USA Facts is an organization that compiles statistics about dozens of areas of American life: employment, the pandemic, climate change, and more. For educators, a visit to the USA Facts page of statistics on American education is a real eye-opener, full of surprises and facts that provide a newly informed perspective. Read more
If you are a high school teacher or guidance counselor, you know that a growing number of American colleges and universities have temporarily or permanently ended the requirement for applicants to take the SAT or ACT exam.
Will the test requirement for applicants go away permanently? No one knows for certain, but it could. In addition to the growing list of colleges that do not require the tests, the organizations that administer them are losing money. Read more
As you know, a major scandal involving college admissions has been making headlines since 2019. A number of very wealthy parents – some of whom are celebrities – paid vast sums of money to a college admissions counselor of sorts, who then pulled all kinds of strings to get their kids into elite institutions that included USC, Stanford, Yale, and others.
How did that counselor help those students get into top colleges? In some cases, he found ways to assure that they would earn top scores on standardized tests. (In one case, he allegedly stated that one student required special accommodations on a test, then he had that student take the test in a private location where he could answer questions for her.) Read more
The idea of transferring from one college to another has always been on students’ minds, and chances are it always will. Students who are just starting their first college year think, “Well, if things don’t work out at the college I have chosen, I can always transfer.” And students who are in their second, third or later years of college think of transferring too, for many reasons. Some would like to transfer to a college that offers stronger instruction in their chosen major. Others transfer for financial reasons. The list of reasons is a large and as varied as students are. Read more
“What this means is that the American Dream for many low-income students has been deferred, perhaps permanently. Young people not born to well-off families will not surpass their parents in income and home ownership, they will not surge into promising careers, and they will not trust the American system to do right by them.”
– Source: “New Data: College Enrollment for Low-Income High School Grads Plunged by 29% During the Pandemic” by Richard Whitmire, the 73million.org blog, December 10, 2020 Read more
As you have noticed, American higher education has just gone through a period of cataclysmic change. Can you think of another four-year period when colleges have removed the names of their slave-holding founders from buildings, and when students have been expected to continue to pay full tuition while attending classes remotely?
Those are only two of the changes we have seen, some of which we have come to accept as a new and normal way of educating students. They are very big changes.
“Doubts about Going to College,” an article that Scott Jaschik published in Inside Higher Ed on December 3, 2020, reports the findings of a survey of 528 students that was conducted by Lane Terriliver, a marketing and advertising agency in the educational sector.
The study, “The Pandemic’s Impact on Higher Education Marketing in 2020 and Beyond,” is a real eye-opener for all of us in higher ed. Read more
You’re eager to get back to campus, or to have your sons or daughters do so. But do you know which campus activities on are the most likely to expose campus residents to the coronavirus?
We thought we knew. But apparently, we did not know everything. When we reviewed “Coronavirus Disease 19: vid Considerations for Institutions of Higher Education,” a list of campus danger spots and activities that was recently published online by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found some surprises. Because we want you and your students to be safe on college campuses, we recommend you this advisory. Read more
Everyone who works at a college or university today is aware that seismic changes are taking place in the makeup of student bodies. Plus, more changes are on the horizon.
In today’s post, we would like to point to four trends that are affecting student bodies at colleges and universities across the United States. Please be aware that we are not passing judgment on any of the developments we will mention below. These trends could be ethically bad or good, but we are leaving it up to you to determine that.
Critical parents have been saying lots of things about their sons and daughters who have been attending classes at home during the Covid-19 pandemic. They’re bored. They’re unmotivated. They’re frightened. They’re angry.
And let’s face it. They have every right to be every one of those things. Wouldn’t you be too, if you were young and your entire world became unfamiliar and frightening? Wouldn’t your belief that the world is an inherently good place have been shaken? We believe it would have, and that you would be entirely justified in feeling pessimistic. Read more