posts, but the vast majority of K-12 teachers I meet take their jobs quite seriously. They are more caring than most other public sector workers who toil in offices every day and never need to manage as many people as a teacher handles in a classroom. Not to mention, the good teachers know the materials that are available to measure student progress that are most compatible with their classroom situations. And parents have had always their own ways of dealing with those teachers who do not try. It's no surprise that the poorer performing urban and suburban school systems are more often than not the ones where the parents are least engaged.

Standardized high-stakes testing is a practice that parents did not ask for and teachers only dread. I have not seen any published evidence that students who passed a standardized test in one grade performed better academically in the next grade when they were promoted. I would love to see a study that says that a C student who was not reading on grade level before the start of a school year reached grade level by passing an end-of-year test and maintained steady performance on grade level after that.

But I wonder if such a study could be done, even in one state, because the tests were changed to address the realities of what the students did or did not know as well as how many passed and how many failed. So, I wonder: could a study be done of students who were first impacted by No Child Left Behind testing policies in the fourth grade in 2002 to see how those students had done by the time they reached twelfth grade in 2010? I'd be curious to know what percentage of those students graduated high school and went on to college or work. I will make a bet: it will be the same as it was when students were not tested.

The idea of public policies such as No Child Left Behind is to keep students in school and help them to learn within their capability to learn. The concept of grade level is not relevant when students start off with physical disadvantages or unstable homes or without English language fluency. Some students will be behind at the start, but more personalized approaches can help them catch up. I'm more than willing to trust teachers to handle them without my comments.

But the idea these policies was not to use tests as a stigma to evaluate the quality of a teacher, a school, and especially not local real estate markets. If you are angry about your property taxes, get angry about standardized tests. They cost money to administer, take learning time away from our students and teachers. It has not been confirmed that cheating is widespread but it is easy to see that parents, who are also voters, are being cheated by these tests. They should be mad because it has hit them in the wallet.

Redesign freshman orientation as a 'boost camp'

2011-03-29T10:57:00.000-07:00

As part of my work I read a lot of materials about student preparation for college, retention rates and graduation rates. There are examples of many schools, some national, others more regionally known, that have taken positive steps to improve their performance.

New programs takes creativity and time and also costs money. Some ideas, such as an innovative mathematics immersion program at the University of Central Florida required outside grants and early proof of success before they could become institutionalized. With all of the information I read about these new programs I became curious to ask: why not rework a traditional program--freshman orientation.

Its been more than three decades since I was a freshman in college. I remember meeting people on my floor during the orientation period and taking math and writing placement tests that led to nothing. I also remember going around to the campus newspaper office. But the rest is a blur, a bunch of events that had little purpose. Aside from taking the tests, we had about a week to get used to dorm living, buy books and do essentially nothing the rest of the time.

So, as politicians, college faculty and administrators have become more concerned about preparation and retention, I wonder: why not put the orientation period to better use? Use it to give new students a quick immersion into what it takes to succeed in college. To me this means--why not start the orientation two weeks earlier and put new students into classes?

I close my eyes for a few seconds and see eyes popping. But here's my thought. You don't learn to swim unless you jump into the water and get used to it. The same is true for college-level courses.

While more and more freshman enter college with advanced placement credits, they do not usually have the experience of sitting in a large lecture hall where they have little contact with a teacher. Nor do they necessarily know how to write a college level paper that requires critical thinking as well as aggressive research. The orientation period is the perfect time for new students to get used to both.

Here's how this would work. Educators today use a written examination called the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) to analyze student writing, analytical and critical thinking skills, as well as some very basic mathematical and statistical competency (this is reading and interpreting data, not high-level math.)

Every student would be given an examination exercise online that is similar to the CLA during the summer prior to coming to school. The online examination is graded and this information is made available to an instructor assigned for orientation. This replaces the reading and writing placement tests that are given on campus.

Each student is then placed into a class, which I will call Critical Writing and Reasoning. On the first day of class, the student and instructor meet and go over the results of their summer exercise. They both know the baseline and the areas where improvement is needed. Obviously some students will need more help than others.

This course, which would replace the traditional English Composition class, would be taught every day for a period of three weeks. Every two days, the student gets a new exercise and the instructor monitors their progress. S/he will met with students who are slipping, though students may also help each other.

The second class each student would take would be a large lecture course with a multiple choice final exam from a limited menu of science, math, humanities and social science courses.

The difference is that the class would be taken every day for an average two and a half to three hours a day. Teaching assistants would be available, as needed, for discussion sessions that have no impact on the final grade. The idea here is to get students used to keeping up with the material, seeking help and preparing for the most unfair examinations they are likely to take in their first two years.

Both of these classes would be taken by every student, no exceptions. The idea is to get students used to working as individuals and get them used to finding help when they need it. Both of these classes would be graded and count as six credits, so there is also motivation to do well. A bright person who doesn't need to work hard might breeze through with two easy As, but s/he may also become someone to shun if s/he does not aid fellow students.

This does not mean that orientation would have no fun. There would be breaks with organized activities, only fewer of them. There is no reason why new students cannot wait to rush fraternities or sororities or visit the campus paper offices. Those organizations will always host activities after the first day of classes.

I call this idea a 'boost camp' which means that every student gets a shock to the system--they learn what it means to be a college student--but they also get a boost before they hit the larger schedule of classes. They learn to balance class time, study time and free time. Some may see that college is not for them, but everyone gets a quick idea of what's expected if they stay.

Of course, there are negatives. For one thing, the new students would have to come to school earlier. This means a shorter summer vacation after the senior year in high school and less time to work to earn money for college. The solution:charge no extra money for the extra time in the dorms, the six credits or the extra meals in the dining hall. Commuting students would eat in the dining hall, too. Monies that have been spent on the orientation programs of the past can be reprogrammed to cover this. If the student eats for free for three weeks then that's three weeks s/he is not spending money on food.

Another negative is that college instructors will be needed to be trained to take a new approach to English Composition. Here's the flip side: the Critical Writing and Reasoning Course does not need to be taught only by the English department. It can be taught by scholars in other disciplines who are certified to administer the CLA, which is a national examination. It might also be possible for students to be matched up in groups with an instructor who is closer to their major interests.

A final negative is discouragement. Too many students may quickly learn that they have to work harder to keep up in college and either leave or transfer to a school that takes a different approach. But here's the upside--they learn earlier. When I was in school it was not uncommon for freshman to do nothing for the first three to four weeks of classes because the first exam was two months away. Better to learn the cold hard facts early than on the first test.

I realize this idea will not be popular among many educators as well as students. But most schools, especially the large state universities, have operated around a model where the weakest are weeded out or forced to stick around for an extra year or two.

I believe this happens in part because too many students do not know what is expected of them until its too late. They finish their freshman year with lower grades than they hoped because they did not develop the right skills and study habits fast enough.

A boost camp could accelerate both or save the student time and some debt. The school would run an orientation closer to their academic mission and boost their retention rate while doing their newest students a huge favor.

Book Review: 50 Jobs in 50 States: One Man's Journey of Discovery Across America by Daniel Seddiqui

2011-03-28T20:40:00.000-07:00

Most college graduates choose a major because they think it is "right" or because they believe that it might help them find a job. Daniel Seddiqui, a 2005 graduate of the University of Southern California earned a degree in economics for the first reason, and he had no idea where he wanted to apply his knowledge. He thought that he wanted to coach--he had run track in college--but all he could land was volunteer assistant positions. He worked at these at the same time he worked at part-time retail jobs, the kind most college graduates hoped to avoid after graduation.

Faced with un-supportive parents who wanted him to be on his own, Seddiqui came upon an idea. Why not take to the road and find work in every state? Try to find a job that symbolized something about the state. His parents laughed at first, but a relative opened a line of credit for him. He used it to buy a used Jeep and cold called to line up jobs in the first round of states. His first one-week assignment was with the Humanitarian Center of the Mormon Church in Utah.

Arranging for accommodations from family, friends, strangers, and even employers, Seddiqui found a job in each and every state, though sometimes he reached to find symbolic work. Symbolic jobs ranged from shucking corn in Nebraska to peanut farming in Georgia to working as an assistant football coach in Alabama. The reaches included being an auto mechanic's assistant in Michigan and a real estate sales assistant in Boise, Idaho.

Seddiqui also landed several job offers; probably some did not require him to have his degree. He also attracted attention on television. Even a South Korean program followed him to different jobs. And when he got on TV, he finally earned his parent's respect. Given a check for $250 he carried in his wallet, they had not believed he would complete the journey.

As someone who was involved with entry level employment for several years, I found this book entertaining. The most important message from the tale is to never be afraid to ask for work at whatever you may want to do. You never know the answer unless you ask. Daniel Seddiqui got jobs, but he also got many rejections for jobs that most college graduates would never want. As he completed his journey he learned to let rejection drive him to succeed and things turned out more pleasantly than even he could have expected.

End federal spending on motorsports marketing for military recruiting

2011-03-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

Today I'm reading a story in ESPN the Magazine on the military's involvement with professional motor sports such as NASCAR and drag racing as a tool to reach out to prospective recruits.

According to this story, about $54 million has been spent on selling the military through motor sports. This includes not only the U.S. Army but also the Air Force and the National Guard. Lt. General Benjamin Freakley, who heads the U.S. Army Accessions Command says that the army got 46,000 recruiting leads through the motorsports program and a total of 150,000 from all sports marketing efforts.

However, he did not add in the ESPN story that these were qualified leads, meaning that the people who filled out a card met basic enlistment requirements before they could take placement tests and ship out to boot camp. It would have been impossible to qualify them without the help of a trained recruiter. Those men and women do more than walk the shopping malls. I found a similar story on NASCAR's site that said one on four of the 46,000 people were qualified; that's less than 10,000 men and women.

The story quotes Freakley: "What's the alternative? A recruiter walking up and down a mall, talking to 150 people to get one person to engage. That's a waste of time and, yes, money."

And on the NASCAR site, he said: "You're at a NASCAR event to have a discussion and a deep dialogue about [the potential recruit's] future."

I haven't written a post about military recruiting for some time, but here is my chance. Quite frankly, I was stunned by Freakley's responses. If these statements are true, then why doesn't the Army close every recruiting office that does not meet quotas?

Think of all the savings on office leases and all the military personnel who could be re-assigned to other duties because they would not need them to be recruiters? Not to mention complaints about recruiters in schools would go away.

And you can have a serious discussion about a future amidst beer, girls and exhaust rumble? C'mon, be serious.

Actually, there is an easy answer to the first set of questions. The Army, and other branches of the service must make every effort to reach out to prospects throughout the entire country, because the military is a national service.

The recruiting command cannot say "oh, northern California is too liberal, so we won't have an office in downtown Berkeley." Maybe the military will consider Freakley's comments when the U.S reduces its involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya. If fewer soldiers and recruiters are needed, then cut back.

I wrote a prior post supporting the military interactive displays that are used in recruiting events at shopping centers and sports events, including video games. I even saw extensive displays by the Army and the Navy at the Army-Navy football game in December. I am all for these displays because they help the public and recruits learn what it means to serve in the military. Our country also values soldiers as heroes, so the public has the opportunity to meet real men and women who have made good in service. It also takes a lot of work to persuade young men and women to serve when it is quite likely they will be sent into battle.

But the motorsports programs as well as the Army-sponsored football game are nothing but advertising. Neither race car drivers nor high school football players are military heroes. The drivers are merely getting your money and mine to drive a car, and there are plenty of private businesses who can pay them to do that. The football players cannot take money, so they are uncompensated participants in their game, though they get an opportunity to showcase their talents for college coaches, meet future teammmates and adversaries, and appear on national TV.

If the armed forces want to have an interactive display outside a football game or auto race, then Mazel Tov. Find them a parking space with access to the audience and a power supply. If they have to pay rent, no problem. The college campuses can certainly use the money and the shopping centers could use a boost to compensate for the downturn in the economy. But stop the buck there.

Put the money spent to splash logos on cars and billboards to use in other ways. I'd rather see it go to help military veterans or towards military education and training for soldiers and students. Give the money to the real heroes instead.

And besides, if the race drivers want to support the men and women in uniform, they should be willing to carry their colors on their cars for free. Why not? Millions of American drivers have dedicated part of their rear bumper to show support for our troops. The pros can do the same.

Would the appearance of a rising underdog help women's college basketball?

2011-03-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

This week I watched several games of the men's and women's NCAA Tournament. I'll be watching the Final Four for both as well. I admit I miss a lot of college hoops during the regular season, especially while football is on, but I never miss the later rounds of the NCAAs.

The Men's Final Four will feature two success stories, Butler and Virginia Commonwealth University, mid-major schools that have beaten much higher seeds, including the #1s in their regional tournaments. These schools will play each other in the opening game, so an underdog is guaranteed to have a Cinderella year. It was not planned that way, but an underdog story will give the final game a higher rating than a match-up between two known powers.

By contrast, the Women's Final Four is quite likely to feature the four top-seeded schools. Three: U-Conn, Baylor and Tennessee, face no lower than a #2 in their regional final, while Stanford will face Gonzaga, an eleven seed that produced two of the few major upsets of the tournament, a 92-86 win over sixth-ranked Iowa and an 89-75 win over third-ranked UCLA. The Zags defeated seventh-ranked Louisville 76-69 to advance to the Elite Eight. Louisville had concocted some upset magic of its own until that point, knocking off second-ranked Xavier 85-75 in the second round.

U-Conn, who got a scare from a fifth-seeded Georgetown team yesterday, and Tennessee have won more than half of the national championships since the NCAA took over management of the women's tournament in 1982. The team ranked first overall going into the tournament has won thirteen times. U-Conn has come in as the Number One overall and won it all six times. Tennessee has done it three times. The other three schools have been Purdue, Texas and Louisiana Tech.

Louisiana Tech is the last mid-major to win a national title in the women's game; they won the first one in 1982, then won it again in 1988. This season they lost to Rutgers in the first round, but they got the courtesy of playing only an hour from home. The last mid-major to play in the finals was Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State) in 2001. Their Lady Bears lost to Purdue, who later beat in-state rival Notre Dame for the national championship.

But I wonder if the rise of a mid-major team, an underdog, would help the women's tournament as much as it endears people to the men's game. For one thing, the women draw far less than the men. For example, U-Conn, last year's champion, averaged over 10,000 fans for 21 games. The men's team averaged 11,700 for nineteen games. The difference per game is not bad, but the men had an off-year, winning only eighteen regular season games and played in the NIT, while the women went unbeaten and were national champions.

Stanford, U-Conn's opponent in last year's final, plays in the Pac-10, so it is hardly a mid-major school. Since 1982, the Cardinal women have played in nine Final Fours, made the final game twice and won twice.Yet they ranked only 23rd in attendance last season, drawing just under 4,300 per game. The men, who went 14-18, averaged approximately 6,600. However, Stanford is a national university with a large, well-to-do alumni base. The name can bring in an audience. So can Baylor, which ranked eighth in attendance last season.

I would guess, based on the attendance at women's games versus the men's, that the television executives would prefer that the teams with the largest fan bases are in the Final Four. There's more certainty over the numbers that would be drawn into a Tennessee-UConn final than those that might come if an underdog manages to get past the top seeds. In the men's game, the underdog is the darling of everyone who goes to any school that is not playing in the tournament. It's a shame that's not the same in the women's game.

Book Review--Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse by Annette Funetes

2011-03-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

Written by the online editor of The Bay Citizen, a San Francisco-based non-profit and non-partisan news organization, Lockdown High is an investigation not only into the "zero tolerance" practices in public schools, but also the people and organizations that benefit economically and professionally from them.

Fuentes story line is that parents and school administrators have become more preoccupied with security while actual incidents of violent crime in the public schools have been dropping. She spends as much time covering supposed remedies--policies, equipment and security practices--as incidents.

Fuentes provides many examples of over-aggressive law enforcement and security practices that have actually endangered students who have not committed crimes as well as outsiders, parents being one example, who regularly visit school buildings. But she adds that advocates for zero tolerance and tighter security measures cite declining crime rates in schools as reasons that their policies, practices and tools are working.

One example she mentions where over-zealousness has happened most is in the marketing of ID badges and other devises for the identification of sex offenders. The crime is used vendors because it is one widely feared and incidents, whether on school grounds or off, are widely publicized. Laws, such as Megan's Law in New Jersey, are named for victims. However, schools may use these tools for other purposes, some in violation of privacy rights, while incidents of a convicted-then- released sex offender appearing in a school building are extremely rare.

The sad stories in this book are the contrasts between enforcement in schools and prisons. For instance, Fuentes discusses a drug raid on a school building where students were asked to lay flat, face down on the floor of the school building while lockers were searched and drug sniffing dogs roamed the halls with officer escorts. You realize it is one thing when law enforcement officers know and find an actual criminal and carts him away versus when they do not know and hold no student above suspicion, partly because of the demographics surrounding the school.

Oddly enough, Fuentes adds, such incidents, Columbine as one example, might have been avoided had school insiders better understood the behavior of their students. Parents, she states, sued the principal and/or the school system for their failure to understand, not because of the lack of "safeguards" in a school building. In fact, she mentions, there were no metal detectors in the school at the time of the shooting there, and there have not been ever since.

Lockdown High is a very friendly and worthwhile read for anyone concerned about school safety. It tells us that the perception of greater safety involves much more than making a school look and feel more like a fortress or a prison; a school must feel welcome to be safe while teachers and administrators must look after their students. I realize that's easier to say than do, but I can't imagine that the job of educating people is any easier because technology adds a layer of perceived security to a school building.

A New Jersey conservative has valid points about school funding

2011-03-25T06:50:00.000-07:00

This morning I am reading a piece on Politicker New Jersey by Murray Sabrin who is one of the louder conservative voices in the Garden State. He wrote to state that New Jersey governor Chris Christie should ignore the findings of a special master as well as the state supreme court with regard to education funding.

Sabrin, in the piece, refers to findings by state court judge Peter Doyne, a special master appointed by the State Supreme Court that the Christie Administration has short-changed urban public school districts to the tune of $2 billion in state aid in the 2011 budget. The court asked Doyne to hear opposing arguments from the state as well as the New Jersey Law Center, a historical advocate for education funding, but they did not ask Doyne to come up with a financial remedy, should one be necessary.

Sabrin goes on to cite the State Constitution as to say that the governor has acted within his obligations to provide for a free public education system, and that he is within his right to decide the funding formula. I am not an attorney, so I won't touch the constitutional grounds of his argument. However, although I am not in the conservative camp, I will say that he has legitimate points.

The state has funded thirty one school districts, called Abbott districts, so named for the court decision that determined their funding. These districts, Governor Christie has said, receive sixty percent of education funding from the state. Some, such as Newark, receive practically all of their revenue from the state. Christie in the 2011 budget cut state aid to these districts by five percent, and cut the suburbs by more. Christie has called the sixty percent distribution ridiculous, though the state's unemployment rate is close to the national average.

I agree with Sabrin in that the courts should not have the final say in school finance and that a governor of either party needs latitude to adjust state funding as demographics and school district needs change. For example, while the Abbott decisions affected urban areas, there have been New Jersey communities in suburban and rural areas where growth has outstripped the community's ability to provide public education. They need state assistance as much as urban districts that have lost population.

Moreover, the districts that receive the majority of available state aid have not been held accountable in the past. Newark and Jersey City, as two examples, continue to employ central office staff who have little to do with the quality of education in the schools. Even while Governor Christie cut aid, I did not see these districts move towards restructurings that might help them become more effective.

Personally, I would rather see more of the money directed towards teachers and principals who work on the front lines. As we see from state Report Cards, each school is different; part of the reason for such uneven performance is the teacher and principal. Accountability and requests for non-academic cuts, excluding transportation, nutrition and school safety, should be placed on these school systems.

The state is right to ask for accountability; taxpayers elsewhere are paying more to educate Abbott students than they do for the students in their own district. If that means fewer central office workers or closings on heavily underused school buildings, then so be it.

One thing I know about New Jersey; people who are forced to say no, with regret, to solving one or more of their own local problems will be more likely to say no to solving someone else's problems. When a district spends over $17,000 a year, and most of it comes from the state, that district has a responsibility to put their financial house in order.

Where I part with Sabrin and other conservatives is with the idea of a minimalist approach to public education: standardized tests, salary caps on teachers and superintendents, and an over-reliance on charters and vouchers to "save" children from failing schools. We deserve more accountability, but it should not be used to mold schools in a direction where they are less likely to perform better, or to direct people out of the public schools. The money needs to be spent on the front lines on the people who deliver the service.

Sometimes we should not mock the 'student-athlete'

2011-03-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

I decided to continue on the basketball theme today after I read this story on Slate.com about the degrees that are being pursued by the players on the teams that earned a spot in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. The reporter was able to obtain information from 59 of the 68 teams.

The story is a blend of fact-finding and sarcasm, focusing on the players who have declared a major versus those who are not far enough along in college to decide on a field of study. Business, or some variation of a business major, was the most popular subject, the same as it is for non-athletes.

Obviously, a news story would have the more outlandish anecdotes, such as the Texas A&M players who have been steered into poultry science and agricultural leaders, although they did not come from agrarian families, but why get excited because athletes majored in sociology or sports management? Non-athletes have the same option. In this story, the reporter assumed that other traditional liberal arts majors, such as economics, history or philosophy, were "harder," with no justification as to why.

Students, whether they are athletes or non-athletes, have access to tutoring and other resources that can help them. A responsible college provides the resources. The administration and the faculty cannot be expected force-feed an education down a student's throat.

There will be students who want to learn as well as others who will want to slide by. That's been a fact on college campuses such time immemorial. Even the best of schools have their easy courses. That's going to happen when a school allows faculty to grade their students any way they see fit. An athlete is no less likely to avoid the poorest instructors than any other student. Why single them out? They have a harder job while in school than most other students do.

I still remember a line from G. Reginald "Reggie" Bishop, then Dean of Instruction at Rutgers, from my freshman orientation: Education is the thing to do. It's now or never. Which do you?

Dean Bishop, who was also a professor of French language and literature, was a serious-looking man who wore black suits all of the time. I used to see him on campus carrying a black lunchbox, much like the ones I saw the Beaver and friends carry on the black and white TV shows of the Fifties and early Sixties. He made suggestions, for instance, that Chemistry majors might want to consider a minor in German because so much of the science was written in German, and so many of the scientists were German.

Of course, most of us being seventeen or eighteen at the time were thinking in other directions, some towards acceptance towards law school or medical school, others towards finding a good job after we finished our four years. Intellectual enrichment was a by-product of the pursuit towards such goals though Dean Bishop might have preferred that it be the reverse. This is no less true for the athletes who come to colleges on scholarship. Those who were offered the opportunity to compete in their sport want to succeed in their sport.

In an ideal society, colleges, especially the flagship state schools, would want their athletes to be not only among their best students, but also among their finest citizens, role models for others. The athletes would not only go to class; they'd wake up their friends and teammates to go, too. They would be the most thankful for their education because they had the most generous scholarships as well the opportunities for further athletic glory, even beyond college as an Olympian and/or a professional athlete. Not to mention a high social standing among the student body.

But anyone who regularly watches college sports know things have never been that way when it comes to every athlete, and that some of the actions of coaches and schools in the pursuit of victory have been exploitative and shameful. We feel sorry for the athletes who did not know better and had their lives, as well as their opportunity for an education, thrown away. And we look cynically upon the athlete who is as famous for his misdeeds off the field as he is for his skills on the field, especially those who have played a sport for more than one college.

Suppose a wand could be waved and all college sports had to become non-scholarship sports. All athletes were required to be full-time students, too, even during the season they played their sport. And they had to apply for admission the same as other students. Which schools would win out?

The ones with the most lax admissions standards would likely get the best athletes, but that does not necessarily mean that they would retain all of them. The school would be left with a choice about how to help the ones on the fence. Throw them out, even if they have made a positive contribution to the performance of their team and the reputation of their school? Or, find a way to help them finish, even if it means counseling them into an "easier" major, or finding other ways to help them stay in school, so that they could finish their degree after their sports eligibility expired? Which is the lesser of two evils?

And by the way, I would love to see the same story written about the women who are playing in their tournament. Unlike the men they need to graduate in order to turn pro. A reporter might see a similar mix of majors, but he might also a graduation rate that is closer, or better, for each school than for their student body as a whole.

The NBA and the NCAA should take a lead in funding midnight basketball

2011-03-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Today I read a guest column in the Newark Star Ledger by Providence Journal reporter Froma Harrop that provides some history and perspective about "midnight basketball," a once Federally-funded program that now gets by on local support.

About half of Harrop's column is devoted to the impact of recreation basketball on U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R. Massachusetts). Brown, who has recently released his autobiography talked about basketball as an opportunity for an escape from a very difficult family life and a chance to go to college. Brown, who was raised by a mother who was in the frequent company of abusive men, was able to find male role models through his coaches.

While Scott Brown might have been too old to have played midnight basketball under the federal program--he was in his mid-thirties when the program was first funded by Congress--his story offers good reasons for others, including the NBA and the NCAA, to support the recreational programs. While advertisers, according to Harrop, spent $614 million on the NCAA Tournament, it is more important for the leadership of the college and professional programs to become involved. Here are several reasons why:

+ Midnight basketball is not only an urban game; it is popular in the suburbs, too. It is easier and less expensive to organize than other sports and it can be played indoors or outdoors all year-round. If one considers the number of schools in the NCAA and the number of professional teams that need to sell tickets for their regular season games, then young people in thousands of communities would benefit. Not to mention the teams could establish better relationships with their fan base for relatively little money.

+ Unlike the other three major league sports, basketball features women in high profile roles, not only as players and coaches, but also executives. In addition, NBA owners such as the Maloofs (Sacramento Kings) and the Buss family (Los Angeles Lakers) have investments in women's professional teams. Midnight basketball offers an opportunity to sell the women's game as well as the men's.

This would be important for growing the women's college game. While schools such as Connecticut and Tennessee regularly sell out women's regular season home games, others like Rutgers, which makes frequent appearances in the NCAA Tournament, do not. In fact, the Rutgers women have less than 1,000 season ticket holders while the men, who have had a winning season in six years, and no NCAA appearances in the last twenty, have over 3,000.

+ Advertisers already have experience with basketball tournaments in cities through Hoop-It-Up, a three-on-three summer tournament that takes place in 42 cities from the end of March through the beginning of September.

While midnight basketball programs are more likely to feature the typical five-on-five game, Hoop-It-Up is invented sport, more like street ball. There's nothing wrong with Hoop-It-Up, but it is an adult game. Midnight ball is meant for kids who need, and hopefully want, to learn the real game.

While it initially cost only $40 million, midnight basketball drew chuckles from conservative Republicans; conservatives are not known to like programs that they consider to be "touchy-feely."

However, the concept has outlasted the funding. An Association of Midnight Basketball Leagues stepped forward six years ago to carry the cause, though neither the NBA nor the NCAA have stepped forward as sponsors. It may be that the colleges or the pros would prefer to have all of the sponsorship money as well as total control. But first they must demonstrate the right intentions.

Quick thoughts on the future of Hebrew immersion schools in New Jersey

2011-03-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

In my home state of New Jersey there have been recent ongoing arguments over the merits of publicly supported Hebrew-immersion charter schools. Opponents of these schools have said that their primary supporters are Jewish families who cannot afford a private Jewish day school tuition for their children.

However, being public schools, admission to a Hebrew-immersion charter school would not be not limited to Jewish students, and all charter school admissions in New Jersey are done by lottery; students get in by luck of the draw.

The debates over these schools are taking place in Highland Park, Teaneck and Englewood; all of these communities not only have a proportionately large Jewish population, they are also racially and ethnically diverse. One publicly supported Hebrew immersion school, the Hatikvah International Academy, already operates in East Brunswick, another exceptionally diverse community. Hatikvah currently enrolls 98 students, with a waiting list for next year.

I went to Hebrew school from kindergarten through the tenth grade and my mother taught Jewish history and culture in Hebrew schools for several years before she passed away. Not everyone who is Jewish goes to Hebrew school for eleven years, so I have some unique standing on this issue.

When I went to Hebrew school, students learned the holidays and the stories behind them. They also learned Jewish and Israeli songs. Conversational Hebrew was taught between the fourth grade and the seventh grade. In the seventh grade you also prepared for your Bar or Bat Mitzvah. The classes after that were a mix of baloney, ethics and philosophy, until your class prepared a service as a team for confirmation. Hebrew school took place after school or on the weekends depending on the class.

As I read these stories about Hebrew immersion schools I cannot see:

+ How students can learn conversational Hebrew before the fourth grade when they have not developed adequate skills to read English, their native language. Teachers tell me that from kindergarten through the third grade you learn to read. From the fourth grade on you read to learn. I never knew of public or private schools that attempted to teach other foreign languages before the fourth grade; even the Catholic schools do not try to teach Latin too early. But all I can do is ask questions. I looked at the Hatikvah Website and saw that they have five Hebrew instructors on staff for 98 students. I'll presume that they know much that I don't know.

+ How one avoids discussing the Jewish faith when talking about Jewish history and culture. Then again, American colonies, Rhode Island being one example, Pennsylvania being another, were founded in part by religious leaders. The benefactor of Harvard University, John Harvard, was a clergyman, and the school named for him initially trained men of the cloth. I doubt that teachers in the traditional public schools would be punished for mentioning these examples, among others, of how religion and religious leaders connected with American history.

+ How one provides a Jewish-focused education without discussing the history of Israel and the political situation of Israel in the world today. I would expect teachers at a Hebrew immersion school to talk about Israel's history almost as much as they would discuss American history. Quite likely they would devote more attention to the country than a traditional public school. I'd suspect one-sided political arguments might ensue in a Hebrew-immersion school, but when has that been a surprise within a traditional public school?

I cannot comment as to whether the education at Hatikvah is better than it would be in the East Brunswick elementary schools, but a charter school as specialized as this would not open unless there was a demand. It is safe to say that parents wanted the culture and the language education for their children without the strict and more conservative setting of the yeshiva, which does not appeal to all Jews.

However, the Hatikvah Academy, unlike the yeshiva, must meet state standards. Next year, their third graders--the school is adding the grade to retain the current second grade class--will need to take state-mandated tests. If the students pass with flying colors, Hatikvah will set benchmarks for charter school authorizing authorities to consider other Hebrew-immersion schools. If they do not, future applications could be prejudiced.

And there is another interesting twist. Hatikvah supplements public money by running optional before-school and after-school programs for which it charges tuition as high as $195 per-month, though the cost per child declines when a family has more than one enrolled in the school. I am not aware of other charter schools in New Jersey that take this approach.

From a distance I see that the charges may help to make up for the difference in state aid between Hatikvah and a traditional public school, and given the youth of the students--the school opened to serve grades K through 2--an alternative to day care for parents. Or the after-school might be an alternative to an after school program run by a synagogue.

However, this raises a question: has public money gone into a school where the parents might have been able to pay more? If the answer was yes, then Hatikvah could have operated as a private school instead of being a publicly-supported charter.

This question is important, not only for the future of Hatikvah, but also suburban charter schools in New Jersey. As more and more charter schools become authorized, it is more and more likely that they will be affected by the same budget cuts that affect the traditional public schools. When that happens funding will be subject to these considerations:

+ Did all students pass the state examinations? Charters have been approved on the premise they will do better. They are usually have much smaller student bodies than traditional public schools, and they invest more time in instruction. So they should be held to a standard that is closer to perfection. Schools that fail continually--more than two consecutive years--should be closed as long as the students can be sent to a better performing public school.

+ Were disadvantaged students well served by the charter school? The primary reason politicians like charter schools is that they are intended to take disadvantaged students out of poor-performing public schools. If a student body that attained near perfection on state tests comes mainly from disadvantaged economic backgrounds or was in need of special education, then that school will be favored in budget talks.

+ Will the school fail with less state funding? A charter school that is supported by well-to-do parents partly through tuition or donations is less likely to receive the same level of state aid as a charter school that primarily serves students in low income families. If an state-authorized analysis revealed that charter schools in a suburb could raise money locally or from donors, then the state would have good reason to pull back money in a budget crisis.

Students in good standing should receive priority to keep their Pell Grants

2011-03-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

Today I'm reading a debate about the future of Pell Grants, the federal program which will provide anywhere between $4,700 and $5,500--depending on the outcome of budget negotiations in Congress--in assistance to college students for the coming year. This is assistance which does not need to be repaid.

After I read the debate, I went back to the Purdue Financial Aid Estimator that I had discussed in a previous post. I "made" myself into a low-income Indiana resident, student and family contributing nothing, high school GPA of 3.25 (the Estimator asks nothing of SAT or ACT scores) to recheck what my aid would be. Here's what I found when it came to scholarships:

Pell Grant: $5,350.00
Indiana Higher Education Award: $3,130.00
Purdue Centennial Opportunity Grant: $1,720.00
Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant: $400.00
Purdue Access & Success Incentive Grant: $500.00

This year, Purdue charged in-state students approximately $10,300 for tuition, fees and books. My student would have received $11,100 in scholarship aid, more than enough to cover it. Federal grants would have made up more than half of it.

Cut the $5,700 in grants back to $4,700, as the Republicans in Congress have proposed, and the student or the school has to come up with another $1,000 to cover the costs of his education. I would find the cut less objectionable if the student had a way to make up the money that he stood to lose as well as the extra money he will need to cover any tuition increase Purdue may implement in the next year.

This student qualified for a Federally funded Work-Study job which would pay $2,500 for the fall and spring semesters. That's not a lot of money over the course of a 30 to 35 week school year, so maybe he finds another job that pays better, assuming that he doesn't need a car to get to work on-time. This also assumes that he'll figure out his way quickly around West Lafayette, if it's a place he has not previously visited.

What if the student borrows the money? Well, according to the Estimator, my student maxed out the Federal loans at $5,500 from the subsidized interest and the unsubsidized programs, and qualified for a $2,000 loan from Purdue. I'd guess he could go to a Purdue credit union for an emergency loan, but that's another debt he would have to repay. Same is true if he goes to a bank.

Here is Purdue, trying to help this student get through the freshman year. He makes it to the sophomore year in good standing--Purdue is not an easy school for the pre-professional majors--and he still needs financial help. If he doesn't get to stay, the student and the school lose. According to the latest U.S. News Guide, Purdue lost fourteen percent of the freshmen who entered in 2009. This was the same percentage reported in 2007 on College Results Online.

Who would be to blame if this student leaves? We can blame the student if he didn't do the work or if he didn't seek help to learn what he didn't know. But can we blame him if he made it through in good standing, but cannot come up with an extra $2,000 to $2,500? I would say the answer is no. And we have to favor the student who does the work.

If there is so much concern about the rising costs of student aid, then tie federal grant eligibility to some form of degree progress, which is not done at this time. If a student is on-track to graduate with their class, they get what they're entitled. If there is an academic reason, for example, a change in major or the addition of a second major, that forces a student to remain an extra year, then fine, as long as the student was making satisfactory progress. If a student drops out for a non-academic reason, such as an illness, family matter or military service, aid can resume as long as the student still qualifies and made satisfactory progress.

I've read suggestions that the grants be turned into loans. Under these scenarios, the student would borrow the money and probably pay no interest while he is in school. The loan turns into a grant if the student makes satisfactory academic progress. If not, the loan must be repaid with interest.

This would work fine if tuition was at the rate charged by community colleges--maybe that is how the repayment obligation is handled--but otherwise this policy would leave our low income Purdue student on the hook for more than $13,000 in loans. I'm sure that some bank would love to consolidate that debt. However, this drop-out has now been hit with more punishment than he could probably afford to deal with. I'd say this idea is draconian, and something to avoid.

It's not the average grant per student that is the major problem, it's that the colleges and the federal government must remind the students that they need to work for the money, whether it be through academic counseling or tough love. The taxpayers deserve that much.

Northwestern University human sexuality class went beyond necessity

2011-03-21T11:55:00.000-07:00

It's been almost four years since my first novel,The Sex Ed Chronicles, came out, though I still follow sex education stories in the news. However, my novel was very tame compared to what happened in a Human Sexuality class taught by Professor J. Micheal Bailey at Northwestern University.

Bailey, who is a tenured professor of psychology at the school, teaches a course that enrolls over 600 students. Recently, he asked students if they wanted to stay behind to watch a live sex toy demonstration. One hundred students did. While Bailey has taught this course on-campus for 21 years, this was the first time he had staged such a demonstration for students. Attendance was voluntary and would not count towards a course grade.

The facts that 600 people enrolled in Bailey's course and slightly more than 100 stuck around should attest to the popularity of the professor and the class. He teaches content that students want to know. I went to a state school much larger than Northwestern and I never saw 600 people in any class I took, even the big freshman intro courses.

While Dr. Bailey had never hosted this live demonstration before this year, he had explicitly pushed the envelope in previous classes. From comments I read on the stories covering this event, Bailey had previously invited students to attend a transvestite show at a club off-campus. He has also hosted a panel of gay men speaking about their sex lives, a transsexual performer, two convicted sex offenders, an expert in female sexual health and sexual pleasure, a plastic surgeon and a swinging couple.

However, Dr. Bailey has also continued to teach seven years after a sexual misconduct suit was filed against him by a transsexual woman he had profiled in a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen. The university investigated the academic integrity of the book--Bailey was accused of using stories given by women without their consent--but the sexual misconduct complaint was never investigated.

Does it bother me that the professor went ahead with such a graphic demonstration? In some ways yes, in others no. This was live and the actors wanted to be public, but it was also in a campus building--and those are not necessarily private places. What if those 100 students had told two or three of their friends that the demonstration was going on, and they showed up, too? Then it would have been a show and not a class.

Had Bailey shown a film instead of a live demonstration, he might have be criticized, but he would have also done what student groups or student center programming boards are also allowed to do, so he really could not be punished. Had Bailey told students to report on similar activities that went on at a fraternity house or a private club off-campus, that would have been a less reasonable request for a teacher to make because privacy rights would have been violated.

As someone unaffiliated with Northwestern, I do not have a right to judge the students who went to the demonstration. But I also wonder,in these days of Internet porn, if the demonstration was any shock at all, or if it was actually necessary. Dr. Bailey has gotten himself in hot water over something he didn't need to do.

I would presume that not only the incident will be investigated, his work history will, too. Pressure will be brought upon the university president to fire the professor; threats to withdraw contributions may happen as well. It will be interesting to see how Bailey's academic colleagues defend him. And it will be all because the professor did something he didn't need to do.

One thing I learned from writing my novel was that sex education and driver's education were practically the only two subjects that any high school student would be willing to learn on their own. They don't need to wait until a college professor will stage life in front of them.

U.S. Department of Education multi-state approval regulations are too burdensome for online degree providers

2011-03-21T09:56:00.000-07:00

Today I've read on eCampusNews that the U.S. Department of Education will stand by a controversial rule that requires all schools that grant online degrees seek approval in every state where they have students. This rule applies to all higher education institutions: public, private non-profit and for-profit.

My impression is that the rule was targeted primarily at for-profit schools that offer programs that must meet professional accreditation standards; the department issued the regulations at the same time as they issued regulations for incentive compensation and misrepresentation. However, they may end up impacting the public schools more; unlike the for-profits they are not profitable, nor can they issue debt or equity when they need money.

This story made me wonder about online education in its various forms and why so many institutions believe that they must offer online degrees. For the for-profits, it is easy to understand why--they're a profit center.

For a state or local school, it could be to deliver more of the catalog off-campus, so that students would not be limited to the course offerings that were available at a single location. This way students were more likely to graduate on-time and take the courses they wanted.

However, the public online education divisions are also behaving like their parent public university; they want to attract out-of-state students because they are a profit center. In addition, the programs that are offered on-campus to out-of-state students do not need to meet the accreditation requirements of the states where their out-of-state students come from. For example, students who study accounting at Rutgers may not necessarily meet all of the education requirements to practice accounting in Delaware, New York or Pennsylvania. Their home state accounting board may require them to take an extra course that reflects state laws or professional practice.

So, I have to wonder, instead of asking schools to produce all of this paperwork, why not ask them to post 'truth in education' information about their programs. For a school that offers accounting degrees, for example, this could be as simple as linking to the national professional association or a state professional standards board and a requirement for the school to link to updated information as it becomes available.

I would have no issue if the Department of Education imposed this most strictly on the for-profits. If those schools want to operate in every state and have campuses in every state, their central office should be aware of professional accreditation standards in every state. This is not an unreasonable request, and since these schools are part of a boundary-free corporation, the federal government is the appropriate home for regulation.

The public and non-profit schools tend to be more regional. They could be held to a standard such as "any state that represents five percent or more of your student population." This would apply to the off-line as well as the online degree. If a state-supported school in Pennsylvania, for example taught many accounting or education students from New Jersey, it would make sense for them to help those students meet the Garden State's professional standards. And it would be more reasonable for these schools to monitor the requests and requirements of a handful of states than for all fifty.

What you should learn when you use a net-price calculator to estimate college costs

2011-03-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

Beginning this fall, colleges are required to provide students and their families with a net price calculator. Ideally, this helps to provide a reliable estimate of college costs, less any grants or scholarship aid before applying to a particular school. The balance, less grants or scholarships is what your family should pay fir the coming school year.

This all sounds well and good, but the federal policies that required colleges to have a calculator did not set the standards for either its design or its output. Nor did they require that it be easy to find off a college's home page or financial aid page. Moreover, the calculator has less value to students and families who are only starting to consider colleges. They have not completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)so they would not know what their estimated family contribution would be.

Purdue University (IN) was one of the first schools to have a net price calculator on their Web site. It's a four-click jump from the home page to the calculator for parents: Parents and Families->Information for Parents (lots of links)-> Financial Aid-> Purdue Financial Aid Estimator (a button). It's an easier three-click jump for students: Students->Financial Aid and Scholarships-> Purdue Financial Aid Estimator (a button). It should have been a three-click jump for the parents, too.
But Purdue makes a good effort at making the calculator button easy to find. The calculator bases estimates on the charges for the current school year; tuition and fees for 2012-13 are not set at this time.

I plugged in numbers as if I was a student from a low income family in Indiana, choosing the lowest income bracket and estimated family and student contributions of zero. I got the information I wanted, but not in the way I wanted to read it. When I got down to Award Eligibility the grants and scholarships were mixed with the maximum awards possible for loans and work study. Student loan and work study information should have been placed below my net price.

But I learned the most important piece of information: what it would cost for a family in the worst financial straits to go to Purdue. Assuming the family and student paid nothing and the student did not qualify for the school's merit scholarship programs, the difference to be made up would be a little less than $11,000. It will likely be more if there is a tuition increase.

Had the work-study and loan information been moved below, I would have also learned that $2,500 could be covered through a job and the government and institutional loans would have taken care of the rest.

I could multiply the debts by four and figure how much the student would need to borrow to complete their Purdue degree. In this case, it would have been $34,000, which seems high, but a science or engineering degree from Purdue is quite respected. The graduate could quite possibly earn fifty percent more in their first year on the job.

Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of the financial aid Websites, FinAid and FastWeb, recommends several ideas to standardize net-price calculators for the benefit of students and their families. Kantrowitz, who regularly testifies before Congress on financial aid issues, has written no fewer than 37 pages of recommendations.

While the man is brilliant, and I've read his pieces before, I find it sad that schools need that much direction in order to make the financial aid process less daunting for students and parents.

However, whether or not there is a calculator online, colleges do not want to discourage applications for admission. Admissions offices fall in step with other agendas: to make the school more selective, drive up the quality of applicants and acceptances and maintain a good yield rate.

Had my low income student learned that he/she would need to come up with an extra $8,500 to $11,000 a year to go to Purdue, he/she might have passed on the school to find a cheaper option. If the student was not a candidate for a merit award, he/she might have elected to spend the first two years at a community college instead or gone to a school with less brand recognition, but a larger financial aid award.

I don't believe that the Purdue admissions office would want that student or their parents to figure this out on their own, especially since the school is a state university and the student is from in-state. But the school is doing the right thing by making the calculator available.

Web site lists campuses that welcome gun-toting students

2011-03-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

Today I read in the Chronicle of Higher Education that a Web site, ArmedCampuses.org, has been set-up by two anti-gun organizations, The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

Thirteen of the twenty five schools listed are community colleges in Colorado; another three community colleges in Utah and one in Virginia are also listed. Of the eight remaining schools, the most notable are Michigan State, which does not allow students to carry firearms in buildings--shades of Virginia Tech, I guess--Colorado State and the University of Utah.

It's interesting to click the Laws tab on this site and glance at the policies that permit guns on campus. Some examples:

+ In Virginia, applicants for a gun permit take an online "training" class—which involves the watching of an instructional video and a multiple choice test (which can be taken repeatedly). Applicants are not required to do any classroom instruction or range training/live-fire exercises.

+ Also in Virginia, firearms can be carried openly on campus, with or without a permit, but an institution can prohibit open carrying in its buildings and dormitories.

+ In Colorado and Utah, these potentially dangerous individuals, among others, would be allowed to receive gun permits: those who have previously been under, but are no longer under an active restraining or protective orders; those who are mentally ill and a threat to themselves and/or others, but who have not been adjudicated as a “mental defective” or involuntarily committed.

Interestingly enough, one of the Colorado community colleges listed, Arapahoe, is located in Littleton, better known as the home of Columbine High School.

No further comments are necessary.

More thoughts on scholarships in lieu of public university subsidies

2011-03-16T11:08:00.000-07:00

I tried to think through Dr. Garland's proposal (below) from a marketing standpoint. Given my experiences with state politics in New Jersey, I have to perceive that the state colleges and universities would not change in their preference for in-state students, even if they received no state subsidies. I would also presume that:

+ Scholarship recipients would be allowed to apply their scholarship aid to schools that are either in-state or out-of-state. It would be too time consuming to set limits on eligible schools or enforce them.
+ Tuition at the former state schools would be roughly the same from school to school, whether the student is from in-state or out-of-state. The schools, however, may have scholarship programs to augment the aid that the in-state students have already received.
+ Private schools would augment student aid through need-based, merit-based or service-based scholarships.
+ There would be a limited amount of time in which students could receive scholarship aid. At Miami University, Ohio Resident Scholarships or Ohio Leader Scholarships were limited to a period of six years per student.
+ The total amount of aid could not exceed the cost of attending the school. The scholarship aid from the state, for example, could not be used in conjunction with a ROTC scholarship or an athletic scholarship.

I would have to believe that the newly private former state universities with strong brand recognition as well a good history of aiding in-state students would still be winners. Good schools that have not built an endowment or other resources that are deep enough to provide additional scholarships would not. I could imagine that schools such as the University of Vermont or the University of Delaware, which have exceptionally large out-of-state populations would begin to treat in-state and out-of-state students equally, more like a private university would.

For upper-income students, I would believe that the home state university becomes a less attractive default option or safe school based on price alone. Some other advantage would need to be there: degree programs, campus life, proximity to home, job market might be strong considerations. But if price was less of a factor, and the home state school was in a dwindling job market or a declining metro area, I might have an easier time shopping for a school elsewhere.

I know that there are always political debates about keeping bright people at home, but state and local governments cannot create job opportunities as fast as new graduates enter the workforce. Helping them prosper elsewhere is preferable to having them suffer at home. I go back to many years working in Newark, New Jersey and living near Trenton, New Jersey, both places where concerned and thoughtful parents would like to see their children leave to find a better life.

I would also imagine that if state school tuition was far higher--out of state charges at some of the best state universities exceed $30,000--without subsidy, then there would be more pressures to hold down costs. It might drive schools to become more cooperative in areas where they might have been competitive losers.

For example, practically every residential four-year school runs a study abroad program. Some have access to more countries and foreign schools than others. Some have more staff to work with students and some have better access to airports and the lowest priced flights. Why can't similar schools contract with the school that runs the best program to run if for everybody?

Another example is courses and online education. Some state schools have had more success with online course offerings than others; they may be offering a larger catalog, have access to a greater number of willing faculty or have better technology to deliver the course. At present, state governments have worked together to create Western Governors University as an online institution. Why can't more schools join together to build comprehensive online course catalogs, share expenses and revenues and mutually accept degree credit for all courses?

Another area where costs are driven up is through the introduction of new majors, some proposed by faculty while other are backed by economic development or political motivations. Some of these efforts are justified, some are not.

For example, California's Silicon Valley is a center for semi-conductor manufacturing, among other electronics technology. Ceramics are used in the making of semi-conductors, yet there is no university in California that offers a bachelor's degree in ceramic engineering. The University of California and/or the Cal State University system would need to consider how to offer the degree, including faculty and lab space, and forecast demand from business and students. Or they could contract with the University of Washington, which has already invested in a department. Cost considerations would lead to subsidizing degree candidates to learn out-of-state while research considerations, e.g. rankings and funding, might lead a school to start their own department. The least cost option does not always win.

A change in tuition policy and practice such as Dr. Garland has proposed requires a change in the mindset of educators and education supporters. I was born in 1960 when President Kennedy was elected. He called for a man to reach the moon by the end of the decade. The goal was met in the context of a "space race" with the Russians that he and his supporters, as well as some Republicans, believed that the country had to win.

That did not mean that the dollars that were spent to go to the moon might have been better spent on other government programs or allowed to circulate freely in the economy. The same is true for education. Ambitious university presidents launched building programs and capital campaigns, both in the name of improving higher education. However, some of the results: rising tuition charges, excessive debt service and unexpectedly low graduation rates make people wonder if that money was well spent.

Replace public university subsidies with student scholarships? Interview with Dr. James Garland, former president Miami University of Ohio

2011-03-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

A former physics professor, department chairperson, and dean at Ohio State University, Dr. James Garland served as president of Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio from 1996-2006.

As president of the university, Dr. Garland led an initiative, First in 2009, that called for Miami to be the leader in the nation among public universities having a primary emphasis on undergraduate education with significant graduate and research programs. This initiative had numerous quantifiable goals, many of which were achieved before Garland retired in 2006.

While president, Garland, with the approval of university trustees, took a unique approach to revising the tuition structure at Miami. In 2004, all students enrolled at the main campus were billed the out-of-state rate, then approximately $18,000. Ohio students then received a Resident Scholarship of $5,000 plus a variable need-based Ohio Leader Scholarship. Students with further need could receive additional assistance. The purpose of this plan was to increase aid to in-state students from low and middle income in light of reduced subsidies from state government. The proposal immediately resulted in nearly 15,000 applications to Miami for 3,450 openings in fall 2004, then an all-time high. There was also a 100 percent increase in Ohio applicants whose parents did not have a college degree.

After his retirement from Miami, Dr. Garland penned Saving Alma Mater, which addressed, in his words: the chronic decline of public universities signified by rapidly rising tuitions, lagging faculty salaries, deteriorating campuses, a change-resistant campus culture, and an increasingly hostile public.

He calls for several reforms, including a redirection of subsidy funds to universities into need-based scholarships, much like vouchers. Students would then use these scholarships at the college of their choice, while publicly supported universities would operate more like private universities after gradual decreases in state aid.

Educated Quest would like to thank Dr. Garland for answering a few questions as to how this concept would be of help to students and their families.

+ You have advocated that state governments invest in public education through assistance to students as opposed to subsidies to publicly supported schools. Have any states gone in this direction? If so, has it helped students and their families? If no, would such a practice better help low and middle income families?

To my knowledge no states have yet replaced direct appropriations to state universities with student scholarships, although I know the idea is being discussed in many states. I think legislatures are mostly focused these days on cutting appropriations in order to reduce red ink in state budgets, but I am hopeful they will begin soon to think about restructuring the (now dysfunctional) appropriation model.

Here’s an analogy to explain why I think the current model is broken. Consider the federal Food Stamp program, which gives money to low-income persons to help them buy food. Imagine a scenario where the government instead gave the money to supermarkets rather than needy individuals, the hope being that the supermarkets would pass along the savings to their customers. Even if this dubious scheme worked as planned, needy individuals wouldn’t benefit very much, because any savings would be spread among all the supermarket’s customers, including those who didn’t need help.

But that’s exactly how public universities are funded. States give money to their state universities, hoping they will be able to pass on the savings to their students. The problem is that everybody benefits equally, even those students who don’t need financial help.

Under my proposal, the money would go to the low and middle-income students who really need the assistance. Of course, that means that upper income students would end up paying more to attend college, and while nobody wants to pay more, that strikes me as the lesser of evils. To my mind, the proper role of government is to help people who really need the help, even if the rest of us have to make some accommodation for them. For low and middle-income students the scholarships could make it possible for them to get a college degree.

+ Should parents expect the costs of education at a publicly supported school to go up dramatically over the next five years, or do you believe that the school and/or state government will do all they can to cap tuition increases?

As states cut back appropriations to state schools, those schools have little choice but to raise tuition charges. Unfortunately, I expect to see significant increases in tuition charges over the next few years.

Furthermore, history shows that state governments cannot “cap” tuition increases without damaging the schools. Price controls always have negative unintended consequences. When the Soviet Union tried to fix prices on consumer goods, the result was long lines and shoddy goods. When state governments try to regulate tuition charges, class sizes go up, student services decline, campuses become poorly maintained, the best faculty leave for greener pastures, and so forth. That has been happening in public universities for the past decade, and the current economic crunch has accelerated the process. Some public university systems are now in dire straits as a result.

+ Will the leading public universities attempt to recruit out-of-state or international students more on the basis that they will have little to no financial need? Or will some of the lesser known flagship schools aggressively pursue out-of-state students through merit or need-based scholarship programs?

Yes, selective public universities (both flagship schools and lesser-known ones) increasingly try to recruit non-resident students, because state governments allow them to charge higher tuition for non-residents. This is one of the “unintended consequences” I was referring to earlier.

When states force tuition controls on universities, it creates incentives for those universities to make up the revenue shortfall by looking elsewhere for students. The universities aren’t being greedy. It is rather that they have no other choice if they are to avoid cutting programs and laying off teachers. Some public universities actually lose money on every in-state student they admit, even when their state appropriation is taken into account. For them, fee-paying out-of-state students are their lifeblood.

+ When should students and their families consider a public university outside their home state over one that is inside their home state?

There is no simple answer to this question, because family circumstances are so variable. These days, many college students are working adults who have no choice but to attend a local public university, so for them the choice is easy.

For other students, families obviously need to take a hard look at the price differences between an in-state and out-of-state public university. If price is not the overriding consideration, then other factors weigh in on the decision: size of the student body, distance from home, number of curricular options, the academic reputation of the school, etc.

Families who are considering a public university in another state should also consider private colleges and universities. Discounting of tuition at private universities is common, so the net cost for most applicants is likely to be considerably less than the school’s “sticker price.”

NFL Players Association had no business asking top college players to boycott draft selection show

2011-03-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

I have written here a few times about the NFL Draft, mainly because it is one of the most interesting entry-level talent searches around. Like other job seekers, prospective professional football players are interviewed and sized up quickly, then asked to prove their aptitude and qualifications.

Obviously, the investment that a professional football team makes in its draft picks is higher-per-candidate than in other industries, but the thoughts are the same: ability, character and fit with the business model and/or corporate culture.

But this week I've read numerous stories where the National Football League Players Association, which has recently de-certified, had asked top college players, who are not yet members of the association, not to come to the televised NFL Draft selection show on ESPN. Supposedly, they have offered an alternative event, where the draft choices will be welcomed by fellow players, possibly some of their future teammates.

This is the first time I have ever heard that the union in a field that is a union environment--there would still be a player's union even if the de-certified association is never resurrected and the owners fill rosters with all-new players--that the union has asked future members, assuming there still is a union, to boycott in solidarity.

This is an asinine and unfair request on the part of the players. Worst, it hurts the fans who, anxious to show support for their team, tune in or show up to watch the draft. The draft, as an event, is for the fans more than anyone else. While the league has held a draft in various forms since 1936, and made the event open to the public, ESPN's full broadcasts have made it more accessible and more popular. It is safe to say that the draft has fermented many dreams in the minds of young football players to hear their name called, hold up a jersey for their new team, and hear their first cheers as a pro.

For the union to ask players to deny themselves an opportunity that they, too, once dreamed about, is cold and uncaring. I know that each drafted player will be a member of the union, presuming it is re-certified, and that is not the case in most other fields that recruit college students for entry-level positions.

But athletes are unique in their competitive nature as individuals as well as team players. The Player's Association is not asking its best players to, for instance, share their endorsement money with their less acclaimed brothers in solidarity. There is an unwritten agreement that the best players earned what they have earned as individuals.

In addition, the Player's Association and the owners have already agrees on the need for a rookie wage scale, which will lower salaries and/or signing bonuses for the players who would appear at the televised draft selection show. So, the union that agreed to reduce the future earnings of these players asks them to stay home and miss out on the biggest day of their life?

Aside from their first endorsement deals, like Cam Newton's $1 million-plus agreement with Under-Armour, all that a top draft choice has earned so far is the cheers and a hat and a jersey for the photo-op for that moment under the lights with the commissioner, their family and friends. The current players have no business trying to take that away from the draft picks, their families and most important, their fans.

A sampling of dual graduate degree programs for school administrators, a guest post by Brian Jenkins

2011-03-14T17:54:00.000-07:00

Brian Jenkins writes about a variety of education topics, including degree programs for school administrators as well as Master's of Business Administration (MBA) programs for BrainTrack.com. EducatedQuest would like to thank him and BrainTrack.com for this guest post

These days taxpayers are demanding more organizational and fiscal accountability from school administrators. It's vital that administrators make smart budgetary decisions. To meet this need, schools such as Stanford University offer a joint Master's of Arts (MA) in Education and Master's in Business Administration (MBA) program to properly prepare current and future administrators.

Regarding education, Debra Meyerson, co-founder of the Organization and Leadership Studies program at the Stanford School of Education, said, "People who have a growing amount of influence are people who can at least speak in business terms or at least be familiar with that way of thinking."

Laura Pappano is a former education columnist and author of Inside School Turnarounds. In that same article, she said, "The maturing of the charters school movement and the interest of philanthropists like Bill Gates in school reform mean leaders need a grasp not only of budgets but also of fundraising, strategic partnering, grant writing, and administering dramatic culture change."

Charter Schools

The typical charter school has no central office to rely on to manage school finances and to raise money. Education leaders at these schools need the knowledge and skills to plan the school's growth and build its capacity. A solid background in financial management would help them make better fiscal decisions. Due to a lack of staff with business skills, some charter schools rely on management organizations to take care of the business elements of operating the school.

To ensure the business aspects of educational leadership are effectively addressed, Joe Nathan, director of the Center for School Change at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, consulted with 25 chief executives before initiating the Leadership Academy for Minnesota Charter and Alternative Public Schools. Each student in the program has a mentor who works in the business world and a mentor from the education field.

My note: It is interesting that a program with a charter school focus comes out of a leading school in Minnesota, which was the first state to approve and welcome charter schools.

Joint Graduate Degrees in Education and Business

There are several schools offering this joint program. Texas Christian University, for example, offers an MBA/Doctor of Education (Ed.D) in Educational Leadership joint program. Students must first gain admission to the MBA program before they pursue the Doctor of Education degree. After showing satisfactory process in the trial period, students can enroll in the Ed.D program.

Stanford University's joint program allows students to simultaneously pursue both degrees. The program includes 84 hours of business and 35 hours of education course credits. Students can take courses that count for credit towards both programs, and the program can be completed in as little as two years. Stanford also offers a nine-month program that provides students access to coursework with more policy and business content.

Lehigh University offers a joint MBA and MA in Educational Leadership. The program consists of 15 credit hours in core business courses, 8 elective credit hours, and 22 credit hours in core education courses. Courses in economics are provided to help graduates effectively lead in an educational setting. Some of the courses are available online, and these can be very convenient options for busy professionals.

The program focuses on skills like budgeting, planning, and making personnel decisions and is taught in an interactive manner. Prerequisites (not required for admission) include basis statistics, principles of economics, financial accounting, and proficiency in Microsoft Office or equivalent.

Graduates of these joint programs are adequately prepared to be school superintendents, business managers, principles, and school district administrators.

Fixing failing schools requires more than great teachers and effective academic strategies: it requires folks with excellent business skills. More colleges and universities should offer these joint programs.

My note: one option is that colleges and universities may partner with non-profit academies that have been set up to train school principals in urban and rural public schools. Such programs may need to offer a combination of online and distance education, possibly group projects, in conjunction with residences outside of the school year. Doctoral programs, as Brian mentions above, such as the community college leadership program at the University of Maryland, operate along this model

Why being state-related works for Penn State

2011-03-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

Today I read this story in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the desire for flagship state universities to be "set free'" in the wake of declining state support to higher education. State schools would, in-effect become more like private schools, free to set their own tuition and fees and manage their operations without interference from state regulations or public officials.

The Penn State system is one such set of schools. These schools are considered "state-related," meaning that they are officially recognized as state-supported schools and receive limited financial assistance from the state. They may set enrollment policy and tuition policy, among other actions, without state government approval. In order for the system to be set free and stay free, it could not raise its in-state tuition to the level where it is a) equal to the out-of-state tuition or b) equal to that of the private colleges in Pennsylvania.

Penn State is unique in that the system has several regional campuses. The main campus in State College enrolls approximately one-quarter of its students from out-of-state. The other campuses primarily serve state residents who commute. Penn State uses a tuition calculator to help current and prospective students know what they can expect to pay.

I used the calculator to get tuition and fees for this semester for a freshman in-state student at four campuses: University Park, the main campus and the four-year campuses at Abington, Harrisburg and York. The main campus tuition and fees exceed $15,000 per-year, one of the highest charges in the country, while the regional campuses charge less.

University Park--$7,625
Harrisburg--$6,625
Abington--$6,365
York--$6,298

The main campus tuition and fees over a full year would exceed $15,000, one of the highest in-state rates in the country, but half as much as a private research university would charge before considering scholarship eligibility. The other campuses, which rely more heavily on in-state enrollments are less expensive and the students are more likely to live at home.

The satellites are more minimalist, however all of the four-year degrees they grant are recognized as Penn State degrees. The university does not consider graduates of the satellite campuses to be "inferior" students. In fact, they are allowed to take part in the main campus job fairs and take schedule slots, when available, for job interviews there. They also root for the same football team--the one that plays on the main campus.

Penn State is unique in that it can satisfy its in-state obligations through a network of campuses. It's possible to begin a degree on one campus and finish on another; more than half of the students do this. It also allows the students and their families to choose a school with all of the frills of a large residential university or one with very few. The key for the system's present and future success is that the whole system is state-related, not just the flagship, and that every degree from every campus carries the same label, and therefore respect.

A week with government workers and football players

2011-03-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

It's been interesting to follow the NFL labor negotiations in the news at the same time as I follow the occupation of the state capital in Wisconsin during the drama over Governor Scott Walker's attempts to end collective bargaining rights--aside from wages, I believe--for state government workers.

The contrasts are fascinating.

The government workers, including teachers, cling hard to retain their rights to collective bargaining. The football players representatives walked away from the bargaining table with seven hours to go. Then they de-certified their union, and gave up their right to continue collective bargaining.

The government workers had already accepted the governor's demands for wage and benefit concessions. The football players refused to negotiate on any of the team owner's demands until they believed that they had enough information to assess the financial position of every football team.

The government workers played well enough to the court of public opinion to attract supporters to spend their nights under the capital dome, though they also have their detractors. The football players "tweeted" to the fans and complained to the media, but nobody cared.

The government workers were not on strike, nor did the governor attempt to keep them from going to work. The owners plan to keep the players from using team facilities to help them maintain their fitness. A coach-player conversation is considered grounds for termination.

The government workers unions have access to public information about state and local revenues, yet they ignore it when they negotiate their contracts. The football players cannot get a complete picture of the owner's revenues, yet they have concluded negotiations in the past without that information. Why do that need it now? Do they think the owners are hiding no-show jobs on their payrolls or special slush funds somewhere? Do they think the principal owner is paying himself a million-plus when he is making millions from other businesses or investments? If they actually got that information what would they do with it? The government workers union can go to the media and play watchdog to the taxpayers. The football players would be just a bunch of angry men, except for the bonus babies and the established superstars.

In these ways, the football negotiations are more foolish. Aside from the move to de-certify the union, their representatives are relying on the legal system to resolve their differences with the owners. The owners, who wanted an extra billion off of $9.3 billion in shared revenues, are also willing to roll the dice with the courts. Aside from money, the other issues include a rookie wage scale, an 18 game season (versus 16), benefits for retired players and player safety.

Both sides agree that there needs to be a rookie wage scale, especially for the very best players. In a league that has operated with salary caps before the season that just concluded, a team cannot afford to be bad forever. Too much money would be tied up in high draft picks and too little money would be available to sign better players to play around them. Score this for both sides.

The 18 game season is more money for the owners, part of the extra billion they want in revenue sharing. This helps the good teams that plan to go with as many of the same players that made them good as they can afford. They do not need to work as many new players into their system. This hurts the bad teams that have to replace most of the players who made them bad. The players say that the extra two games jeopardize player safety. Score this for the players.

Representatives of both sides agree on player safety, especially about concussions. The owners don't want to lose their investment in the player. The player wants to play then leave the game and have a normal healthy life. Score this for both sides.

Representatives of both sides agree that there should be a larger pot for the retirees. But neither side wants it to count against their cut. Score this for neither side.

The stupidest thing about the football negotiations is that the owners and players are already making lots of money. If they left their just-expired agreement in place, both sides would be making more money every season. Owners don't stop looking for new ways to generate revenue. Players don't stop trying to stay healthy and perform. Fans spend more money, which keeps the game going. If there is a lock-out they will spend nothing on pro football.

Maybe Jerry Seinfeld is right. Sports fans don't root for the player in the uniform, they root for the uniform that's dropped in the laundry. It doesn't matter who wears the pants and the jersey as long as their team wins. If the owners want to start over with new players at lower salaries, the fans will watch them, as long as the team in their colors wins. Fans look at football as a diversion from their day-to-day life. If there's no football on Sunday or Monday they will find something else to do. Economic activity will move someplace else.

What saddens me more are the negative attitudes towards government workers. Those who have stayed the longest stay because they like the work, the job security, or both. They might not get to a see a NFL game, but they buy the chips and the beer that helps fuel the league. Wages have not kept up with the private sector, though benefits have increased more rapidly. There will be a reset, but nobody wants to keep the government workers from buying chips and beer.

The people of Wisconsin elected Scott Walker to hold the line on the costs of government, not to take away worker's rights. Both sides already know what is possible on wages and benefits, not much. But I can't blame Wisconsin's public sector workers and their supporters for fighting for the rights that the members of their championship football team are willing to toss aside. Unlike the football players and the team owners they cannot afford to roll the dice with the courts.

Best values among the best law schools to get rich

2011-03-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

Today I looked at this story--The Best Law Schools For Getting Rich--that recently ran in Forbes. It ranks the top 25 U.S. law schools in terms of mid-career--in this case fifteen years out--pay.

Of the 25 schools, three: Columbia, Fordham and NYU, are located in New York City. Three: American, George Washington and Georgetown, are in D.C. Two: Northwestern and Chicago, are in Chicago. Three: Berkeley, Santa Clara and Stanford, are in Northern California while two: Southern Cal and UCLA are in Southern California. So, fifteen of the Forbes 25 are in cities with exceptionally large legal communities as well as federal courts. These schools are also located in exceptionally important media and financial centers.

Of the rest: Duke, UVa., Harvard, Penn, Notre Dame, Cornell and Michigan have reputations that transcend state boundaries. BYU probably does, too, given the size of the Mormon community and the school's importance to that faith.

However, there were also some regional/local surprises here besides the University of Santa Clara: Georgia State, Ohio State and Rutgers-Camden.

I took this Forbes list and loaded it onto another site I've used for a previous post: the Equal Justice Works Guide. Since law school is extremely expensive, I tried to see which of these schools might deliver the most bang for the buck. I found twenty three of the schools. NYU and Notre Dame were not listed. Among the 23 I found:

+ Sixteen charged in excess of $40,000 in tuition to all students or to out-of-state students.
+ Eleven will leave students with an average indebtedness in excess of $100,000. This is in addition to any loans the student has outstanding for other degrees.
+ Nine provided tuition grants to the majority of their students.
+ Fifteen provided average grants in excess of $10,000 per student.

The best value depends upon where you want to go to school and where you want to go to work.

Rutgers-Camden left its students with the least indebtedness, while charging the second-lowest out-of-state tuition, which was slightly more than $33,000. However, the average tuition grant was only $4,500. Slightly more than a quarter of the students received grants. It's safe to presume that the school is a great value if you are an in-state resident. A private school may be a better value for out-of-staters.

Brigham Young is the best value among the national universities. The tuition for students who are not members of the Church of Latter Day Saints is $18,480. Less than half of the students get grants, which average $3,000. But even without a grant the school is a bargain for any law student. BYU law graduates leave with an average indebtedness of slightly more than $46,000.

The best value among the top private law schools? Stanford, Forbes top choice. Approximately half of all students receive grants which average $20,700, about half of the tuition. The average indebtedness is less than a hundred grand. Stanford also has less than a third as many students as Georgetown or Harvard and less than half as many as Columbia or UVa. This is the school where value, selectivity and networking opportunities on the East and West Coasts all converge--assuming you can get in.

Two reports of failing charter schools in New Jersey but we need one of best practices

2011-03-11T09:21:00.000-08:00

Today I read on NJ Spotlight that a significant number of state-approved New Jersey charter schools --35 out of 73--have either seen their charters revoked or gave them up.

My hometown Trenton Times today ran a front page story that two more, one in Trenton and one in Jersey City, faced closure. The Trenton school has been open for 16 years, the Jersey City school for ten. Surely they've had enough time to prove that their students can succeed; both schools have been around since before No Child Left Behind. The state's department of education has put both schools on probationary status.

It was interesting that two of the older schools are coming into review under a Christie-appointed commissioner who has said that he will do the right thing by the students, parents and the community, and close both of them if they do not come up with an acceptable plan to improve student achievement. The older schools, if they use earlier techniques, would need a refresh in strategy anyway.

Given that half of charter schools have failed or now earned a probationary status, it's time that the state, through non-partisan academics and administrators who have run districts in other states, took a look at the best practices of the ones that have succeeded in boosting student achievement by better than state averages--and document them for the public. This will:

+ Provide benchmarks in terms of launch and roll-up towards a successful operation.
+ Possibly serve as a guide for panels of educators that will authorize new charter schools in the future.
+ Assist the school boards and administrators of districts with failing schools that may be willing to seek charter operators or reconstitute a traditional public school using best practices of the charter schools.
+ Help the public distinguish between a "good" charter school and a "bad" one; the differences go beyond performance on high-stakes tests.
+ Guide parents to help them select the charter schools to which they would like to send their children.

I have nothing against charter schools as long as they have a plan that has resulted in better student achievement beyond test scores. By better achievement, I mean improved performance and attitude in the later grades, a lesser likelihood that the students will fail in some way--not just academically, and for high schools, successful college admissions and degree completions as well as military, vocational and apprentice examinations. All schools must have a focus on producing good citizens as well as capable students.

The problem I see with the Christie Administration's approach to charter schools is that the governor and supporters believe that a charter school, even one that has been approved but not opened, is automatically better than a traditional public school. The governor, et al., might be convinced, however, that charters are less expensive and that they get more work from teachers and principals for less money.

Of course, the governor has not actually said that, but he has made it quite clear that he is not afraid to come after scared cows, like the traditional school system and the union-management relationship, with a butcher knife.

In the end, while there are best practices, the advantages of charter schools to politicians lie in numbers that politicians may use to get re-elected and real estate professionals may use to get their best price. If they don't have enough numbers to work with, then a movement will weaken.

College students caught in the middle in state legislative debates over voting rights

2011-03-10T11:20:00.000-08:00

Today I read this story in the Washington Post online about proposals to keep college students from registering to vote in the state where they go to school, unless they or their parents live there.

One such bill in New Hampshire has been introduced by a Tea Party GOP legislator who says that: They're "foolish. Voting as a liberal. That's what kids do. (They) lack "life experience," and "they just vote their feelings."

New Hampshire is one of thirty two states considering such proposals; these also require a voter to display proof of citizenship when they vote. I'd guess that a driver's license, bank card or statement and insurance card are not considered acceptable.

That's funny. I just used all of these to renew my driver's license last summer. No one asked me if I worked or owned a home in New Jersey to determine if I pay taxes,so that I would have the right to drive my car in the Garden State. The folks at the Division of Motor Vehicles took me at my word.

It's interesting when people who call themselves true patriots want to deny people a fundamental right because they do not like their politics. That's the whole point behind such bills, whether they are proposed by conservatives or liberals, Democrats or Republicans, Tea Party or latte drinkers.

These people talk populist, then they go to great lengths to cut out anyone who does not share their views. "Populist" attempts to strip public sector workers of collective bargaining rights, for example, are an attempt to weaken a large voting bloc of people who also consider themselves "populists."

There are, however, some legitimate points. Student ID cards are not a proof of residence in the state where the school is located and dormitories, which are not opened year-round, cannot be considered primary residences for college students. Neither can a campus postal box, which is not an address. However, that all changes when a student moves off-campus or directs their personal mail to another address, such as that of a relative.

I would argue that it is reasonable to ask students who live in on-campus housing to move off-campus and to have a driver's license or non-driver's ID (plentiful in places like New York City where students don't own cars)in the state where they want to vote. They should demonstrate some intention to plant roots in a community. Out-of-state students enrolled at state colleges are already asked to do that when they apply to be considered for in-state tuition. Beyond that, it is foolish to attempt to deny voting rights to a voting bloc because you "do not like them."

We ask our military to fight against such asinine threats to freedoms in other countries as a means of defending our own freedom as well. It's amazing that the politicians who revere the military the most do not want to apply one of the military's greatest virtues to people who have just become old enough to go to war.

Weak NJ teachers union plays further into Chris Christie's hands

2011-03-10T10:19:00.000-08:00

Today my hometown Trenton Times reports that the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) spent $6.8 million on lobbying last year, a state record according to the state's Election Law Enforcement Commission.

According to the story, the NJEA's total was seven times that of Verizon, the second-highest spender.

I didn't read those numbers and put fingertips over my heart. They were no surprise. The teacher's union has over 200,000 members, though they negotiate through local bargaining units. It is a very large constituency that can influence votes. It would be more surprising if they did not lobby aggressively. They are an interest group,plain and simple, but what's wrong with that? Good teachers work hard and they should expect their union to work hard for them.

However, unlike the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and their president, Randi Weingarten, who I have written about in previous posts, my most recent being about a public appearance in Newark over teacher evaluations, the NJEA offers no alternatives on school or teacher performance, only complaints.

Maybe this is because the union has given up trying to work with the Christie Administration--or maybe it does not have the negotiating chops to work with them. If someone told me that the AFT had more sway over New York City's teachers and the education community there, as well as Newark's teachers, who that union also represents, I wouldn't argue.

Yesterday's USA Today editorial page featured a point-counterpoint on seniority-based lay-offs where the opposing view was presented by Barbara Keshishian, the NJEA president.

In her piece, she argues that "seniority is still the most objective way to manage layoffs, and the best protection against discrimination, bias and the whims of administrators. She adds that they are the "Obi-Wans" of their schools.

Yet, towards the end of her piece,Keshishian says that there needs to be "a dependable teacher evaluation system that takes multiple measures of achievement (including test scores) into account, but which also emphasizes the qualities of great teaching."

I read these quotes and I wonder if the union president would rather see a gamed evaluation process, just as there are standardized tests that can be gamed. Some evaluation processes can be weighted towards attributes that take time for teachers to develop.

Keshishian offers up some of those attributes herself: communication, empathy, patience, discipline, ability to engage students and content knowledge. Evaluation processes in the private sector are fairly standard up till upper management; younger as well as more experienced workers can be evaluated using the same form. A process that would favor Obi-Wans would be unfair, as would having two processes, one for Obi-Wans, the other for those who have the larger learning curve.

It's not realistic to assume that the Obi-Wans are the only hope for schools in need of a makeover; they have so much invested in the old ways. The hope is to find people who are willing to lead change or follow change agents. Sometimes these will be Obi-Wans who get a chance to test ideas that they have kept under wraps, other times they will be younger teachers who are bright and enthusiastic. A good faculty is balanced with both.

I'm wondering, as I read more news coverage of Keshishian and the NJEA, if more of the New Jersey locals should listen to Weingarten and the AFT. Weingarten has shown more willingness to initiate ideas, and even to work with some charter schools in New York. The reforms that have come down the pike from Democrats and Republicans are not all things that public school teachers will like.

But since these reforms have bi-partisan support, especially in New Jersey, where a Democratic legislature will pass a budget introduced by a conservative Republican governor that provides more funding for charters as well as vouchers misleadingly labeled as Opportunity Scholarships.

No matter how much money the NJEA throws into advertising and meetings with legislators to fight Governor Christie's plans, they have shown that they have few, if any allies. As Denzel Washington says in the movie Unstoppable, the only way to fight overwhelming power to grab it by the tail. That means the union has to come up with reforms that the public will like better than those proposed by the governor, and they have to do a better job of taking their case to the public.

Can or should colleges teach 'communications skills' to STEM and information technology students?

2011-03-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

Tonight I just read a story about entry-level hiring for information technology positions.

This story discusses a survey of 376 employers conducted by SHARE, an independent, volunteer run association providing enterprise technology professionals with continuous education and training, valuable professional networking and effective industry influence.

According to their Web site, SHARE serves more than 20,000 individuals representing over 2,000 of IBM's top enterprise computing customers,including leading international corporations, universities and colleges, municipal through federal government organizations, and industry-leading consultants.

The SHARE survey results that were reported to eCampusNews revealed that:

+ More than nine in 10 college graduates who majored in information technology (IT) aren’t prepared for life in the workforce;
+ Three in 10 IT companies said new hires were “severely deficient” business skills and are often in need of remedial training from superiors.
+ Forty-four percent of new hires are “well trained” but have “gaps” in their skill set.
+ Seventy-seven percent of respondent companies said that new hires needed better problem-solving skills.
+ Seven in 10 employers said new IT workers needed critical thinking skills.
+ Sixty-one percent said that new hires needed better writing and communication skills.
+ Only eight percent rated their IT hires as "well-trained" and "ready to go."

The disconnects are obvious and concerning, especially since SHARE's membership includes "employers of choice," companies that recent college graduates want to work for.

The next question I have, having worked on entry-level hiring issues are is:

How and when should colleges be developing business communications skills and interpersonal communications skills within the context of a STEM or Management Information Systems degree program?

Suppose colleges don't do this within the form of an academic course. Wouldn't students who had demonstrated leadership or teamwork in school activities stand out--if a recruiter's initial look at a resume focused beyond grades? From my experience, employers who sought the high-demand majors, including the STEM subjects, set a private cut-off based on GPA. A student who had impressive independent study, co-op or work project experience gets left off.

STEM degrees, from my limited exposure to them, involve classwork and laboratory exercises. The key is to help students master the subject first; that's what the academics have done. It would be no surprise to find out that faculty forced students to work independently, so that they could devote more time to their own work.

The brightest computer programmers are graded on the creativity of their solutions, not how well they present them. That may not be right, but faculty as researchers are trying to do the same thing in their own work. It would be no surprise if faculty members had favorite students they personally chose as research or teaching assistants who did not have strong interpersonal skills.

STEM students, like any other bright students, are curious. They want to land positions in industries that are interesting to them. This means that they will not only be biased towards firms, but that they will lack the knowledge of businesses and industries that are less familiar to them. It's up to the employer to make the industry "interesting." I worked with enough entry level employers to know that they do not always try. I'd guess those who gave unfavorable opinions on the SHARE survey are among the ones who believe that they do not need to try.

New hires will not automatically walk in with that attitude after they have a degree and come through the door on the first day on the job. More important, how will they be capable to use systems to solve business problems if the employer has not taught them anything about the business? I've worked with systems, so I'll share one problem that arises: the new hires will blow the requirements planning stage of any project. They will not only have limited business knowledge; they will not know how to speak with subject area experts.

The best thing a college can do with IT students is put them into co-op or internship situations where they will have a mentor who will guide them and help them through their early mistakes. The next best thing would be to have team projects with students in other majors that serve as a capstone course at the end of the junior and senior year. The best way to learn how to write and how to interact with people is to write and interact with people in something that looks and feel real. These efforts take a lot of time for faculty to manage and coordinate, but I've learned that students respond better to real-world challenges than a "touchy-feely" class tacked onto the curriculum.

But most important, employers cannot place too much blame on the colleges for the preparation of their newest hires. They selected the candidates to interview and made the hiring decisions. If they would like the schools to do a better job, they should also make some investment--money, technology, courses, co-op, etc.--in the degree program so that they get the results they want. They should also look further down resumes to find candidates with some real-world project experience instead of just top grades.

Book Review--College Admissions for the 21st Century by Robert J. Sternberg

2011-03-08T11:00:00.000-08:00

This is a book about college admissions and testing that offers an addition to the standardized tests to help college admissions counselors better predict academic success. The author, a former president of the American Psychological Association as well as a former dean at Tufts University, has studied college admissions since his sophomore year at Yale. His view is that standardized examinations such as the SAT and ACT--the abbrieviations stand for nothing now--measure memory and basic cognitive abilities and they can be used in cojunction with a high school grade-point-average to predict how each applicant would perform during their freshman year. They also score how a student might perform while taking a long multiple choice examination under pressure, a situation he is likely to face during his first two years in college.

However, he adds that test scores and grades alone provide an incomplete package for admissions officers to consider.

While Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts, Sternberg launched Project Kleidoscope, an admissions practice that included short open-ended essays that are scored not only on writing quality, but also measures of creativity, practical intelligence and wisdom. These augment the other application materials, including standardized exams.

Sample questions used in the first year included:

Create a short story using one of the following topics:
a) The End of MTV
b) Confessions of a High School Bully
c) The Professor Disappeared
d) The Mysterious Lab

Using an 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper, illustrate an ad for a movie, design a house, make an object better, or illustrate an ad for an object of your choice.

Using your knowledge of American or world history, choose a defining moment and imagine an alternate historical scenareo if a key event played out differently.

The use of these essays showed these results:

+ They scared off the less serious applicants who would have made up the bottom third of Tufts' applications pool.
+ Combined with a new viewbook and a marketing campaign based on leadership, the total volume of serious and qualified applicants actually increased.
+ The average SAT scores for the entering class increased.
+ The diversity of the student body increased as well. Tufts admitted 30 percent more African Americans in the first year these essays were used and 15 percent more Hispanic Americans.
+ Admitted students in 2007 who completed an essay--they were optional--performed better in their freshman year than students who did not.
+ While slightly more than half of the admitted students in 2007 completed an essay, about two-thirds of the students admitted in 2008 had completed them, too.
+ There was no meaningful difference on essay scores among members of different ethnic groups.

Tufts was an interesting place to use Kleidoscope because it is an extremely selective school that is considered against other extremely selective schools. According to the latest U.S. News Guide, Tufts admitted only 27% of all applicants in 2009. The school has only 5,000 undergrads and two undergraduate schools, one for liberal arts, the other for engineering, which has ten percent of the students. Tufts offers no business major.

At first glance, Tufts is most similar to Brown, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Princeton or Rochester in terms of student body size and academic mix. Schools such as Carnegie Mellon and Case Western Reserve are of similar size as well, though they also offer undergraduate business degrees.

All of these schools, again according to the U.S. News Guide, are generous with grants. Average costs, after receiving grants, ranged from less than $16,000 for Princeton to $30,000 for Carnegie Mellon. The average for Tufts was slightly more than $25,000, lower than Case Western, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins and Rochester.

The decision for the bright applicant who gets into one or more of these schools is going to come down to personal fit with the school and financial aid. The essay might help tilt the balance not only for admissions but scholarships as well, though there are no losers among these schools.

It might also motivate the applicant to become excited about the school. This is important for Tufts which does not have the same brand recognition as the Ivies or Chicago or word associations such as Carnegie Mellon--engineer or Johns Hopkins--pre-med/doctor. A nice viewbook is nice but it is tough to compete against brands, unless you can bring the student to campus so he can see if he'll be happy, or if you can show him the money.

The thought process behind Sternberg's Project Kleidoscope and college admissions in general is worth reading, however Sternberg alludes that he had certain political skills to make it work at Tufts. The man has since moved on to become Provost and Senior Vice President at Oklahoma State University. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with to improve the academic reputation and the graduation rates at that school.

The value of test-prep is repetition

2011-03-08T09:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I read a story in Education Week about the value of test-prep courses for college admissions. This story reported the concerns over the costs of the more expensive test-prep packages as well as their promises to raise scores on the SAT or ACT examinations.

This story, which is locked, quotes a professor, David Briggs, from the University of Colorado, who is the chairman of the research and evaluation program at the university's school of education. Professor Briggs found that the average affect of commercial coaching was positive; test scores went up, again on average, 30 points on the math and verbal sections of the SAT. The story also mentions a 2006 study conducted by Consumer Reports of 10 online test-prep services. That story, which I found online, showed that scores improved by an average of 38 points.

Thirty or thirty eight points has value. The difference might not move you from outside the 25-to-75 percent range into the median for the schools you want, but it can move you in a positive direction from within the range, or even push you beyond it. For instance, in the 2011 U.S. News Guide, the 75th percentile for students entering Cal-Berkeley this fall was 1470. Thirty more points might push you into scholarship territory. That's a good return on investment in the test-prep fee,

Of course, the test-prep courses promise larger gains, though the counterpoint is that students can obtain practice tests for free. They can also take good math and English classes in high school--though teacher quality cannot be guaranteed to students.

The test prep companies did not exist, or at least I was not aware of their existance, when I was in the eleventh grade. I took a math review in high school to re-learn and practice the algebra and geometry I had forgotten, but nothing for the verbal side.

The first time I saw the verbal questions was when I took the PSAT--not a bright move on my part. Had I gone through coached practices I am sure that I would have done better. As things went, I raised my scores 100 points by taking the test three times. My scores got better mainly because I became more familiar with the test.

Four years later, I took a free practice course for the GRE at Rutgers, where I was a junior. The main value was the same: I got used to taking a timed test, especially at a time I was not taking any math. Again repetition was the value, only this time I was not practicing on the test day. I took the GRE once and scored well enough to get into grad school.

Ten years later, I wanted to go to business school. I had worked for seven years and had not taken a math of any kind for thirteen. The hardest math I used at work as an urban planner was geometry, to calculate the area of a piece of property, and very basic statistics. So I signed up for the Princeton Review. Again I learned how to take a test by using practice tests. I took the GMAT once and scored well enough to get into business school.

So the value of test-prep can be summed up in one word: repetition. You get used to a test by taking the test. You take an in-person class and you go through what its like to have a proctor in the room. For someone who had not taken a test in a while that had value. For someone who is motivated to go through a $25 practice book from start to finish and check the answers, then go through a second book for good measure, I'd tell them to skip the more expensive options.

But here's my big question. If every college-bound student has to take either a SAT or ACT to apply to college, then why don't high schools offer the coaching or at least the practice time and space? It's not like the teachers need to teach to these tests, though they are certainly high-stakes exams for the students.

The Education Week story, as one example, mentions how one Ann Arbor, MI high school prepares for the ACT. One counselor's solution: provide free after-school sample tests and proctor them. The students study on their own then show up for practice on pre-arranged dates.

Had this option been available to me "back in the day," I would have taken practice tests as often as I could before I took a real exam.I have all the test-prep I'd want for the cost of a test book.

This does not mean test-prep has no value. If you have not gone to school for a while, it can be tremendous help. If you did poorly in algebra or geometry, you need to re-learn both before you can take either the SAT or ACT, so you may need help beyond practice tests. But again the key is repetition. Keep doing the work until you get it down.