In both the US and Iraq there are efforts to get more Iraqi students to American universities.
In the states, educators have been working with their counterparts in Syria to help relocate students. NPR reports that they have formed the “Iraqi Student Project,” in which fourteen universities are currently participating. It sounds like they are doing good work:
…program coordinators visit promising applicants in their homes for personal interviews. Students are selected after further review of their academic performance and grasp of English; then, they spend time working with tutors on their English and other skills. Students then apply to participating American schools that offer programs in their major fields of interest.
Students from the Campus Anti-War Network and other groups helped to pass a referendum at UW-Madison that would raise money from student fees to help bring Iraqi students to campus. Apparently, it wasn’t too hard (so you should do it too!):
“It was actually a lot easier than I thought it was. I wasn’t expecting people to be as supportive of this as they were,” said Wustmann, who was heavily involved in collecting signatures. “Some reactions were so enthusiastic, like ‘how can I help this? It’s such a great idea.’”
As you have probably heard by now, the “credit crunch” has been making the student loan market less lucrative for many lenders, and has caused a bit of a controversy in the world of higher education.
To recap – lenders are trying to argue that problems in the credit markets will lead to a crisis for students who need loans to attend school, while most othersthink that the affects for most students will be small. Congress and the Education Department have created new policies to make sure that, no matter what happens, students will be able to access financial aid, but lenders, who already receive government subsidies to make loans to students, keep pushing to get a sweeter deal for their bottom line (as opposed to sweeter deals for students or taxpayers).
I thought this new article in the Chronicle of Higher Education might help point to the difference between planning for the worst (good), and unnecessarily wasting taxpayer money (not so good):
Today Emily Bazelon looks at a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education that talks about how colleges and universities with the biggest endowments -- usually over $500 million -- are working at increasing class and race diversity, but somehow the number of students who receive Pell grants are falling. So if these schools were really successfully recruiting lower-class students, wouldn't the Pell grant numbers be going up? The answer is, they're not. The answer, then, isn't to increase recruitment in schools where they might find lower-class students, but instead Yale and Harvard are expanding to upper middle class families with incomes up to $200,000.
These premium colleges and universities seem to be so out-of-touch with the lower class students that they're not recruiting successfully. I grew up in a small town full of middle- and lower-class working folk, something those coastal elitists like to call "flyover country." Part of the problem is that education for a lot of people that might be in the classes that they'd want -- the kind that are in the Pell grant-receiving brackets -- view education as a much more practical venture. They want to earn a degree that will take them the furthest without breaking the bank.
As you have probably heard, we are going through some rocky financial times. A “credit-crunch” fueled recession means that many financial institutions will have a harder time making ends meet, and this, of course, includes student loan companies, as the Washington Post points out today.
Higher education advocates are worried that these lenders are exaggerating the effects of the crisis on the student loan industry as a way to secure unneeded bailouts and get back some of the wasteful subsidies that Congress cut last year in order to increase student aid. They are also worried that all of the hype will mean debt-averse students may be discouraged from “investing” in a college education. Don’t worry – it is very unlikely that you won’t be able to get the loans you need to finance you education.
Starting about a year ago, my school's college counselors gravely informed us that because of demographics, this year would be the hardest ever to get into college. According to the Times,however, the number of high schools seniors is going to peak in about two years, making about 99% of colleges less selective:
Projections show that by next year or the year after, the annual number of high school graduates in the United States will peak at about 2.9 million after a 15-year climb. The number is then expected to decline until about 2015. Most universities expect this to translate into fewer applications and less selectivity, with most students likely finding it easier to get into college.
Although it's certainly true that good schools have gotten more selective, there's a bit more to this trend then simply admittance percentages going down. The first oddity is that while the elite schools have gone from incredibly selective to total crapshoot (Harvard, Yale and Princeton admit less than 10% of their applicants, despite 85% being perfectly qualified to go), the number of good, selective schools has skyrocketed. Schools like Emory and USC, which only a decade or two ago were considered mediocre rich kid schools, have, because of their bulging endowments, been able to snatch up the best professors and students. USC, for example, will not only offer scholarships to good students, but will just straight up hand out cash. Also, due to the increasing financial returns to a college education, the number of objectively highly qualified students, with good SAT scores and what, has also increased due to the incentives. This means that, from the other end, the number of good schools has to go up because there's been a downward flow in where the good students are going to school. Add on the fact that because of applications being predominately online and most schools accepting the Common Application, it's become much, much easier to apply to a bunch of good schools, and consequently, acceptance rates have to go down.
But while the stress and amount of work associated with trying to get into a competitive school has certainly gone up - as I can attest - the actual quality of American higher education, at the highest level, has probably gone up more.
A new trade school in Oakland, CA is preparing its students for a highly competitive career in a burgeoning field: medical marijuana. For $200, Oaksterdam University (clever, huh?) teaches students how to cultivate and cook with pot, and equips them to navigate the legal restrictions on the use of medical marijuana.
"My basic idea is to try to professionalize the industry and have it taken seriously as a real industry, just like beer and distilling hard alcohol," said Richard Lee, the activist and medical marijuana distributor who founded the school.
While Lee’s students seem excited about learning to “grow pot at home for fun, health, public service — or profit,” not everyone is thrilled. Though Lee’s school is totally legal, Michael Chapman, an assistant agent in charge with the Drug Enforcement Agency's San Francisco office, thinks it’s more of a detriment than a public service. "I think they are sending the wrong message out to the community and it's something that could only facilitate criminal behavior," he said.
Fun fact: According to Lee, entry-level workers at medical marijuana dispensaries earn over $50,000 a year on average, and managers and owners often make over $100,000.
Gene Nichol, the president of the College and William and Mary, stepped down today after a relentless smear campaign was waged against him by conservative lawmakers in Virginia. Ryan Powers, a former Center for American Progress intern and a senior at the College of William and Mary, has a great post over at Think Progress summarizing and analyzing the unfortunate series of events.
Nichol's greatest sins seem to have been his decisions to allow a student-funded organization to host a sexually themed art show and to have the university remove a crucifix from the non-denominational chapel on campus. He explained his decisions in an email sent to the school community this morning:
The Center for American Progress and Campus Progress are pleased with today’s passage by the House of Representatives of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act (H.R. 4137). This legislation continues to build on Congress’s commitment to making college more affordable and ensuring that Americans are prepared to compete in an increasingly knowledge-based economy.
An amendment has been introduced that would give important protections to private student loan borrowers.
Since student loan companies lobbied their way into the Bankruptcy Bill in 2005, borrowers have been virtually unable to discharge private student loans through bankruptcy. Instead of treating these loans like credit cards or any other form of consumer debt, they are treated more like a criminal fine. This leaves borrowers few ways to deal with what are often high-cost loans if they run into financial troubles.
Later this week, the House of Representatives is taking up its version of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act - the law that governs almost every federal program and policy towards higher education. We have a chance, if we act fast, to change this situation. Rep. Danny Davis proposed an amendment that would extend bankruptcy protections to private loan borrowers.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger just released his proposed budget for 2008-2009, and it includes deep cuts to higher education programs. The reduced spending is a response to a $3.3 billion budget gap. Read More »
The conservative Center for College Affordability and Productivity has a great post up explaining why we shouldn’t be overly impressed by Harvard and Yale’s recent decisions to spend more of their massive endowments on financial aid. Read More »
Check out the Chronicle's new group blog, Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind. They have a roster of professors who come mainly from arts or cultural studies backgrounds. Let's hope this works out better than the New Republic's Open University, which has been moribund for months at this point. The last post was Nov. 29, and the one before that was Nov. 22.
Minority enrollment in graduate schools continues to rise, according to a study released yesterday by the Council of Graduate Schools and the Graduate Record Examinations Board.
According to Inside Higher Ed, overall enrollments increased 2% in 2006, and most of that growth is attributed to increasing numbers of minority, female and international students. White, male and U.S. citizen enrollment stayed constant.
This year’s growth follows an overall trend: underrepresented minority enrollment increased from 14% in 1996 to 22% in 2006.
Kenneth E. Redd, director of research and policy analysis at the Council of Graduate Schools noted that though this growth is encouraging, there are still barriers to break down.
While making up a nearly proportional 13 percent of students that are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, for example, African Americans still are only 8 percent of those studying sciences and engineering. For most members of minority groups, the most popular field remains education.
Ansley A. Abraham Jr., director of the Doctoral Scholars Program of the Southern Regional Education Board, congratulates professors for increasingly encouraging minority students to consider graduate school. "By no means does this mean that we should let our foot up off the pedal," he said.
In a closed-door meeting Tuesday night, the University of California Regents announced a 5% increase in all executive salaries, with some executives seeing proposed increases as high as 33%. As mentioned in my previous blog, this occurred the same day that President Bush vetoed the College Opportunity & Affordability Act.
While the two are probably not connected, I find it very poignant that they did occur within hours of each other. Some may not realize that the failure to pass the College Opportunity & Affordability Act has left many middle class families in a difficult situation. On the one hand, they are not poor enough to receive financial aid and on the other hand, they cannot afford to send their children to a decent college even for an arm and a leg.
Yesterday, President Bush vetoed the 2008 appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies. According to Inside Higher Ed, the bill would have
raised the maximum Pell Grant to $4,925,
increased funding for TRIO programs for low-income students to $868 million, up from $828 million in 2007
rejected Bush’s proposed cuts to campus-based aid programs
increased funding for minority serving colleges to $515 million, up $10 million from 2007
So Bush doesn’t care about giving poor kids health care OR money for college. And, unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the House and Senate will muster enough votes to overturn his veto.
Today, Senate leadership failed to win the 60 votes needed to move the DREAM Act toward a vote and delayed an opportunity to hold true to the values of our country.
Every year, approximately 65,000 qualified undocumented students graduate from high school, but are stuck in limbo without the ability to legally obtain work or access the necessary aid to attend college.
I myself am the son of two immigrant parents, both of whom emigrated from Cuba in the mid 1970’s. I grew up in Miami and went to school with many of the students who make up the ‘65,000 student’ statistic. As immigrant youth, we read the same books, watched the same TV, and went to see the same movies as our non-immigrant peers. We had the same experiences they did, but are now unable to live the same dream.
As president of the United States Student Association (USSA), representing hundreds of campuses throughout the country, I am challenging students today to come together in support of our peers whose voices are being drowned out by anti-immigrant forces.
This bill isn’t just about amnesty. It’s about hope, opportunity, and ensuring the American dream continues to exist for generations to come.
At USSA, we believe that education is a right for all, regardless of immigration status and though the recent vote is a minor setback, students will continue the fight, organizing call-in days and lobby visits, rallies and educational forums until the voice of reason echoes through the halls of the Senate and we enact the truly American DREAM into law.
Campus Progress applauds Congress for passage and subsequent signing of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act. Campus Progress and other proponents of the bill had to overcome vehement opposition by student loan companies and veto threats by the Administration to succeed.
Not only does the new College Cost Reduction and Access Act raise the maximum award by at least $1,090 over the next five years, but the bill also makes student loans easier to pay back by cutting interest rates in half for subsidized Stafford loans, and protects borrowers by tying monthly payments to income. Finally, it encourages public service by expanding loan forgiveness programs for firefighters, teachers, and others in valuable but low-paying careers.
All of these important measures will be paid for by making the financial aid system more efficient, rather than from taxpayers. Campus Progress thanks Members of Congress from both parties who worked hard to make college more affordable for millions of young people. We thank the Congress for having the courage to cut expensive and wasteful subsidies to politically powerful loan companies like Sallie Mae and Nelnet.
Through our Debt Hits Hard campaign, Campus Progress looks forward to working with Congress, students, coalition partners in the Campaign for College Affordability, and state and university officials to continue to work towards access to education, student debt relief, and a financial aid system that works for students, not banks. A key priority now is addressing private loans – making sure that students obtain these more expensive loans only when federally guaranteed loans are exhausted, and that they can borrow on fair terms.
Graduates have the highest student debt in [drum roll]: DC and New Hampshire! DC also happens to have the most expensive school in the US. Hawaii gets good beaches, great weather, and graduates who, on average, have the lowest debt in the US. The Project on Student Debt put together a nifty interactive map again, so check out your state.
They also found that student debt levels have risen. The average debt load is now at least $19,646, and is probably closer to $21,146.
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