Major initiative in California depends on college students

With support for Proposition 30 sliding among California voters, the decision to approve the initiative, which would raise taxes on the wealthy to increase funding for public education, could fall to students at the state’s public universities, the Huffington Post reports. Championed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), Prop 30 would raise state income taxes on individuals making over $250,000 and temporarily raise the state sales tax by one quarter of one cent. California stands to gain $6.8 billion in revenue annually if it passes. But if it fails, K-12 schools, community colleges and state universities will lose hundreds of millions of dollars in appropriations and college students would face massive tuition hikes. Students at the University of California, for example, would suffer a mid-year $2,400 increase in tuition. The most recent poll, from USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times released on Oct. 25, found support for Prop 30 has plunged to 46 percent of registered voters, down from 64 percent in March, with 42 percent of voters opposed to the measure…

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The art of a college education: Getting schooled at Academy of Art

In the past two decades, the Academy of Art has grown 10 times in size to nearly 20,000 students, the Huffington Post reports. And administrators are pushing for more: a recent school master plan projects a student population of nearly 25,000 within five years, roughly the same number of undergraduates who attend the University of California at Berkeley. It is the only arts school in the nation with both NCAA basketball and baseball teams. The university has opened recruiting offices in Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand. It’s created a massive online division, aimed at beaming courses on classical sculpture and video game animation taught by teachers located as far away as Scotland to thousands of virtual students across the world. As the Academy of Art has expanded, so has the local prestige of its owner, Elisa Stephens. The 52-year-old lawyer has become a fixture in San Francisco high society, and is a regular attendee at fundraisers thrown by the city’s political and social elite. Her mansion sits atop Nob Hill, one of the city’s most exclusive zip codes…

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Watch: The future of ed-tech

From school e-readers and flipped classroom models to computerized testing and online courses,
educators are still grappling with ways to shift an educational paradigm of the 20th century into one of the 21st, the Huffington Post reports. In a thought-provoking short film, “The Future of Learning,” Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson takes a look at engagement learning in a technological era. The video was made as part of Ericsson’s Networked Society series.

“Knowing something is probably an obsolete idea. You don’t actually need to know anything — you can find out at the point when you need to know it,” self-described “slumdog professor” Sugata Mitra says in the video’s opening. “It’s the teacher’s job to point young minds towards the right kind of questions. The teacher doesn’t need to give any answers, the answers are everywhere. And we know now from years of measurements that learners who find the answers for themselves retain it better than if they’re told the answer.”

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Sexual violence on Amherst’s campus

An offensive T-shirt printed by an off-campus fraternity at Amherst College has triggered a heated debate about the school’s alleged “sexist” culture, which some students say has spawned an unsafe environment for women and survivors of sexual violence, the Huffington Post reports. Dana Bolger, a 21-year-old junior at Amherst, recently wrote a blog post for AC Voice, a college publication, in which she discussed the offensive T-shirt and its broader implications: “Do you wonder what sexism and misogyny look like in 2012? Imagine a drawing of a woman. She’s clad only in a bra and a thong. She’s got bruises on her side. There’s an apple jammed in her mouth. And she’s stretched out, tied up, suspended from a spit and roasting over a fire. You don’t have to imagine. [In] April, a fraternity at Amherst College designed this image, stuck it on a T-shirt and sold the shirt to students… By the way, there is a pig depicted on the shirt. It’s in the corner, smoking a cigar and watching the woman roast. The words “Roasting Fat Ones Since 1847” appear above the image.”

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Study: Dual-enrolled students more likely to attend, graduate college

A report by Boston-based education nonprofit Jobs for the Future urges policymakers to expand dual enrollment after determining that high school students who take college courses are more likely to attend and graduate from college than those who do not, the Huffington Post reports. Results showed that high school students who completed a college course before graduation were nearly 50 percent more likely to earn a college degree from a Texas two- or four-year college within six years than students who had not participated in dual enrollment. According to the report’s findings, 54.2 percent of dual enrollment students earned some form of college degree, compared to 36.9 percent of non-dual enrollment high school graduates. Branching off that, 47.2 percent of high school graduates who had taken college courses while still in high school went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree, compared to 30.2 percent of non-dual enrollees. The study tracked 32,908 Texas students for six years, beginning when they graduated from high school in 2004. Half were “dual enrollment” students, meaning they completed college courses while in high school that awarded both high school and college credit, and half were not. According to the report, both groups were otherwise similar in academic and social background…

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Student loan debt ranking by state shows continued rise

College students who graduated with bachelor’s degrees in 2011 left school with the largest average student debt load in history, according to a new report, the Huffington Post reports. The class of 2011 came out with an average of $26,600 in student loan debt, a 5 percent increase from $25,250 in 2010, according to the Project on Student Debt at The Institute for College Access & Success.. The increase, in line with recent years, shows student debt continues to grow faster than inflation.

“As debt levels rise, fear of loans can prevent students from getting the education they need to succeed,” said Lauren Asher, president of The Institute for College Access & Success, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. “Students and parents need to know that, even at similar looking schools, debt levels can be wildly different. And, if they do need to borrow to get through school, federal student loans, with options like income-based repayment, are the safest way to go.”

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Survey: Students go not receive the mandatory counseling about their loans

Many students who took out large amount of federal student loans did not receive the required in-person or online counseling, according to a report released this week by Young Invincibles, conducted with NERA Economic Consulting, the Huffington Post reports.

“A full 40 percent of participants with federal loans said that they did not remember receiving counseling even though the federal government requires it,” Chris Altieri wrote on the YI blog. “That means colleges aren’t doing their part to make sure students understand their loans.”

The report includes a survey of 13,000 participants deep in debt, with an average student-loan debt of $75,000. About 42 percent of survey respondents were either currently enrolled in an undergraduate program or had finished one in the past five years. The other 58 percent were pursuing or recently earned a graduate or masters degree……Read More

George Mason profs bringing economics education to the masses

Alex Tabarrok, Left, and Tyler Cowen teach economics at George Mason University and are the two men behind MRUniversity, the Huffington Post. Two George Mason University economics professors are teaching on a new campus: in the cloud. Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok have launched MRUniversity, named after their blog MarginalRevolution.com, where they’ll enter the booming world of free online education alongside projects like Coursera and companies such as Udacity and edX. But Cowen and Tabarrok plan to do things a little differently. For one, they want other people to contribute their knowledge to the curriculum, much like they would on Wikipedia.

“[People] don’t have to pay $50,000 a year to Harvard,” Cowen said, “you can go online and get something for free.”

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Students flee California’s budget mess for out of state choices

California’s public universities are ranked among the best colleges nationally and globally, but more Californians are ditching the Golden State for education from elsewhere, the Huffington Post reports. Some $2.5 billion in state budget cuts has led to steep tuition hikes, enrollment freezes and a shortage in class availability at California’s public colleges. Some state universities turned to seek more out-of-state students who pay higher fees and tuition to fill budget holes — a practice that angers students who feel they deserve the first crack at their public schools. As in-state tuition and fees exceed an average of $13,200 and a cost of attendance between $19,500 to $33,000, it makes a $25,445 non-resident tuition bill at The Ohio State University look like the better buy. The prospect of more cuts to California state universities doesn’t help…

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Open letter to debate moderators: Candidates should talk education

Believe it or not, it wasn’t until the very last question of the very last debate when the 2008 presidential candidates were finally asked about education policy, says Carol Rasco, president and chief executive officer for Reading is Fundamental. At Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), we’re urging the debate moderators to ask the question early and often. Even though the lion’s share of policy discourse is focused on other issues, a recent Rasmussen survey shows 61 percent of likely voters rate education as very important. At the same time education is not being raised in election chatter, headlines related to this issue are grabbing our attention, like the one last week showing 2012 high school graduates scored lower in reading on the SATs than they have in four decades…

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