Latest News

News Affecting WESTOP Members

Education Policy
Investing in America's Future
'Affirmative Action for the Future
Defining Accountability
A lift on the road to graduation
FY2009 funding for TRIO Signed in to Law
A lift on the road to graduation
WESTOP Projects Excel in National Competition
Upward Bound APR Dates Announced
Demystifying Aid for Community College Students

Education Policy
Investing in America's Future

Arnold L. Mitchem 11.17.09, 2:00 PM ET

Our country is losing its competitiveness because we are not adequately investing in human capital. The most ominous sign of this trend is that the educational attainment of young adults is slipping steadily: The U.S. is the most developed nation in the world, yet it is now, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 15th among 29 industrialized countries in college completion rates.

This failure to prepare our workforce is already having serious repercussions. The Business-Higher Education Forum recently warned that the "glaring and growing need" for higher-skilled and credentialed workers is exacerbating the nation's economic woes and hobbling its long-term outlook. And many employers note that the gap between workforce needs and worker skills is already significantly compromising productivity.

In California, two-fifths of the state's jobs are expected to require college degrees by the year 2020. But the number of adults with those credentials will fall far short, according to projections cited by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. Researchers project that California can meet its future workforce needs--but only if it increases the number of Hispanics who earn college degrees.

The Obama administration wants to reverse the decline in our baccalaureate attainment, and has set a goal that the U.S. will produce the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. To reach that goal, the administration plans to increase the Pell Grant program, reform and expand the reach of community colleges, invest federal money in research and data collection, reform the student loan program and simplify the student aid application process.

Baccalaureate attainment, of course, is the key to realizing President Obama's goal, and the sine qua non for assuring America's economic competitiveness. But we will not meet the administration's goal if the president and Congress continue to oversimplify the task of graduating students from families with no college background--the vast majority of low-income students--by relying principally on a financial aid strategy. That tactic is well meaning, but short-sighted.

Instead, we must put in place strategies to ensure that a higher proportion of nontraditional students--low-income, first-generation, minority and older students--not only enter but complete college. Low-income, first-generation students face a myriad of obstacles--class, cultural, informational, academic and social--to postsecondary education, not simply a lack of financial resources.

Two industry leaders understand the complexity of this challenge. General Electric (through its Developing Futures initiative) and Goldman Sachs (through its Developing High-Potential Youth and other programs) are underwriting efforts to help low-income and minority youth address these multiple barriers. The premise of these programs is simple: provide services through an array of personal and academic interventions both in and out of the classroom that focus squarely on baccalaureate attainment. In doing, so they are expanding approaches like Upward Bound and Student Support Services (the so-called TRIO programs) that have been operating with federal support since 1965, and that currently serve more than 800,000 students from sixth grade through college graduation.

But unfortunately, although 5.5 million students receive federal grant aid to attend college, fewer than 5% of those college students receive the vital supportive services necessary to maximize that investment.

The results of federal higher education policy are a glaring testament to its insufficiency. While the president proposes to invest $28 billion in Pell Grants, an amount that has ballooned by 214% in the last eight years, the gap in college completion based on income has widened. Students in the lowest income quartile have less than a 10% chance of earning a bachelor's degree by age 24.

We must change course.

What's desperately needed now to meet President Obama's goal is a policy focus that recognizes that first-generation students, especially those from low-income families, face more obstacles to college graduation than just an empty pocketbook. In other words, we must abandon the notion that financial aid is the silver bullet, and couple our grants, scholarships and loans with interventions that address class, cultural, academic and informational obstacles to graduation--a course of action that is grounded in four decades of experimentation and success in both the private and public sectors.

Arnold L. Mitchem is president of the Council for Opportunity in Education in Washington, D.C.
source: http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/17/college-completion-rates-leadership-thought-leaders-mitchem.html

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'Affirmative Action for the Future'
November 18, 2009

While the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the consideration of race and ethnicity in college admissions, the future of affirmative action is far from certain. Some states have barred it and critics continue to look for ways to challenge it. In his new book, Affirmative Action for the Future (Cornell University Press), James P. Sterba offers a defense of affirmative action. Sterba is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and his analysis mixes philosophical and legal arguments. Via e-mail, he responded to questions about his book.

Q: How do you define affirmative action?
A: Affirmative action is a policy of favoring qualified women, minority, or economically disadvantaged candidates over qualified men, nonminority or economically advantaged candidates respectively with the immediate goals of outreach, remedying discrimination, or achieving diversity, and the ultimate goals of attaining a colorblind (racially just), a gender-free (sexually just) and equal opportunity (economically just) society.
Q: How vulnerable is affirmative action in higher education today?
A: The constitutionality of affirmative action in higher education has been endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bakke (1978) and then 25 years later even more firmly by a much more conservative U.S. Supreme Court in Grutter (2003). So affirmative action in higher education is not vulnerable at all from the courts. It has, however, been shown to be vulnerable to deceptively designed referendums as in California (Proposition 209) and Michigan (Proposition 2). When people in California were asked whether they would still favor Proposition 209 if it outlawed all affirmative action programs for women and minorities, support for 209 dropped to 30 percent while those opposed rose to 56 percent. But deceptively designed Proposition 209 was the referendum that legally banned affirmative action programs for women and minorities in California!
Q: Why do you distinguish in the book between "outreach," "remedial" and "diversity" affirmative action?
A: Outreach affirmative action has the goal of searching out qualified women, minority or economically disadvantaged candidates who would otherwise not know about or apply for the available positions, but then hire or accept only those who are actually the most qualified.
Remedial affirmative action attempts to remedy discrimination. Here, there are two possibilities. First, a remedial affirmative action program can be designed simply to put an end to an existing discriminatory practice, and create, possibly for the first time in a particular setting, a truly nondiscriminatory playing field. Second, a remedial affirmative action program can attempt to compensate for past discrimination and the effects of that discrimination.
Diversity affirmative action has the goal of diversity, where the pursuit of diversity is, in turn, justified either in terms of certain educational benefits it provides, or in terms of its ability to legitimately create a more effective workforce in such areas as policing or community relations, or in terms of achieving equal opportunity. Here it might even be said that the affirmative action candidates are, in fact, the most the most qualified candidates overall, since the less diverse candidates would not be as qualified.
Q: Do you view the moral arguments you make and the legal arguments you make as distinct? Which are more important to you?
A: I do see the legal and moral arguments for affirmative action as distinct, but sometimes they are intertwined. For example, showing that the U.S. Supreme Court has always interpreted diversity affirmative action to be in accord with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides both moral and legal support for this form of affirmative action because these fundamental U.S. laws are at the same time also taken to be morally justified.
Q: How is the success of some Asian American groups in higher education changing the debates on affirmative action?
A: The success of some Asian American groups is a proven success of affirmative action. At the time of Bakke (1978) members of these groups did receive affirmative action. Today they no longer need affirmative action in order to be enrolled in top-flight colleges and university in sufficient numbers to bring the benefits of diversity. If affirmative action continues for members of minority groups who are still disadvantaged and steps are also taken to improve the still inferior K-12 educational systems that service these groups, in the not too distant future affirmative action as we know it will come to an end.
Q: Do you think opponents of affirmative action can be convinced to change their views?
A: Most opponents of affirmative action can be convinced to change their minds because they have formed their opinion about affirmative action knowing no more than half the facts and half the arguments that are relevant to an assessment of the practice. Once they get a fuller picture of what is relevant to an assessment of the affirmative action, they are confronted with good reasons to change their view. For example, once opponents do a comparative evaluation of diversity affirmative action against two other preference programs in higher education – legacy preference and athletic preference – each of which is twice the usual size of the college or university affirmative action program, it is difficult for them not to see the superior moral and educational justification of diversity affirmative action.
Q: Why is affirmative action important today?
A: My book begins by chronicling study after study showing present day racial and sexual discrimination in the U.S. Since direct government action against this continuing discrimination is both sporadic and weak, affirmative action programs still remain one of the more effective tools for undermining the racial and sexual prejudice that fuels this discrimination, thereby helping to diminish its frequency and severity.
— Scott Jaschik

source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/18/sterba

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Defining Accountability
November 18, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Given the sprawling terrain covered by the American Enterprise Institute's forum here on "Increasing Accountability in American Higher Education" Tuesday, it was probably inevitable that the conversation would touch on so many topics as to be almost incoherent.

Accreditation. Finance. Scholarly research productivity. College rankings. Governance. Tenure. Standardized tests. With papers and presentations on those topics and more, the daylong discussion was, not surprisingly, all over the map. But if a major theme emerged from the assembled speakers, most of whom fall clearly into the pro-accountability camp, it was that as policy makers turn up the pressure on colleges to perform, they should do so in ways that reinforce the behaviors they want to see -- and avoid the kinds of perverse incentives that are so evident in many policies today.

This is especially true, several speakers argued, on the thorniest of higher education accountability questions -- those related to improving student outcomes. While the event looked at times like a reunion of Margaret Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education, with an agenda that featured not just its former chairman but several advisers to the panel, it unfolded very much focused on President Obama's call for increasing the proportion of Americans with a postsecondary credential.

Many of the speakers framed their remarks around changes that they saw as essential to helping the country ratchet up the number of young people and adults who not only enter higher education but emerge with what they need to enter the work force. (Oh, and one or two people actually talked about how nice it would be if policy makers still envisioned college as a place where people learn about citizenship or just become educated for education's sake.)
Peter Ewell, vice president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, focused his formal presentation on the growing network of state-based data systems that, in his eyes, present the best chance of producing good information on how students are faring in postsecondary education and beyond. Ewell has long been a leading advocate of such data systems, which will be most effective, he argued, if they are linked to databases of employment records and then stitched together to create regional networks.
But better data systems (which he acknowledged will take years to develop in this way, and are opposed in some quarters of higher education) will help only if the information they seek to collect is intelligently framed, which the most widely used current measure -- graduation rates -- is not, Ewell and others agreed. Ewell called for the development of a set of measures of "milestone events" in a student's academic path -- things like a "basic skills conversion rate" (capturing those who get to credit-worthy work after developmental courses), definitions of "transfer ready" and "work force ready" (to describe those who get meaningful academic or career skills but leave a community college short of an associate degree), etc.

And he said higher education leaders and state policy makers could make a shorter-term change that could start to alter the incentives for, and ultimately the behavior of, institutions: shifting state funding formulas so that colleges receive money based on how many students are still enrolled by the end of academic terms, rather than at the beginning.

"We have a performance funding scheme now -- it's called 'pay to enroll,' " he said. "One of the simplest things we can do is to reimburse for courses completed rather than courses attempted" by their students, he said. Added Stan Jones, former commissioner of higher education in Indiana and now president of the National Consortium on College Completion: "If we could make that change, counting courses at the end of the semester rather than the beginning, that would have powerful implications. Everybody would drag out their [list of] courses and say, 'Where are we having problems?' " (It was acknowledged that such an approach could create perverse incentives of its own, by discouraging institutions from enrolling academically underprepared students who might be unlikely to succeed -- a potential risk of the entire emphasis on "completion" that is increasingly in vogue.)

Many of the other speakers presented time-honored (read: familiar) approaches to what AEI called "the multifaceted accountability equation in higher education." Naomi Schaefer Riley, deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's Taste page and author of God on the Quad, argued for reining in tenure for groups of professors who she argued no longer warrant it -- including instructors in vocational fields who don't need the protection of academic freedom, gender and race studies professors with openly political agendas, and scientists who, she said, have forfeited their right to academic freedom by entering into corporate research arrangements that limit their ability to publish.

"Obviously we can‟t revoke the contracts of these professors now, but going forward, there is no justification for continuing to offer lifetime contracts to people in these fields." Riley said. "Whether because they have a political agenda or their subjects do not necessitate the freedom to ask big questions or because they seem happy to voluntarily give up their right to ask big questions for the right price, these professors do not need their academic freedom protected. And they don't need tenure.

Countering Riley's argument that tenure impedes accountability, Gary Rhoades, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, argued that tenure allows professors to "hold the line" on academic standards against administrators who encourage instructors to raise the grades of complaining students because they "don't want unhappy customers... Accountability is not quite as straightforward as we think," said Rhoades, who described himself as "not a 'just say no' guy" about accountability. "It's not a question of whether [colleges and faculty should be held accountable], but how, and by whom," he said. "It's about who's developing the measures, and what behaviors do they encourage?"
Among other issues raised at the AEI session:

• Kevin Carey of Education Sector and Charles Miller, former chairman of the Spellings Commission, both called for a national/federal body to take over some or all of the quality control responsibility that now falls to the regional accrediting agencies. "Regional accreditors should continue to be in the business of peer review, but the federal government needs to be the objective protector of taxpayers' dollars," Carey said. Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, said that government regulation would be a major mistake, but said that accreditors needed to come to agreement on "community-driven, outcomes-based standards" to which colleges should be held.
  
  
• Miller and Ben Wildavsky of the Kauffman Foundation defended the existence and encouraged the proliferation of more rankings of colleges, on the theory that the more information that exists in the public realm about colleges and their operations, the better positioned citizens and policy makers will be to make the choices they need. Higher education officials regularly talk about the "uniqueness of each college" and the dangers of standardization. But while they complain when policy makers seek to develop measures that compare one institution against another, colleges "keep lists of peers with which they compare themselves" on many fronts, Miller said.

— Doug Lederman
source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/18/aei

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A lift on the road to graduation
Federal programs help disadvantaged students succeed in college
By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 26, 2009

Khawar Malik had written just one 10-page paper in four years at DuVal High School in Lanham, and his teacher had given him an entire year to finish it.

High school left him unprepared for college. So, Malik, 19, entered the University of Maryland through its Academic Achievement Programs division. He spent six summer weeks in the academic equivalent of boot camp, learning all the reading, writing, math and study skills he would need to keep pace with other freshmen. By the end of the sixth week, he had written another 10-page paper and several shorter ones. Today, he is an English major.

"If I didn't have this program, I wouldn't be here right now," said Malik, a sophomore who has a 4.0 grade-point average.

The federal Student Support Services program, launched during the Nixon administration, is part of a larger effort to help disadvantaged students overcome academic and cultural barriers to success in higher education. The program is part of TRIO, a group of national initiatives that have proven their ability to raise the odds that a disadvantaged student will stay in college, get good grades and graduate.

Yet supporters say the programs have languished through years of fiscal neglect. Total funding to the TRIO programs -- $848 million in the fiscal year that began this month -- has risen about 1 percent in the past five years. TRIO serves 838,591 students, fewer than it did in 2003.

The support programs are closely linked to the federal Pell grant, a $25 billion fund that helps students from low-income families pay for college. Unlike TRIO, funding for Pell has increased by more than one-third over the past three years. A student aid bill that cleared the House last month would add $40 billion to Pell over the next decade but does not address TRIO.

Advocates say the support programs are key to the success of students who receive Pell grants. Money, they say, is not enough.

"You can give them all the money in the world," said Arnold Mitchem, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, a nonprofit organization in the District that supports the TRIO programs. "But if you don't address the confidence issues, the skills issue, you're not going to make it."

Mitchem contends that the Obama administration will get a better return on its investment in Pell by expanding the programs that support Pell students. About 23 percent of Pell recipients receive bachelor's degrees within six years, according to federal data, while an additional 29 percent get associate's degrees. Such statistics prompt some critics to contend that Pell money is largely wasted.

Federal data show that 29 percent of all postsecondary students complete a bachelor's degree in six years and 10 percent attain associate's degrees.

But when Pell is combined with the support programs, the graduation rate rises by about 10 points, according to Mitchem's agency.

At the University of Maryland, the TRIO program is housed in an academic building across from Memorial Chapel. On Wednesday morning, students popped in and out of small classrooms to learn study skills and seek supplementary instruction in reading and math. Program directors do not consider the classes remedial. Instructors teach college-level material, but at a slower pace.

"We give the students an elongated approach to dealing with the concept," said Jerry Lewis, executive director of Academic Achievement Programs.

One classroom functioned as a collegiate study hall, with students seeking help from tutors or from their classmates. A young man turned his notebook to a classmate and asked, "How do you know if the function is even, odd or neither?" The classmate helped him solve the problem.

In another class, an instructor led several students through a list of multiple-choice graphing problems. "For these kinds of problems," he told them, "you always use elimination."
The six-week boot camp is the starting point for about 100 freshmen a year at Maryland, students who otherwise would not be admitted. Typically, they have good grades but lower SAT scores than other U-Md. students, and they come from high schools that offer less-rigorous classes. All but a handful make it through the summer program and gain freshman status.

Students remain tethered to the support programs for their first two years, taking supplementary classes, learning how to deal with professors and roommates, and getting advice on how to manage their time.

About 92 percent return as sophomores, a higher retention rate than for the university as a whole. Two-thirds of program participants receive their diplomas. That is lower than the 81 percent graduation rate for U-Md. as a whole but higher than the national average for students from low-income families in four-year colleges, which is about 40 percent, according to program officials.

Stephanie Trimnell, an 18-year-old freshman from Laurel High School, arrived at U-Md. with the sort of academic deficits that lead many disadvantaged students to drop out. After the six-week summer program, she was placed in Math 003, a developmental course that covers high school algebra. But one thing she has learned is confidence.

"They motivate you. They inspire you," she said. "Everybody's pushing you toward being a better person."

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/10/25/AR2009102502488.html

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November 2, 2009

Dear Colleagues:

Late last week, President Obama signed legislation to extend FY2009 funding for TRIO and most other federal programs through December 18, 2009.  Between now and then, Members of Congress will work to finalize FY2010 funding legislation, including the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill that will fund TRIO. As you know, TRIO received a $20 million increase in the House version of the bill; however, half of that amount was designated to go to student grant aid as opposed to program services. The Senate Appropriations Committee opted to level-fund TRIO. During the next several weeks of negotiations, it is critical that advocates in the TRIO community reach out to their Members of Congress (contact information available here) <http://www.congressweb.com/t/l/?XHRKOVBQSGCYWBJ>  - particularly if they sit on the Appropriations Committees in the Senate <http://www.congressweb.com/t/l/?XHRKOVBQSGNYLPX>  or the House <http://www.congressweb.com/t/l/?XHRKOVBQSGAQGCM>  and urge them to support a $50 million increase for TRIO. Without it, we stand to lose between 17,550 - 24,550 students and 84-115 programs nationally next year.

We will continue to keep the community aware of developments regarding TRIO appropriations as well as the pending budget reconciliation legislation in the Senate. (This will be the companion legislation to HR 3221 <http://www.congressweb.com/t/l/?XHRKOVBQSGJVEOJ> , the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act passed this summer by the House of Representatives.) As both bills have tremendous implications for TRIO students and programs, COE will continue to keep the community informed of the progress of these pieces of legislation.

 Thank you for your continued support of TRIO programs.

Sincerely,

Heather Valentine, Council for Opportunity in Education

[TOP]

A lift on the road to graduation
Federal programs help disadvantaged students succeed in college
By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 26, 2009

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/25/AR2009102502488_pf.html

Khawar Malik had written just one 10-page paper in four years at DuVal High School in Lanham, and his teacher had given him an entire year to finish it.

High school left him unprepared for college. So, Malik, 19, entered the University of Maryland through its Academic Achievement Programs division. He spent six summer weeks in the academic equivalent of boot camp, learning all the reading, writing, math and study skills he would need to keep pace with other freshmen. By the end of the sixth week, he had written another 10-page paper and several shorter ones. Today, he is an English major.

"If I didn't have this program, I wouldn't be here right now," said Malik, a sophomore who has a 4.0 grade-point average.

The federal Student Support Services program, launched during the Nixon administration, is part of a larger effort to help disadvantaged students overcome academic and cultural barriers to success in higher education. The program is part of TRIO, a group of national initiatives that have proven their ability to raise the odds that a disadvantaged student will stay in college, get good grades and graduate.

Yet supporters say the programs have languished through years of fiscal neglect. Total funding to the TRIO programs -- $848 million in the fiscal year that began this month -- has risen about 1 percent in the past five years. TRIO serves 838,591 students, fewer than it did in 2003.

The support programs are closely linked to the federal Pell grant, a $25 billion fund that helps students from low-income families pay for college. Unlike TRIO, funding for Pell has increased by more than one-third over the past three years. A student aid bill that cleared the House last month would add $40 billion to Pell over the next decade but does not address TRIO.

Advocates say the support programs are key to the success of students who receive Pell grants. Money, they say, is not enough.

"You can give them all the money in the world," said Arnold Mitchem, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, a nonprofit organization in the District that supports the TRIO programs. "But if you don't address the confidence issues, the skills issue, you're not going to make it."

Mitchem contends that the Obama administration will get a better return on its investment in Pell by expanding the programs that support Pell students. About 23 percent of Pell recipients receive bachelor's degrees within six years, according to federal data, while an additional 29 percent get associate's degrees. Such statistics prompt some critics to contend that Pell money is largely wasted.

Federal data show that 29 percent of all postsecondary students complete a bachelor's degree in six years and 10 percent attain associate's degrees.

But when Pell is combined with the support programs, the graduation rate rises by about 10 points, according to Mitchem's agency.

At the University of Maryland, the TRIO program is housed in an academic building across from Memorial Chapel. On Wednesday morning, students popped in and out of small classrooms to learn study skills and seek supplementary instruction in reading and math. Program directors do not consider the classes remedial. Instructors teach college-level material, but at a slower pace.

"We give the students an elongated approach to dealing with the concept," said Jerry Lewis, executive director of Academic Achievement Programs.

One classroom functioned as a collegiate study hall, with students seeking help from tutors or from their classmates. A young man turned his notebook to a classmate and asked, "How do you know if the function is even, odd or neither?" The classmate helped him solve the problem.

In another class, an instructor led several students through a list of multiple-choice graphing problems. "For these kinds of problems," he told them, "you always use elimination."

The six-week boot camp is the starting point for about 100 freshmen a year at Maryland, students who otherwise would not be admitted. Typically, they have good grades but lower SAT scores than other U-Md. students, and they come from high schools that offer less-rigorous classes. All but a handful make it through the summer program and gain freshman status.

Students remain tethered to the support programs for their first two years, taking supplementary classes, learning how to deal with professors and roommates, and getting advice on how to manage their time.

About 92 percent return as sophomores, a higher retention rate than for the university as a whole. Two-thirds of program participants receive their diplomas. That is lower than the 81 percent graduation rate for U-Md. as a whole but higher than the national average for students from low-income families in four-year colleges, which is about 40 percent, according to program officials.

Stephanie Trimnell, an 18-year-old freshman from Laurel High School, arrived at U-Md. with the sort of academic deficits that lead many disadvantaged students to drop out. After the six-week summer program, she was placed in Math 003, a developmental course that covers high school algebra. But one thing she has learned is confidence.

"They motivate you. They inspire you," she said. "Everybody's pushing you toward being a better person."

WESTOP Projects Excel in National Competition

With guidance from over 500 TRIO staff, approximately 2000 TRIO students participated in the 2009 TRIO Quest activities. Link to http://depts.washington.edu/trio/quest/index.html for a overview of the 3 activities included in TRIO Quest.

For national judging, TRIO programs submitted 100 educational web sites created by over 400 TRIO students, 400 PhotoEssays, and over 90 Media Quest activities.

Out of the 100 ThinkQuest TRIO sites, 11 sites (11%) made it to the final judges for awards; from the 400 PhotoEssays, 14 essays (3.5%) made it to the final judges; and 10 (11%) of the Media Quest submissions became finalists in the competition.

You can link to http://uwtrio.org to see all Finalists from WESTOP and other regional associations.

WESTOP projects did particularly well in the national competition with 9 projects being recognized at semifinalists or medalists.

The highest award was earned by Pima Community College for the stirring video Una Esperanza.

A complete list of the recognized projects are below.

Congratulations to ALL!

PhotoEssay

Semifinalist, Mother of All, University of San Francisco, UB
Semifinalist, The World of Music, Leeward Community College, UB
Semifinalist, A Book, a Stranger, and a Secret, Maui Community College, UB
Semifinalist, Sticks, Palau Community College, UB 
 
Media Quest Video
 
Best of Contest, Una Esperanza, Pima Community College, UB
Semifinalist, I Hate Velcro, Pima Community College, UB        

ThinkQuest TRIO

Silver Award, Music Business, University of Southern California, UBMS
Bronze Award, Alternative Medicine, University of Southern California, UBMS
Honorable Mention, American Sign Language, CSU Chico, UB
Honorable Mention, Flow With The Wind, CSU Chico, UB, UB
Commendation, Global Elements, Loyola Marymount University, UB
Semifinalist, Energy Efficient Work Operations, California Lutheran University, UBMS
Semifinalist, Green Buildings, California Lutheran University, UBMS
Semifinalist, Raising Awareness in the Community, California Lutheran University, UBMS
Semifinalist, Reducing Travel with Better Communication, California Lutheran University, UBMS
Semifinalist, Renewable Energy, California Lutheran University, UBMS
Semifinalist, Recovery Course From Divorce, CSU Chico, UB
Semifinalist, The Anatomy of Fighting, University of Southern California, UBMS
Semifinalist, Greek Mythology: The Influence in Art, University of Southern California, UBMS
Semifinalist, Native American Impact, University of Southern California, UBMS
Semifinalist, Survival Buzzer, University of Southern California, UBMS

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Upward Bound APR dates official

Dr. Linda Byrd-Johnson, Director of the Office of Federal TRIO Program, announcedthe dealine for Upward Bound Annual Performance Reports (APR). You can download her letter by clicking here.

Upward Bound, Upward Bound Math-Science, and Veterans Upward Bound projects have an upload due date of January 8, 2010. Upward Bound grants with start dates of December 1 have until February 26, 2010 to complete their APRs. The online data collection Web site for the UB programs will be available on December 1, 2009.

The letter also provides a spreadsheet of projects that will receive special instructions needed in order to complete the APR based on data and explanations they provided last year.

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Demystifying Aid for Community College Students
October 20, 2009

Tuition rates at California's community college may be low compared to those elsewhere, but that should not permit legislators to ignore the difficulty so many students have paying, says one lobbying organization.

Tuesday, the California Public Interest Research Group is releasing a report detailing a survey, conducted during the past spring and summer semesters, of community college students across the state. Chiefly, students were asked about their “work habits, their understanding of financial aid and how these factors might affect their academic success.” The group hopes the rampant misconceptions about financial aid highlighted in the survey will influence state legislators to fund aid counseling programs to help students take full advantage of what is available.

“While California community college [tuitions] are the lowest in the nation — an accomplishment which we all can be proud of — they compromise only about 5 percent of the total cost of attendance,” the report reads. “The full cost of attendance that community college students must shoulder, including housing, food, and transportation, is much higher than the $780 that a typical full-time student pays in [tuition]. According to the California Student Aid Commission, total student costs for the nine-month 2009-10 academic year totaled $17,286 for a typical full-time community college student.

" To determine how well students bear this cost burden, the survey asked three basic questions about financial aid; many students could not answer them correctly. Fifty-three percent responded incorrectly that they “have to go to school full time to be eligible for financial aid.” Additionally, just 50 percent knew that “taking more classes per term could increase their financial aid award.” Finally, 46 percent mistakenly thought that financial aid “could not be used to cover living expenses, or said that they did not know what it could be used for.”

More students answered all three of these questions incorrectly (13 percent) than answered all three correctly (10 percent). Forty-four percent of students, however, only answered one of these questions correctly.

Further survey responses seem to indicate that “understanding of financial aid and likelihood of applying for it are related.” Students who answered more of the previous questions about financial aid correctly were more likely to have applied for aid. Seventy percent of those students who answered all three questions correctly had applied for aid, while only 44 percent of those who did not answer any correctly had applied for aid.

In a further wrinkle, only half of the students surveyed who had their enrollment fees waived by the California Community College Board of Governors also received Pell grants. The report notes that most students who meet the “income requirements [to qualify for the fee waiver] are likely to be eligible for federal grant aid.” It further suggests that most of these students only filled out a form for the fee waiver and did not complete the FAFSA.

Beyond grants, more than half of the students surveyed described loans as an option which “should only be considered as a last resort" or “as something that they would never consider under any circumstances.” Illustrating this point, 46 percent responded that, if they were in a class in which they could not afford textbooks, they would “prefer to push through without books or drop the class altogether rather than take out a student loan.” Also, of those who said they would consider loans, nearly as many responded that they would put their debt on a credit card as said that they would take out a federal loan.

“These data not only show that community college students tend to be debt averse, but also that those who do not consider borrowing may not have the information they need to make wise financial decisions, which may lead them to take on debt that is more expensive in the long term,” the report reads.

Finally, the survey found that the average student worked about 23 hours per week to help pay for his or her education. Less than a quarter of these working students reported that “they are balancing their work and studies well.” Also, more than a quarter said “they had to drop classes or whole semesters due to the number of hours they spend at their jobs.” The average student dropped 2.5 classes and 1.8 semesters because of work conflicts.

Saffron Zomer, author of the report and director of CALPIRG’s campus program, said she believes there is a general misconception about California’s community colleges that has driven some of the student behaviors chronicled in this report.

“When the general public in California talks about our community colleges, they typically only say that they have super-low fees or that they’re cheap and affordable institutions,” Zomer said. “People that have that mindset are not invested in the fact that our community colleges are not being properly funded. We actually think it’s important to get out there that these students work long hours, often don’t understand a lot about how financial aid works and need help.”

Zomer argues that, especially amidst the state’s massive budget shortfalls, “programs designed to counsel students and help them understand their financial aid options should be adequately funded.” She also recommends that the State Assembly increase funding for Cal Grants -- debate this past summer saved the aid program from the chopping block, but didn't expand it. In the report, she writes, “we need to be discussing how to make Cal Grants more effective, not whether we can afford them at all.”

Though CALPIRG is currently not pushing any specific pieces of legislation, Zomer noted that her organization is sharing financial aid “horror stories” from students with state legislators to inform them of how some in their district are “struggling” to get through college. The group has started compiling these real-life accounts into a yearbook of sorts chronicling what it is like “to juggle class, job and family” in a project called “Getting to Graduation.”

“We’re collecting a set of these stories from students in every legislator’s district to put a personal face on this problem,” Zomer said. “We’re hoping to improve their understanding of these issues. Though there are not bills right now in the legislature, this is an important first step toward building support for this issue.”

— David Moltz
source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/20/calpirg

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