Archive for the ‘Admissions’ Category

Here is yet another paper on the impending shortage of college-educated workers, released on Wednesday by the Center for Law and Social Policy and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.

The paper looks at each state’s jobs in 2008 and projects what the job needs will be in 2018.

In 2018, Georgia will have 306,000 more jobs requiring postsecondary education than it does now, from 2,523,000 jobs to 2,830,000 jobs.

The paper also lists unemployment rates by level of education in each state. In Georgia, the unemployment rate for someone without a high school degree is 16.9.

With a high school degree, the unemployment rate is 11.7.

The unemployment rate for Georgia workers with college degrees is 5.8. For those with graduate or professional degrees, the unemployment rate is 3.6.

From the release:

The paper, Not Just Kid Stuff Anymore: The Economic Imperative for More Adults to Complete College, finds that over the next decade, there will be no national growth …

Continue reading New research paper: Demand for college-educated workers will rise by 16 percent by 2018. »

Related to our discussion the other day over whether public dollars should fund degrees that don’t lead to jobs: The U.S. Department of Education will now impose a “gainful employment” rule, which will ban for-profit schools from federal financial aid if a sizable number of their graduates can’t find jobs that that enable them to repay their student loans.

While students at for-profit institutions represent 12 percent of all higher education students, they represent 26 percent of all student loans and 46 percent of all student loan dollars in default. The median Federal student loan debt carried by students earning associate degrees at for-profit institutions was $14,000, while the majority of students at community colleges do not borrow for the same degrees.

The for-profits live on public dollars as more than a quarter receive 80 percent of their revenues from taxpayer-financed federal student aid. Given their reliance on federal aid, this would seem to be a spur for reform …

Continue reading If graduates can’t find jobs and pay back loans, for-profit schools could lose federal aid »

The mother of a co-worker, Ellen Nizzi earned her college degree this weekend at age 90. (Family photo)

I have worked with AJC editor Carolyn Warmbold for many years, and heard a lot about her spunky and energetic mother’s dream of earning her college degree.

Well, Ellen Nizzi did it this past weekend — at age 90 at Eckerd College in Florida.

Here’s a lovely St. Petersburg Times story about an amazing lady whose daughter is one of my bosses at the AJC.  (A lifelong learner and holder of a doctorate from the University of Texas, Carolyn is pretty amazing, too, but I will save that for another day.)

Ellen Nizzi’s belief in education is inspiring.

By Danny Valentine

One by one, the graduates of Eckerd College crossed the stage Sunday morning beneath a big white tent.

The crowd politely clapped as men and women in black robes and caps accepted diplomas. Some cheered. Others whistled. One blew a bullhorn.

But of the 532 graduates, only one brought the audience to its feet with …

Continue reading A dream and a degree deferred to age 90: She earns diploma and standing ovation. »

Do you know high school seniors who either didn’t get into the college of their choice or who are still considering whether to go to college?

The National Association for College Admission Counseling publishes a list of colleges that still have space after the May 1 deposit deadline. It’s always interesting to see the good colleges on the list. It’s a very handy list as you can search colleges by state and click to get contact information for each school.

This year’s list includes several well known Georgia colleges with room for students in their fall freshman classes.  One of them is Morehouse.

Also on the list are Agnes Scott College, Andrew College, Berry College, Brenau University, Oglethorpe University, Piedmont College and Savannah College of Art and Design. They all marked “yes” to whether financial aid was still available. (Georgia Southern University is on the list, but only for transfer students, not freshmen, and has limited housing.)

Just received this note from …

Continue reading Some colleges still have spots for freshmen, including Morehouse and Agnes Scott »

I received this letter from a dual enrolled high school senior who had the reverse situation of the grade calculation controversy in Cherokee County. In Cherokee, dual enrolled students enjoy an edge in class ranking computations. This student says she lost points because of her extensive dual enrollment courses.

Cherokee assigns a 100 for any college “A,” but applies an exact numerical grade for students in its high school AP classes. In this student’s system, high schools apparently decide for themselves what numerical value to assign to an “A”  from a college course, a fact that she says was never explained to her.

A dual enrolled “A”  translated to a much lower numerical equivalent than an “A” in an AP course, which lowered her GPA considerably.

Isn’t it time to standardize this whole process statewide so that every school treats these grades in the same way?

Also, class rankings seem more trouble than they are worth . Shouldn’t public schools follow the lead of many top …

Continue reading Student: I was penalized for my “A’s” in dual enrollment classes »

The goal of all Georgia public colleges, even Tech, should not be to weed out the weak, but help all students graduate, said a panel today. (AJC file)

As expected, the Regents increased tuition today at Georgia’s public colleges and universities. At the same time that the Regents were voting, I was across downtown at a panel on college completion where affordability was cited as an impediment to students completing their degrees. There were 150 people in the audience, including business leaders, state school chief John Barge and Erin Hames, from the governor’s office.

“We are reaching limits in our states to keep education affordable,” said David Spence, president of the Southern Regional Education Board and panel moderator.

(One of the panelists was Rockdale Superintendent Samuel T. King, who told me afterward that he was not at liberty to confirm that he was a candidate for the Cobb school chief job. I take that as a “yes.” If he was not a candidate, King would have been …

Continue reading As Regents raise tuition, policymakers discuss whether college costs are too high »

Should freshmen be allowed to play on NCAA teams or should freshmen ineligibility rules be restored? (AP Photo)

With tonight’s final game of the Final Four, here’s a provocative op-ed piece from the Monday print education page urging a ban on college freshmen playing NCAA sports. This essay is by Maggie Severns, a program associate for the Education Policy program at the New America Foundation.

Enjoy:

By Maggie Severns

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ushered in the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament  by telling the media that schools should only qualify for post-season play if they are on track to graduate at least 40 percent of their players.

In a column for the Washington Post, Duncan wrote, “When I raised the issue of low graduation rates among men’s teams last year, skeptical sportswriters said I didn’t understand the realities of big-time college basketball. But every year, the litany of excuses for why basketball teams cannot graduate most players and …

Continue reading It’s madness to let college freshmen play. Restore NCAA freshman ineligibility rules. »

Many people accuse the state’s university system of raising tuition in the past without consequence because the HOPE Scholarship absorbed most of the shock. But the AJC has a good story this morning debunking a lot of the assumptions around tuition and tuition increases.

The article also examines the impact of the ongoing legislative cuts on higher education, cuts that will continue this year and likely lead to tuition increases in fall college bills. And the news story looks at the annual buck passing; the Regents blame the Legislature for cutting higher ed budgets year and year and lawmakers blame the Regents for refusing to tighten their belt.

Those cuts will be more personal for the third of public college students who receive HOPE because the scholarship will no longer camouflage increases as a result of the reductions in the beloved program this year. HOPE is paying a percentage of college tuition from now on rather than all of it. That percentage will vary each year …

Continue reading Brace yourself: With or without HOPE, college students will see tuition increases »

The lottery cannot keep up with the costs of HOPE and pre-k. Should it start giving more of its proceeds to the programs?

Many of you have complained that the lottery is giving a smaller slice of the pie to HOPE and pre-k than was originally intended and urged the AJC to write about it.

The paper has a good story today on the issue of why the lottery is returning less than the third that voters approved in the statewide referendum that legalized lottery sales in Georgia. In a nutshell, the lottery officials maintain that new games and more prizes attract more players and the cite Georgia Lottery sales and earnings as their evidence.

The AJC reports that a state audit found the Georgia Lottery is fifth-highest among 42 lotteries in the nation for jackpots and still ranked seventh in total money transferred to the state because it had maintained high overall sales. The auditors found the correlation between the higher or more-frequent jackpots and better sales benefited the …

Continue reading Lottery defends its percentage going to HOPE, pre-k, saying more prizes ensure more players »

(Folks, This piece I wrote runs on the Monday education page, paired with this column by Gov. Nathan Deal.)

The debate in the Legislature over the HOPE scholarship changes provoked many dramatic speeches, but the most personal was delivered by state Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Smyrna.

Evans is the exact student that Gov. Zell Miller, a son of hardscrabble Georgia, envisioned when he launched HOPE in 1994. Growing up in Ringgold to parents who labored in carpet mills, Evans was smart, but poor. She was not raised in a household that read the classics or discussed poetry around the table. Still, she graduated in the top 10 percent of her class.

Despite her accomplishments, Evans today would not qualify for the full HOPE funding that enabled her to attend the University of  Georgia.

And that’s  because she barely broke a 1,000 on the SAT.

“Hard work can get you a higher GPA, but hard work will not always get you a higher SAT,” Evans said. “I could not make up what I didn’t …

Continue reading The politics of HOPE »