Free online courses enable high schoolers to explore possible majors and preview college-level academics, experts say. MOOCs have been controversial, but these online classes enable curious high schoolers to explore a range of disciplines for free without having to commit to staying enrolled.
The college debt crisis is even worse than you think (Boston Globe)
A new study by the Washington think tank New America finds that nearly 50 percent of public four-year colleges nationally are leaving the poorest students on the hook for more than $10,000 a year, a figure that has jumped by a third in just four years. But at private colleges, it’s close to 100 percent. Apart from the elites, most privates, despite all those hefty tuition hikes, have even fewer resources than public institutions and can’t come close to meeting students’ entire need.
Where College Admissions Went Wrong (the Atlantic)
In 2011, close to 200 higher-education professionals from selective institutions across the country gathered at the University of Southern California to come up with a plan to reshape college admissions. “The values and behaviors this system signals as important, and its tendency to reward only a narrow band of students...is crippling the mission of education.” The gathering confirmed the growing consensus—even among those intimately involved in the most notorious aspects of admissions—that the system is in desperate need of reform. The intense competition it fuels undermines students’ well-being; pressures applicants to fine-tune their test-taking skills and inflate their resumes; and distorts the purpose of higher education.
How to Survive the College Admissions Madness (NY Times)
For too many parents and their children, acceptance by an elite institution isn’t just another challenge, just another goal. A yes or no from Amherst or the University of Virginia or the University of Chicago is seen as the conclusive measure of a young person’s worth, an uncontestable harbinger of the accomplishments or disappointments to come. Winner or loser: This is when the judgment is made. This is the great, brutal culling. What madness. And what nonsense.
The Myth of Kinder, Gentler College Admissions (Observer)
The college admissions process is stressful, often absurdly so. It is also unfair—but not in ways that most people realize—and certainly not in ways that most parents, college administrators and policy-makers would agree on.
The current admissions system maintains the status quo, much to the pleasure of the college-industrial complex: lots of students apply for a relatively small number of openings at each school. That basic economic truth—great demand, limited supply—helps prop up ridiculously high tuition. And in turn, that outrageous tuition fuels the craziness to get into “top,” then “better” and finally “good” schools. Here’s how it all works...
How college admissions has turned into something akin to ‘The Hunger Games’
Anyone remotely involved in the college admissions process in the past few decades knows it has become, for too many students, high stakes and very, very high anxiety. In this piece, a college admissions counselor looks at the reality and makes a call for a new approach.
Real Compassion in College Admissions (NY Times)
THE college admission process is always stressful, often unfair and may well reward the wrong values. But the recommendations released last month by a Harvard Graduate School of Education project called Making Caring Common will only make things worse. In its report, “Turning the Tide,” the Harvard group suggested that kids take fewer Advanced Placement courses, that colleges should think about making the SAT and the ACT optional, and that all students should participate in what it calls “meaningful” community service activities.
Kids would then write college application essays about what they learned from these experiences. The report’s recommendations were triggered in part by a survey that found that only 22 percent of middle- and high-school students thought that caring for others was more important than personal happiness or individual achievement.
The Absurdity of College Admissions (The Atlantic)
How did getting into an elite school become a frenzied, soul-deadening process?
Acceptance rates at highly selective colleges have plummeted in recent years. Exclusivity has always been baked into their brand: Only about 3 percent of 18-year-olds in the U.S. go to schools that admit fewer than half their applicants, making the “college-admissions mania,” as The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson once put it, “a crisis for the 3 percent.” Still, it’s a mania to which more and more teensare subjecting themselves, pressuring applicants to pad their resumés and tout superficial experiences and hobbies, convincing them that attending a prestigious school is paramount. And critics say that mania has even spread into and shaped American culture, often distorting kids’ (and parents’) values, perpetuating economic inequality, and perverting the role of higher education in society as a whole
Should Everyone Go To College? (Psychology Today)
Emerging adults have difficult decisions to make regarding higher education. Proponents of college education tell us a degree means higher wages, while skeptics say educational expenses and delays in earning wages make college a poor investment.
It’s true: College is increasingly expensive and stressful as students try to compete with greater numbers of their peers to get into reputable schools, they face mental healthproblems at alarming rates, graduates face crushing debt, and the job market for college grads is bleak. Why should any of us want to endure college?
Why College Isn’t (and Shouldn’t Have to be) for Everyone (Robert Reich)
With inequality at record levels and almost all the economic gains going to the top, there’s more pressure than ever to get the golden ring. A degree from a prestigious university can open doors to elite business schools and law schools – and to jobs paying hundreds of thousands, if not millions, a year. So parents who can afford it are paying grotesque sums to give their kids an edge.
Getting a Student Loan With Collateral From a Future Job (NY Times)
At Purdue University, some undergraduates will have a new option to help finance their degrees: pledging to pay a percentage of their future incomes in return for funds today. Such programs are not loans. Instead, students get funds to cover current education expenses, and, in return, they agree to pay a percentage of their future income over an agreed-upon period of time.
Though an emerging corner of the educational finance industry, such programs help ease the often crushing debt many American college students face after graduation, proponents say. A small number of lenders have tested the model in recent years, but Purdue is the first American university to officially embrace the concept.
Time For College Admissions To Consider A New Diversity (HuffPost)
It’s the college admissions decision season, a time when colleges and universities beat their chests with statistics for their incoming freshmen classes. But in the midst of all this self-aggrandizement, one term you probably won’t hear referenced is neurodiversity, a concept that stresses the need to recognize neurological differences like Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and matters that fall along the Autism Spectrum. Despite a growing amount of research, very few, if any, colleges and universities even recognize the term neurodiversity let alone display any specific information on how it factors into consideration for admissions.