As the number of returning adult students continues to grow and the “traditional” student population has only become more diverse to include those with backgrounds and life experience in varying fields of study, some schools are looking at rewarding those new students with credit hours for “prior learning,” rather than prompting them to start over as most freshmen do.

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education explores schools that consider academic achievements alongside individual accomplishments before students step onto campus, and look at their volunteerism, years in the military, or on-the-job training, among other life experiences. Formal assessments of those experiences are then used to evaluate incoming students as a way to award them credit hours, often as a replacement of general education coursework.

At Valdosta State University, professors conduct assessments of students’ experiences by having them demonstrate what they already know about a certain field. The Chronicle describes a biology professor who awards credit to students who may have a background in science from volunteering to clean up local streams, for example, or lab experience. The school has been conducting such assessments for about a year and a half; the program started when the school decided to begin training students who had come from non-traditional backgrounds to become teachers.

At Empire State College, which is part of the State University of New York, students are able to write their own degree plans. Faculty committees and administrative offices review portfolios students craft based on their work experience in a particular field, for example, and determine how many credits students should receive based on that information. The school’s administrators say having the students reflect on what they’ve learned before going to college helps them realize their potential and make obvious the kinds of skills they may have, as they are forced to put those talents on paper. At Inver Hills Community College, students are asked to complete two courses at the school before attempting a portfolio, which not only involves writing about their past experiences, but being able to discuss them.

Other schools conduct more standardized tests and formal assessments for students to demonstrate prior learning skills, such as the American Council on Education’s evaluations of work and military training or the College Level Examination Program tests. According to the Chronicle and Stamats, a higher-education marketing company, the availability of credit for life experience is the top thing adults look for when selecting a school in their college search. About half of all schools have some kind of prior learning assessment available to students, according to the Council for Adult & Experiential Learning, so if you’re a returning adult student, consider that the work you’ve already done could save you some time—and money—as you take on that college experience.

Posted: under College Classes, Tips.
Tags: College Classes, college tips, course enrollment, returning students, Tips

Comments (0) Mar 18 2010

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) released its latest list of the highest-paying college majors of the class of 2010 last week, with engineering- and technology-related fields of study once again coming out on top.

This probably won’t come as much of a surprise to you. Engineering and technology majors consistently rank high on any list of highest-paying careers, and there have only been minor changes in the ranks over the last few years. (Information sciences and systems is a new addition to the list this year, coming in at 10th place.) The only non-engineering related degrees in the top 10 this time around were computer science and information sciences and systems. According to NACE, petroleum engineering earned the highest starting salary reported at the bachelor’s degree level ($86,220). That average starting salary was more than one-and-one-half times the average starting salary reported for bachelor’s degree graduates as a whole ($48,351). The average starting salary for all graduates has fallen about 2 percent since 2009, by the way.

It’s certainly not always the case, but often, the more technical your skills are, the more potential you have of landing an impressive starting salary. There’s less competition in a field like petroleum engineering, for example, as it isn’t the most popular of majors, so those engineers benefit from those odds with higher salaries. (Petroleum engineering degrees account for less than 1 percent of all bachelor’s degrees conferred, according to NACE.)

What does this mean for you liberal arts majors? Even you business majors may worry that you’ll have a tough time making ends meet, as business isn’t exactly overrepresented on the NACE list. Still, not everyone is going to grow up to become an engineer. (And if they did, the list would surely shift, as it depends greatly on the supply and demand of new graduates.) Certainly, the kind of field you’re interested in should play a big part when you’re deciding on a college major. And most college students do still consider interest over salary potential when choosing their majors, as the most popular fields of study fall well outside petroleum engineering. (According to the U.S. Department of Education, the most popular college majors are in business, the social and health sciences, and education.)

Take the NACE list with a grain of salt, and don’t change your focus to aeronautics just because of the pay potential. If you have no interest in one of those high-paying majors, chances are you’ll have a tough time getting through a four-year program in that discipline, and if you do graduate, an even tougher time liking a job in a career you chose for the money. But if you are passionate about engineering and technology, that’s great. You’ll have a good starting salary to go along with a job you enjoy.

Posted: under College Classes, College Majors, Tips.
Tags: College Classes, College Majors, engineering, Tips

Comments (0) Mar 16 2010

As more states continue passing medical-marijuana laws (14 and counting), it was only a matter of time before higher education would take notice. A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education takes a look at Oaksterdam University, an Oakland, Calif., institution that provides “quality training for the cannabis industry.”

Oaksterdam (named after Oakland and Amsterdam) has been offering weekend seminars and semester-long courses since November of 2007, when a group of marijuana-legalization activists their burgeoning movement deserved a trade school. The main school exists in a 30,000-square-foot converted office building, with satellite campuses in Los Angeles, Sebastopol, Calif., and Flint, Mich. Its academic departments, which admittedly began as a “political stunt,” according to the article, now include coursework in biology, political science, horticulture, and “methods of ingestion,” a class that teaches the benefits and history of extracted medicine, the chemistry behind it, and the different extraction methods and equipment used.

Although classes at the school aren’t transferable - Oaksterdam isn’t an accredited institution - that fact hasn’t seemed to hurt enrollment. The “campus tour” described in the Chronicle article included an out-of-work engineer looking for a new career and a teenager who decided against majoring in horticulture at the University of California at Davis in favor of Oaksterdam. “I was convinced it was the best road for me to go down,” he said in the article.

MedGrow Michigan Cannabis College is the Midwest’s version. Students there take one class a night for six weeks, and take a cooking and concentrates lab, a history of cannabis class, and several horticulture lectures. The school’s site boasts that more schools outside of its current Southfield, Mich., location are coming, and the faculty there include attorneys, professors in botany, and a professor of history who was one of the first 500 patients in the state of Michigan to obtain his patient ID card for medical marijuana use.

Cannabis colleges aren’t the only kind of school taking advantage of career changers looking to pick up new skills and improve their job outlooks. Michigan’s ABC School of Bartending and Casino College has been training potential new employees for new casinos planned across the border in Ohio. Students at the casino school learn how to deal cards and count poker chips, among other tricks of the trade, to prepare for the more than 7,500 potential jobs at casinos to be built in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo. A new school that recently opened in Tinley Park, Illinois, Bette Baron’s Art of Body Coloring School, offers a two-week intensive program in body art.

Posted: under College Classes, College Search, Just for Fun.
Tags: College Classes, College Search, job search, Just for Fun

Comments (0) Feb 26 2010

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro unveiled a new program yesterday that would allow undergraduates to graduate within three years. The initiative, UNCG in 3, would target “highly motivated students,” according to the school’s press release, and would address the growing number of high school seniors who enter the university with transferable college credit earned through Advanced Placement (AP), UNCG iSchool or other early college programs.

Graduating early isn’t a new phenomenon. Many college students consider graduating early to save costs (the UNCG in 3 program would save undergraduates about $8,000 in tuition, fees, room and board) and get a jump on their post-college careers. Sen. Lamar Alexander, a former president at the University of Tennessee turned Republican lawmaker, has said the three-year degree track would would save students money, ease the dependence on federal and campus-based financial aid, and allow students  to move into the working world or to pursue an advanced degree in less time. But it is unique for a college to set up a program specifically to get students on that track.

Incoming freshmen in the following degree programs would need 12 college credit hours prior to enrollment to be eligible: Accounting, African-American Studies, Business Administration, Communications Studies, Economics, Elementary Education, English, Entrepreneurship, Finance, German, History, Information Systems and Operations Management, Political Science, Psychology, Religious Studies, Romance Languages and Russian. Those eligible students would need to take and pass at least 16 credits each fall and spring, plus seven credits each for two summer sessions.

The decision to offer the program came following a survey of the North Carolina school’s student body. According to the school’s press release, in the fall of 2009, 526 freshmen came to the college with AP credits; 92 students had 12 or more credits. That year, 59 first-year students entered with credits from UNCG iSchool, joining 139 continuing students with iSchool credit. A number of high schools across the country are also set to begin offering early high school graduation plans, further shortening not only the college but the high school experience.

Other colleges are looking to keep students from taking too long to graduate. At the University of Texas at Austin, a 20-member committee has recommended placing a limit on the number of semesters it should take undergraduates to graduate at 10. The current average length of time is 8.5 semesters; the national standard is four years, or eight semesters. According to the Associated Press, another task force recommended a 10-semester limit in 2003. Students would be able to appeal the limit, which would not apply to those in some architecture and engineering programs, or to shorter summer sessions. The committee also looked at limited the number of times students should be allowed to switch majors.

The Texas college has been looking to place such limits on the student body to better serve those students. According to the committee’s report, “By remaining at the university for extended periods, these students reduce the university’s capacity to serve other students who wish to attend UT, both freshmen and transfers.” The Associated Press did not address whether there was a financial incentive for the school to graduate students early and get new freshman applicants enrolling.

Posted: under College Classes, College News, High School.
Tags: College Classes, college news, High School, high school students

Comments (0) Feb 23 2010

Public high schools in eight states will introduce a program next year that will allow their high school sophomores to test out of their junior and senior years if they are interested in enrolling in community college early.

The program is the brainchild of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), and was announced Wednesday. Those who do well on the tests, which will be called “board exams,” but aren’t interested in going to a community college will be able to continue taking college prep courses at their high schools to prepare for filing applications to the selective schools of their choice. Those who fail the exams will be eligible to retake them at the end of their junior and senior years.

According to the NCEE, the program’s goals are to reduce the number of college students in remedial courses, and to better prepare high school students for campus life and the rigors of academics at institutions of higher education. Today, nearly half of the students in community colleges take one or more remedial courses and many are never able to complete developmental courses and move on to credit-level courses to complete their college degree, according to the NCEE.

Students would be tested on a broad range of topics, including the standard English and math. Between 10 to 20 schools in the eight states involved will offer the program, modeled after existing programs in countries like Australia, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands, in the 2010-2011 academic year. According to an article in the New York Times, the program has received a $1.5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help states and school districts get the program running. Start-up costs for school districts would be about $500 per student; that would cover the costs of courses, tests, and teacher training. To cover future costs, the eight states in the program plan to apply for a portion of the $350 million in federal stimulus money designated for improving public school testing, according to the New York Times.

The eight states offering the program are Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. The NCEE hopes the program, which was a part of recommendations set into motion by the NCEE in 2006, will spread across the country. Their other recommendations included getting children in school by the time they were 3 years old and giving states control over local school districts.

Posted: under College Classes, High School, High School News, Standardized Testing.
Tags: College Classes, High School, High School News, Standardized Testing

Comments (0) Feb 18 2010

It may not make students too happy, but a number of schools across the country are taking a closer look at whether their professors are doling out marks that are a bit on the high side.

According to a study conducted by the University of Oregon’s Undergraduate Council, the number of A’s given to students increased by 10 percent over a 12-year period, and the school’s overall GPA has increased by about 5 percent. The average SAT score, however, has remained the same, suggesting that students aren’t necessarily studying harder, but benefiting from grade inflation at work.

In a story from news station KVAL CBS 13 in Eugene yesterday, administrators said the school needs to come up with guidelines where students are awarded grades that are reflective of their work, and where students aren’t just given a “B” for showing up on time. “If all the grades are squeezed in between B+ and A+ what are we really communicating to students about the quality of their work?” Karen Sprague, vice provost for undergraduate studies at the University of Oregon asked in the story.

Princeton University has been trying to put a stop to grade inflation for six years now, with some in its student body complaining of the opposite - grade deflation. A recent article in the New York Times said students on campus were worried about other Ivy League students who perhaps didn’t have to work as hard. One student in the article described the “nightmare scenario” of competing against someone from Yale University who had a 3.8 GPA, compared to his 3.5. The percentage of students with Princeton “As” was below 40 percent last year, down from nearly 50 percent when the policy was adopted in 2004, according to the New York Times. In a survey last year by the undergraduate student government, 32 percent of students said grade deflation was their main source of unhappiness. About 25 percent said they were more unhappy with lack of sleep.

An easy fix would be to give only those students As who deserve them, without figuring in quotas of how many high marks a professor is allowed to award or hold back. This would require a campus-wide standard, however, that takes a close look at defining “excellence,” a criteria for that A grade. Students’ expectations may need to be tweaked as well, as grade inflation isn’t only limited to college campuses. Not too long ago, some high schools considered placing limits on how low to go; some schools argued that awarding scores below the 50 percent mark may do more harm than good, worried that improving those GPAs could become an impossible feat for students with a particularly low grade.

Posted: under College Classes, GPA.
Tags: College Classes, GPA, grades

Comments (0) Feb 17 2010

Duke University professor Deborah C. Jenson wasted little time deciding how to get academia involved following the recent earthquake in Haiti. She developed a new course for the school called “Haitian Creole for the Haitian Recovery” that aims to help undergraduates, health-care practitioners, and engineers get involved in relief and rebuilding efforts by teaching them about the country’s language and culture. Less than two weeks after the earthquake, a group of students from all different backgrounds - history, forestry, and political science majors, for example - were already meeting and discussing how their unique skill sets could contribute to rebuilding Haiti.

The course also includes a basic introduction on how to navigate Haiti as someone who joins the relief effort, from getting around to pinpointing exactly the parts of Haiti that were most affected by the earthquake. Jenson came to the idea almost immediately after the disaster. She met with students from the Haitian Student Alliance and her Creole classes, and knew exactly what the relief effort would need to be successful and lasting: cultural sensitivity.

In an interview with Jenson in The Chronicle of Higher Education this week, she describes the projects already taking form as a result of her students’ need to help, such as a prosthetics drives and an initiative to help HIV-positive orphans. Others are in the class so that they can become effective communicators before going on humanitarian missions to Haiti. Jenson said in the interview that because it is obvious rebuilding efforts will continue for many years to come, Duke will probably offer the course in subsequent semesters.

Colleges and organizations across the country continue to look for ways to use their resources and personnel to make a difference in Haiti. The Institute of International Education created an emergency grants program to help students from Haiti on American campuses who have been affected by the earthquake. Accredited campuses are able to nominate up to five students at their institutions for the $2,000 grants. Lynn University established a fund to assist members of their community whose lives the earthquake impacted. The school was rocked recently by news that the four students and two faculty members who went missing after the earthquake were presumed dead. The group was there on a service learning trip.

If you’re still looking for ways to help, contact your university. Colleges have become an excellent source for students interested in joining the relief effort. Or consider getting involved in community service projects closer to home. There’s never a shortage of service or volunteer projects wherever you may be.

Posted: under College Classes.
Tags: College Classes, community service, community service scholarships, service, volunteer

Comments (0) Jan 29 2010

Has the week been feeling a little long lately? Can Friday never come soon enough? If you’re at the University of Montana, you could be in luck. In response to continued economic troubles and predicted shortfalls in state and federal revenue, the university’s president announced this week that the school could benefit from a four-day work week that would reduce operating costs and address their budget woes.

The measure would make faculty and students’ days longer, and professors would still make the same salaries. Faculty and staff had mixed feelings about the idea - Does this mean more cutbacks in the future? Are jobs on the line here? - but students have found few negatives to bring up. It’d mean every weekend was a three-day weekend, and for the green among them, a reduced carbon footprint since there would be fewer commuters on that day off and less energy expended to run the school. Others think it could allow them to pick up more hours at on-campus and off-campus jobs to help cover those college costs. Students who have expressed concerns worry that this may mean it takes them longer to graduate. Programs with rigorous curriculums, like law and pharmacy, may have trouble fitting in all of their required instruction into a shortened week.

According to the Western Montana newspaper “The Missoulian,” the change would involve the following: The University would be open Tuesday-Friday, to account for the many activities that happen on Fridays. Classes would run at 90 minutes, which already happens campus-wide on Tuesdays and Thursdays. More classes would be offered early in the morning and late in the evenings, meaning more 8 a.m. classes for students. Faculty and staff would work 10-hour days. Administrators think the change would save the college about $450,000 each year, or about 15 percent of the university’s overall budget to heat and light buildings. The earliest a shortened week would take effect is July 2010.

Some community colleges already operate in a similar fashion. The unusual thing here is that the University of Montana is a research institution, where arguably more time on campus is needed by those who are there for the school’s research capabilities. Administrators say they have a few things to iron out before discussing the idea further, including whether the school’s library and University Center would remain open on Mondays.

What do you think? What are your pros and cons of a short week? Should other schools consider it to save some money or recoup some funding for their budgets? Let us know what you think.

Posted: under College Budgets, College Classes, College and the Economy.
Tags: College and the Economy, College Budgets, College Classes, course enrollment, economy

Comments (0) Jan 28 2010

More than one in four college students took at least one online class in the fall of 2008, according to an annual survey released yesterday called “Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States.” Those numbers, which come from the Sloan Consortium and reflect data from thousands of colleges and universities across the country, illustrate a 17 percent increase in the number of students enrolling in online classes since the survey was released last year.

To put things in perspective, the number of students enrolling in higher education overall only grew by 1.2 percent. More than 4.6 million students are enrolled in online courses across the country, compared to 3.9 million the previous year. Less than 10 percent of students were taking classes online in 2002; today that figure is more than 25 percent. The survey did not take a close look at online degree universities, although it would be interesting to see whether distance learning has also seen an increase in applicants who see the benefits of completing their coursework at their own pace. (About 73 percent of fully online universities reported requests from students to offer even more online courses than they already do.)

The Chronicle of Higher Education today describes the survey’s data even further, and suggests that despite the increase in online enrollment, many colleges are still not offering a sufficient number of online offerings despite the potential for that strategy to address some schools’ budget problems. (According to the report, enrollment numbers in general increase in times of economic crisis.) Public institutions are more likely to offer more online courses, according to the article. At the University of Central Florida, for example, more than half of the student population is taking at least one class online each year.

Other highlights of the report include:

• More than 80 percent of these students taking online courses are studying at the undergraduate level, with only 14 percent taking graduate level courses and the remainder in some other for-credit course.
• 54 percent of institutions report that the economic downturn has increased demand for existing face-to-face courses.
• 66 percent of institutions report increased demand for new courses and programs, and 73 percent report increased demand for existing online courses and programs.
• Less than one-third of administrators believe that their faculty accept the value and legitimacy of online education. (This has changed little over the last six years.)
• Nearly 300 institutions with no current online offerings are reporting increased student demand to begin such offerings.

Posted: under College Classes, College and the Economy.
Tags: College and the Economy, College Classes, course enrollment, economy, online college

Comments (0) Jan 27 2010

A new school that recently opened in Tinley Park, Illinois, hopes to lure out-of-work art students by offering a two-week intensive program that promises to teach them a new skill—body art.

The school, Bette Baron’s Art of Body Coloring School, opened earlier this month, and faced little opposition from the town, which saw it as another opportunity for students seeking vocational schools. An article in the Chicago Tribune today describes how Bette Baron, the owner and a tattoo artist for the last 16 years, opened the school to take her mind off the death of her son, Brian. Her son’s face and “Love You Forever Brian” decorate her left arm. “Even housewives are getting tattoos now,” Baron said in the article. Students pay $900 tuition fee and $750 for a tattooing kit at the school, and can expect to make up to $100 once they become licensed body artists.

According to the Tribune article and a 2008 poll by Harris Interactive, 32 percent of adults ages 25 to 29 have tattoos. Do tattoos have a place in academia? Sure, ink and piercings been linked to all sorts of things, including deviant behavior, as Texas Tech University’s school of sociology reported recently. (They say the more tattoos and piercings you have, the more likely you are to binge drink, fall into promiscuous behavior, get arrested, and use drugs.) Career counselors also usually suggest you keep your body art from public display when interviewing for a new job, especially if there’s a dress code and a fairly conservative office staff.

But tattoos are also becoming the way academics express themselves. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently featured a series of scholars’ photo submissions that displayed tattoos scholars got to commemorate their work, research, and theses. The tattoos in the series weren’t considered taboo, but representative of the spirit and creativity of those academics. They included scholars who got inked with the symbol for the general formula of an ester linkage, coral fish, a double helix, and the phrase “read books” that came down the calves of an adjunct English instructor in Memphis. Lawrence K. Fulbeck, a professor of art who is the author of “Permanence: Tattoo Portraits,” even went to Japan to have some tattoos done the old fashioned way—through an hours-long process using needles rather than an electric tattooing drill.

What do you think? Is body art so mainstream that you wouldn’t be shocked to see your professor sporting a tattooed sleeve down his arm? Would any of you consider a permanent reminder of your academic work inked on your body?

Posted: under College Classes, College Culture, Just for Fun.
Tags: art scholarship, College Culture, Just for Fun

Comments (2) Jan 22 2010