Study Finds that Most Students Are Too Optimistic about Their Majors’ Earning Potential
How much money can you expect to earn after you complete the coursework for your major and graduate college? Do you really know what your earning potential will be?
According to “Labor Market Expectations and Major Choice for Low-Income, First-Generation College Students: Evidence from an Information Experiment,” a study conducted in 2017 by Alexander I. Ruder (University of South Carolina and Rutgers) and Michelle Van Noy (Rutgers), many students, especially those who come from lower income backgrounds, are overly optimistic about how much they will earn. Ruder and Van Noy polled 2,965 students and determined that students who grew up in financially disadvantaged circumstances were especially prone to overestimate the potential earnings that their major and college degree would enable them to earn. Read more
Will 2021 Be a Good or Bad Year to Transfer Colleges?
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
Why College Could Become Even Further Beyond the Reach of Underprivileged Students
“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
Teaching in a Pandemic: 3 Resources for Surviving and Thriving
As teachers persevere bravely through the resurgence of COVID-19, it is easy to forget that they walk a fine line between helping students and avoiding burnout. At the Student Research Foundation (SRF), we are committed to magnifying the voices of teachers and their students to strengthen education. We have found several articles to encourage you during the final months of the pandemic. Read more
Positive Educational Trends that Have Emerged from the Pandemic
When you ask a group of college administrators to summarize the effects that the pandemic has had on their institutions, most of them are likely to use adjectives like, negative, threatening, horrible, terrible, and even catastrophic.
There’s a reason for those answers. Thanks to the pandemic, many colleges have seen enrollments fall, spent too much of the funds they had available to offer students for financial aid, lost their valuable foreign students, had to put building and expansion plans on hold, and experienced a host of other problems. Read more