Posted by admin on July 13th, 2009
President Barack Obama has called for strengthening higher education so that the United States could lead the world in college degrees in a decade.
“In an economy where jobs requiring at least an associate’s degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience, it’s never been more essential to continue education and training after high school,” Obama wrote in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post.
“That’s why we’ve set a goal of leading the world in college degrees by 2020.”
The president stressed the need to revamp community colleges, or local government-funded educational institutions used by Americans with modest means.
These colleges can work with local businesses to help workers learn the skills they need to fill the jobs of the future, he said.
“We can reallocate funding to help them modernize their facilities, increase the quality of online courses and ultimately meet the goal of graduating five million more Americans from community colleges by 2020,” Obama said.
The president added that providing Americans with all the skills they need to compete was “a pillar of a stronger economic foundation,” while rejecting claims that his 787-billion-dollar economic stimulus package was not working.
“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was not expected to restore the economy to full health on its own but to provide the boost necessary to stop the free fall,” the president wrote. “So far, it has done that.”
Posted by admin on July 7th, 2009
When the new Military GI Bill kicks in Aug. 1, the government’s best-known education program for veterans will get the biggest boost since its World War II-era creation. But the benefit is hardly the “Government Issue,” one-size-fits-all standard the name implies.
In fact, depending on where service members and veterans decide to attend college, they could receive a full ride, or very little.
An Associated Press review of state-by-state benefits under the new bill shows huge discrepancies in the amount veterans can receive.
For example:
• Veterans attending New Hampshire colleges like Dartmouth might get $25,000 from the government each year, and in Dartmouth’s case essentially a free ride, thanks to an additional grant from the Ivy League school. But in neighboring Massachusetts, it is a different story. At that state’s numerous private schools — many just as expensive as Dartmouth — the government’s baseline tuition benefit is only about $2,200 a year.
• Veterans who choose a private school in Texas could get close to $20,000 a semester from the government for a typical course load. Those picking schools in California will get nothing for tuition.
The explanation stems from the formula the government created, as well as a much-criticized decision by the Department of Veterans Affairs on how to implement the law.
The new GI Bill covers full in-state undergraduate tuition and fees at any public college. That’s far more generous than the old GI Bill, which provides a monthly stipend that is the same from state to state.
But Congress also wanted to help veterans attend often pricier private schools. So the new bill offers them an amount equal to the tuition at the most expensive public college in the same state.
That penalizes veterans going to private colleges in states that have kept their public university tuition low.
As a result, the new GI Bill is a great deal for such vets in states like New Hampshire, New York and Texas; a pretty good one in states like Ohio; and hardly any deal at all in Massachusetts and especially California, where the state constitution prohibits public universities from charging tuition. Instead, California’s public universities typically charge “fees” of several thousand dollars per year.
Critics argue the Department of Veterans Affairs misinterpreted the law and should have combined tuition and fees in coming up with reimbursement levels. That would have put the total California benefit at around $13,000 per year.
Anthony Brooks, a 26-year-old former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, will get a mere $5,000 toward the $38,570 tuition charged at the private University of Southern California — and half of that comes from USC through the government’s Yellow Ribbon matching-grant program.
“It’s depressing, actually. It’s putting states up against each other,” said Brooks, who plans to become a doctor. He added: “We all fought for our country. It just seems unfair.”
The VA says its hands were tied by Congress.
“It is a valid question concerning why we would pay X in State A versus how much we would pay in State B, but the statute defines the kinds of programs we would account for,” said Keith Wilson, the department’s director of educational services.
Congress passed the Post 9/11 GI Bill last year, offering veterans the most significant expansion of educational benefits since the original GI Bill in 1944. The VA expects nearly half a million veterans to participate in the coming year.
The benefits — including new, separate stipends for housing and books — kick in after three years of active duty, and some of them are transferable to family members.
Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., has introduced legislation that would correct the discrepancy in California.
“California’s generosity on state tuition was intended to keep college costs down, not inadvertently increase costs for the state’s veterans,” said Lindsey Mask, a spokeswoman for McKeon.
In the meantime, education and veterans groups are fielding calls from veterans confused over how much they can get.
“What should be a simple number has turned into some kind of Frankenstein-like monster that nobody will be able to understand,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education.
About 80 percent of veterans tapping the new bill are expected to attend public institutions. But some of the remaining 20 percent — those planning to attend private colleges, graduate schools, and the for-profit institutions that are hugely popular with veterans — are angry.
“On paper, this is an amazing new GI bill. It’s an amazing plan,” said Matthew Collins, a former Army specialist who started a Facebook group criticizing the system.
He plans to attend California Baptist University, affordable only because it is making a $10,000-per-veteran contribution under Yellow Ribbon — something many California colleges are unable to offer.
“I just don’t think they truly thought it through,” Collins said.
Yahoo AP Story
Posted by admin on June 26th, 2009
The Obama administration took dead aim yesterday at one of the biggest headaches faced by college students and their families — how to fill out what has become a lengthy and complicated application for financial aid.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan outlined a series of changes that could allow some applicants to skip many of the 153 questions.
“Too many students who qualified found applying for student loans was too difficult to understand,” Duncan said. “Too often, they simply got frustrated and they gave up. The form itself was liter-
ally a barrier to entry in college. That has to change.
“Next year’s applicants should see a 20 percent reduction in the number of questions and a 50 percent reduction in the number of Web pages to navigate,” Duncan said.
He also asked Congress to adopt a sweeping overhaul aimed at making the form easier to fill out, including allowing families to attach their tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service to the application. Currently, families have to include separate investment and banking records.
As tuition soars, financial assistance is crucial to keeping students in college. Of the 60,000 students at Ohio State University and its regional campuses, more than 32,000 receive financial aid.
The reforms are aimed at the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA. The six-page application is so complex that last year former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings jokingly complained, “It asks you how old you are three different ways.”
In the final months of the Bush administration, Spellings asked Congress to reduce the number of questions in the form to just 27. Congress never acted on that.
“It’s a good step,” said Tally Hart, senior adviser for economic access at Ohio State. “That form is really a deterrent in its existing structure because it looks so intimidating. and the problem is the greatest for the people it should serve the most.”
Educators and financial-aid specialists hailed the move, saying it eventually could lead to more students applying for financial aid.
“Could the department have gone further? Yes,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, which represents the nation’s universities. “Some people think you should get them on a postcard. But the fewer the questions, the less accuracy you have. What the department is trying to do is balance the importance of simplification with accuracy.”
Beginning this summer, students who have reached the age of 24 or are married may skip 11 questions dealing with their parents’ financial history. Men older than 26 will not have to answer the question about Selective Service registration. And when the new forms are made available in January, low-income students will not be asked about assets.
In another effort to simplify federal assistance, the Education Department has been giving students instant estimates of Pell Grant and student-loan eligibility since May.
Columbus Dispatch
Posted by admin on February 12th, 2009
During difficult economic times, the cost of higher education leaves many students wondering if they can afford to go to college. For those who want to avoid being saddled with huge loans, the U.S. government offers one of the best deals around: Enroll at one of the five service academies tuition-free and receive free room and board. (And you thought the Grand Slam promotion at Denny’s was cool.) But if military service isn’t for you, here are eight other schools that offer tuition-free educations:
1. College of the Ozarks
Several schools share the “Linebacker U” and “Quarterback U” monikers in reference to the NFL talent that their college football programs produce, but the only “Hard Work U” is located in Point Lookout, Missouri. In 1973, a Wall Street Journal reporter bestowed that title on the College of the Ozarks, where students pay no tuition and work at least 15 hours a week at a campus work station. Jobs are taken seriously at the school of 1,400; students are graded on their work performance in addition to their academics.
History: In 1906, Presbyterian missionary James Forsythe helped open the School of the Ozarks to provide a Christian high school education to children in the Ozarks region, which spans parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The school added a two-year junior college 50 years later and completed its transition to a four-year college program in 1965. The school was renamed College of the Ozarks in 1990 and has established itself as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the Midwest.
Notable: College of the Ozarks was No. 4 on the Princeton Review’s list of the top 10 Stone-Cold Sober schools in 2008.
Famous Alum: Actress and model April Scott, who played Daisy Duke in the straight-to-DVD prequel of Dukes of Hazzard – Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning. Scott has also appeared in Entourage, as a briefcase-toting model on Deal or No Deal, and on various magazine covers.
How to Spend the Money Saved on Tuition: Silver Dollar City, an amusement park in nearby Branson, Mo., harkens back to simpler times with its 1880s theme. In addition to thrills, roller coasters at the park offer scenic views of the Ozarks.
2. Deep Springs College
Deep Springs is a two-year, all-male liberal arts college located on a cattle ranch and alfalfa farm in the Inyo-White Mountains of California’s High Desert. To get an idea of just how isolated the school is, consider the explanation for its policy forbidding smoking in any of the school’s buildings or near hay bales: “We’re 45 minutes from the nearest emergency services, so a fire could be disastrous.” Every student admitted – 10 to 15 per year – receives free tuition, room, and board, and works at least 20 hours a week on the ranch. The manual labor ranges from washing dishes to milking cows. Most students complete their degrees at prestigious four-year schools after leaving Deep Springs.
History: Deep Springs was founded by Lucien Lucius Nunn, a pioneer in electrical engineering who helped design the Ontario Power Plant at Niagara Falls. While working for the Telluride Power Company, which provided power to gold mines, Nunn invited young men to work for him in exchange for an education. The work-study program became known as the Telluride Institute in 1905. Nunn was driven out of the company in 1912 by a powerful stockholder who believed Nunn’s unconventional means of attracting workers was detrimental to the business. Nunn decided to start a completely new educational endeavor at Deep Springs, which admitted its first class of 20 in 1917.
Notable: Academics, labor, and self-governance are the three pillars of the Deep Springs experience. Students have a say in what subjects to study, what professors to hire, and even what applicants to admit.
Famous Alum: William T. Vollmann, a novelist and journalist with a propensity for writing about dangerous firsthand experiences, including a trip into Afghanistan with the Mujahideen in 1982. Vollmann has written more than 20 books, including Europe Central, which won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction.
How to Spend the Money Saved on Tuition: Given that students are generally prohibited from leaving the ranch during the semester, online shopping via the somewhat reliable Internet connection is one of the only viable options.
3. UC-Irvine School of Law, Class of ’12
In an effort to attract the best and brightest students for its inaugural class, the UC Irvine School of Law is offering a free ride to all 60 students admitted this fall. Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law scholar, told reporters, “Our goal is to be a top-20 law school
from the first time we are ranked.” By early February, the number of applicants at California’s first new public law school in 40 years had topped 1,000. The school will rely on grants and donations to cover the estimated $6 million it will cost to put each of the students in the first class through the program.
History: There is some precedent for a professional school offering free tuition to its inaugural class. In 2008, the Central Florida College of Medicine received nearly 3,000 applicants after offering the same deal to each member of its inaugural class.
Notable: Chemerinsky, an adamant defender of the separation of church and state, as well as abortion rights, was hired, fired amid political pressure from conservatives one week later, and then rehired as Irvine’s law school dean in 2007.
Famous Alum: You? It’s not too late to apply.
How to Spend the Money Saved on Tuition: In-N-Out burgers. Lots and lots of In-N-Out burgers.
4. Berea College
Thanks to a large endowment, every student admitted to Berea College in Kentucky receives a full-tuition scholarship valued at more than $90,000. Students are required to work at least 10 hours a week in one of more than 140 departments, and while room, board, and books are not covered, the work-study program enables some of the 1,500 students to lighten their financial load even more. Berea offers degrees in 28 fields.
History: Berea was founded in 1855 by Rev. John Fee – an ironic name for the founder of a tuition-free college if there ever was one – as the first interracial and coed college in the South. Classes at the school were fully integrated until the Kentucky Legislature passed a law in 1904 that prohibited school integration. The law was amended in 1950 to allow integrated education above the high school level and Berea returned to its roots, becoming the first school in Kentucky to re-open its doors to African-Americans.
Notable: Berea’s motto is “God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth.”
Famous Alum: Carter G. Woodson, an African-American historian, journalist, and author. After graduating with a Bachelor of Literature degree from Berea, Woodson earned his PhD and taught at Howard University. He pioneered the celebration of “Negro History Week” in 1926, which would serve as the precursor to “Black History Month” as we know it today.
How to Spend the Money Saved on Tuition: Berea is home to the Kentucky Artisan Center, a 25,000-square-foot facility that showcases Kentucky-made arts and crafts in a variety of exhibits.
5. Olin College of Engineering
Olin College is a school of 300 in Neeedham, Mass., where every admitted student receives four years of free tuition valued at $130,000. The school is funded by a $400 million grant from the F.W. Olin Foundation and ranks as one of the top undergraduate engineering programs in the country. There is great emphasis placed on philanthropy at Olin; students are encouraged to develop creative ideas that address societal needs and help make the world a better place.
History: The school is named for Franklin W. Olin, who founded the Olin Corporation and made a fortune selling ammunition. Olin was a great philanthropist, too. Since 1938, the F.W. Olin Foundation has contributed more than $300 million in grants to colleges and universities throughout the country. The same foundation financed the development of Olin College, which was completed in 2002. The school graduated its first class in 2006.
Notable: Indicative of the entrepreneurial spirit of the school, six Olin students are taking a year off to develop educational Internet software – think Google Docs meets Facebook – for local middle school students. The students expect the software, which will include built-in features that allow parents and teachers to interact with and monitor their students’ work, to be operational by mid-April.
Famous Alum: He’s not exactly famous, but Alex Dorsk does have a cleverly titled blog chronicling his time aboard a research vessel with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
How to Spend the Money Saved on Tuition: Honor the legacy of F.W. Olin, who played two years of professional baseball after graduating from Cornell, with a trip to Fenway Park in nearby Boston.
6. Cooper Union
Located in Manhattan, Cooper Union offers degree programs in art, architecture, and engineering, and every admitted student receives four years of free tuition valued at $130,000. According to a recent article in the New York Times, applications for early decision to the school were up 70 percent this year. The admissions rate at Cooper Union is about 8 percent, while the enrollment is a little more than 900. The Cooper Union endowment is valued at nearly $600 million.
History: Peter Cooper, who invented the first locomotive in the United States, believed that education of the highest quality should be “as free as air and water,” so he founded Cooper Union in 1858. Cooper’s greatest legacy may have come 14 years earlier, when he received the first American patent for powdered gelatin. A cough syrup manufacturer bought the patent from Cooper, developed a prepackaged gelatin dessert, and named it Jell-O in 1897.
Notable: The Great Hall on the Cooper Union campus has been the site of several historic speeches. Abraham Lincoln outlined his views on slavery – namely that he didn’t want to see it spread – in a famous address there, while Mark Twain spoke at the school’s inauguration.
Famous Alum: Milton Glaser, who founded New York Magazine and designed the ubiquitous I Love New York logo.
How to Spend the Money Saved on Tuition: Fifth Avenue is a start.
7. Curtis Institute of Music
Like Juillard, the Curtis Institute of Music is considered one of the most prestigious performing arts conservatories in the world. Unlike Juillard, tuition at Curtis is free. Every student admitted to the school of 160 in Philadelphia is provided a full scholarship, and all piano, harpsichord, composition, and conducting majors are lent Steinway grand pianos. As part of their training, students at Curtis host over 100 public concerts each year, and receive one-on-one instruction from the musically accomplished faculty.
History: Mary Louise Curtis Bok founded the Curtis Institute in 1924 as a place for talented young performers to prepare for careers as professional musicians. She named the school in honor of her father, Cyrus Curtis, the founder of Ladies Home Journal and a fellow music lover.
Notable: According to the school’s Web site, 17 percent of the principal chairs in America’s top 25 orchestras and four music directorships in the top 50 are held by Curtis-trained musicians. More than sixty alumni have performed with the Metropolitan Opera.
Famous Alum: Anthony McGill, a member of the Metropolitan Opera and the clarinetist in the quartet that played at Barack Obama’s Inauguration last month. Also: Leonard Bernstein.
How to Spend the Money Saved on Tuition: Buy a membership to the Franklin Institute to supplement your musical education.
8. Alice Lloyd College
All students at Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, Ky., are required to work at least 10 hours per week in exchange for free tuition. Students who need additional financial aid to pay for room and board may work up to 15 hours per week. Jobs at the school of 550 are assigned based on a student’s work experience and personal preference.
History: Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd, a former publisher and editor of The Cambridge Press, moved from Boston to Eastern Kentucky in 1916. With the help of June Buchanan, Lloyd chartered what was then called Caney Junior College in 1923. The school became an accredited four-year college in 1980.
Notable: The call letters for Alice Lloyd College’s non-commercial radio station, which has broadcast inspirational programming around the clock since 1998, are WWJD-FM.
Famous Alum: Carl D. Perkins, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 until his death in 1984. Perkins’s legacy lives on in the form of the Perkins Loan, a need-based Federal student loan.
How to Spend the Money Saved on Tuition: Elk were introduced to Kentucky in 1997 as part of a restoration project and Knott County, which includes Pippa Passes, is now known as the elk capital of the East. Tours are available through several outlets.
mentalfloss.com
Posted by admin on October 31st, 2008
As the price of a college degree continues to rise, there’s growing evidence that the monetary payoff isn’t quite as big as often advertised. The best estimate now is that a college degree is worth about $300,000 in today’s dollars—nowhere near the $1 million figure that is often quoted.
“That $1 million number has driven me crazy!” says Sandy Baum, a Skidmore economist who studied the value of a college degree for the College Board last year.
Baum’s research showed that college graduates earn, on average, about $20,000 a year more than those who finished their educations at high school. Add that up over a 40-year working life and the total differential is about $800,000, she figures. But since much of that bonus is earned many years from now, subtracting out the impact of inflation means that $800,000 in future dollars is worth only about $450,000 in today’s dollars.
Then, if you subtract out the cost of a college degree—about $30,000 in tuition and books for students who get no aid and attend public in-state universities—and the money a student could have earned at a job instead of attending school, the real net value in today’s dollars is somewhere in the $300,000 range, a number confirmed by other studies.
But, especially these days, that still makes a college degree one of the most lucrative investments a person can make, Baum notes.
Better yet, college graduates can go on to earn advanced degrees, which return even bigger payoffs. The average holder of a bachelor’s degree earns about $51,000 a year, Baum calculates. But those who’ve gone on to earn MBAs, law degrees, or other professional degrees earn about $100,000 a year.
In addition, Baum found that there are plenty of other rewards for a degree. The quality of the jobs college graduates get is far better, for example. College graduates are more likely to get jobs with health insurance. And it is easier for them to find and hold jobs. The unemployment rate for college graduates was just 2.2 percent last year, half the unemployment level of those with only high school diplomas.
There are lots of other nonmonetary benefits as well. College graduates are healthier, contribute more to their communities, and raise kids who are better prepared academically, studies show.
Other researchers have found that the payoff of a degree is especially lucrative for students from low-income families, since the education and credential give them a chance to break out of low-paying careers.
Article posted from USNEWS
