Tag Archives: Vocational School

New York Federal Reserve Bank report: Many college grads underemployed

11 Aug

One Tennessee Study found that quite often kids are encouraged to choose college over vocational or trade options. The societal push the last few years has been to have more kids go to college. Quite often schools are ranked on the percentage of kids that go directly to college from high school. So, counselors are following cultural cues they have received from administrators, parents, and the media. http://www.tennessee.gov/education/cte_council/doc/career_college_advice.pdf The Pew Research Center has a report, Is College Worth It? http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/05/15/is-college-worth-it/ Amanda Paulson of the Christian Science Monitor has a great article, Does Everyone Need A College Degree? Maybe Not Says Harvard Study http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0202/Does-everyone-need-a-college-degree-Maybe-not-says-Harvard-study about a Harvard study.

A new report released by Harvard Wednesday states in some of the strongest terms yet that such a “college for all” emphasis may actually harm many American students – keeping them from having a smooth transition from adolescence to adulthood and a viable career.
“The American system for preparing young people to lead productive and prosperous lives as adults is clearly badly broken,” concludes the report, “Pathways to Prosperity” (pdf).

Harvard has quite a bit of press about the report. Jill Anderson wrote the press release, Pathways to Prosperity Seeks to Redefine the American Education System which is at the Harvard site. The point of the report is whether there should be a variety of post-high school paths and not just the focus on a B.A. Still, there should be post-high school training which would provide additional skills. http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news-impact/2010/02/pathways-to-prosperity-seeks-to-redefine-american-education-system/

One of the goals of education is to give the student sufficient basic skills to be able to leave school and be able to function at a job or correctly assess their training needs. One of the criticisms of the current education system is that it does not adequately prepare children for work or for a career. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/borrowing-from-work-schools-teach-career-mapping/ A liberal arts education has been considered the gold standard. A Washington Post article has some good tips about how a liberal arts education could be made valuable in the current economic climate.

Andy Chan, vice president of the Wake Forest University Office of Personal and Career Development, and Jacquelyn S. Fetrow, Reynolds Professor of Computational Biophysics and dean of Wake Forest College wrote in the Washington Post about producing employable liberal arts grads. In the article, Six tips for liberal arts colleges to produce employable grads, Chan and Fetrow give the following advice:

Here are a few recommendations for liberal arts colleges to more deeply realize and communicate the value of the liberal education for the world of work today:
• Develop partnerships that bridge the career development office with the faculty and academic advisors. Students demand to know how their choice of major will affect their career options. By sharing these data and student examples with the faculty and academic advisors, the career development office becomes more vital to students and to the faculty. With the endorsement and influence of the faculty, students utilize the complete range of resources offered by the career development office starting from their first year on campus.
• Provide opportunities for faculty to understand the needs of employers. When professors understand why employers hire certain students, they can articulate how the academic material can be applied variety of work settings and help students recognize and better market this knowledge and skills. They can also more effectively mentor students and provide career advice and connections.
• Make internships and/or research projects an integral part of the student experience. Make sure the student demonstrates the drive to stick with a research problem for longer than a semester. A survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that 84 percent of executives at private sector and non-profit organizations expressed a desire for students to complete a significant project before graduation to demonstrate their depth of knowledge and a passion for a particular areas, as well as their acquisition of broad analytical, problem solving and communication skills.
• Offer credit-based courses in career development so that students learn the fundamentals for lifelong career management. With projections that today’s graduate will have eight or more jobs in their life, they must be equipped with the knowledge, skills and tools to navigate the path from college to career as well as post-graduate career changes.
• Bring recent alumni from a variety of careers to campus and perhaps into the classroom to share their experiences for how they utilize their liberal education. Today’s students expect immediate answers and a direct line from major to career. At Wake Forest University, history professors require their students to participate in teleconferences with alumni who applied their bachelor’s degree in history to relevant but not directly related fields, such as journalism, law and marketing. Understanding the breadth of real-world opportunities dispels the myth that all history – and other liberal arts – majors are destined to become professors.
• Develop partnerships between the liberal arts college and the business school to enable faculty and students to work and learn across boundaries. Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise, now the most popular minor at Wake Forest, emerged from a college-business school collaboration. Alternatively, many students choose to acquire the Masters in Management degree at Wake Forest in their fifth year to develop the business knowledge and leadership skills to complement their liberal undergraduate education. These types of partnerships are essential to provide students with the skills to apply their liberal arts skills to business-world problems.
There are many possible solutions to help students realize and articulate the relevancy of the liberal education to the world of work. The one requirement is that liberal arts colleges must make personal and career development a mission-critical part of the undergraduate experience – and they must collaborate with faculty in the endeavor.
A liberal arts education, long regarded as one of America’s unique sources of strength, remains an important vehicle for nurturing young talent who will produce the answers for our future. However, a liberal education without regard to career relevance is not enough. Liberal arts colleges must begin rethinking success by demonstrating relevance beyond the classroom. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/six-tips-for-liberal-arts-colleges-to-produce-employable-grads/2012/03/31/gIQAQb6EnS_blog.html

In the current economy more and more prospective students are wondering if college is a good investment.

Jill Barshay of The Hechinger Report reported in the article, Reflections on the Underemployment of College Graduates:

Most people — and especially parents of 20-something college graduates — know that the job market is particularly tough right now for recent college grads. But so tough that about half of them are either unemployed or underemployed?
That is what analysts for the New York Federal Reserve Bank of New York calculated, in a January, 2014, report, “Are Recent College Graduates Finding Good Jobs?” Defining “underemployed as working in low-paid jobs that don’t require college degrees, the analysts, Jaison R. Abel, Richard Deitz, and Yaqin Su, found that roughly 6 percent of recent college graduates, aged 22 to 27, were unemployed at the beginning of 2013 and 44 percent were underemployed. The unemployment figure has likely dropped since then, along with the overall drop in unemployment. But it’s quite possible that underemployment — the percentage of college grads who are in jobs that don’t require college degrees — hasn’t changed much.
Curiously enough, this New York Fed study was largely a rebuttal to the popular notion that the job market is much worse for college grads today. The authors looked at two decades of data and found that the combination of unemployment and underemployment is roughly the same today as it was for college graduates in the early 1990s who also had to seek jobs during a recession. By age 30, the majority of the 1990s cohort eventually found better work, and the same could happen for the current crop of college graduates.
But the authors also pointed to some ominous signs. They drilled down into the data of the underemployed and noted that it’s more likely for recent graduates to be in a low-wage or a part-time job than in the past. In other words, there’s a smaller share of college graduates in well-paying non-college jobs, such as electrician, dental hygienist or mechanic. And there’s a rising share of college graduates in the lowest paid of the non-college jobs, such as bartender, food server and cashier. That could make it harder for these young adults to transition to higher skilled jobs in the next few years. Time will tell.
Harvard professor Richard B. Freeman, one of the leading U.S. labor economists, wrote that he believes things are also worse now for American college graduates because of international competition. “The college graduate situation has a global dimension — 6 million bachelor’s graduates in China that affect the U.S. market as well — which is very different than in the past,” he wrote.
It’s worth pausing a moment to understand how economists think about underemployment, an admittedly fuzzy term. The New York Federal Reserve used the Department of Labor’s O*Net surveys. If at least 50 percent of the respondents working in a particular occupation say it requires a college degree, then the New York Fed labeled the occupation a college job. And it called a college graduate “underemployed” if he or she worked in a job for which less than half the respondents said a bachelor’s degree was necessary. Under this definition, every college-educated real estate broker, registered nurse and Shakespearean actor is classified as underemployed.
Sometimes fields change and become more sophisticated. Twenty years ago, some jobs didn’t require college degrees that now do. Journalism is one where many people didn’t have a college degree a couple generations ago. Now, even O*Net says reporters need a college degree. One question interesting labor economists is whether the employers hiring young adults can be more selective than the job itself warrants, and can demand college degrees simply because they have an excess of college graduates to choose from. Many elementary schools in the New York City area, for example, have the luxury of being able to demand that any teacher’s aide have a B.A. But O*Net says that the degree isn’t necessary for that job. Over time, that could change, if enough teacher’s aides respond that a college degree is necessary to be a teacher’s aide, even though you could perform the job superbly without one….
Reflections on the Underemployment of College Graduates – Higher Education http://diverseeducation.com/article/66209/

A college degree is no guarantee of either employment or continued employment. Still, because of the economic uncertainty there is an “arms race” in education. Laura Pappano reported in the New York Times article, The Master’s As the New Bachelor’s http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/education/edlife/edl-24masters-t.html?emc=eta1&_r=0 Whether a person chooses to attend a four year college after high school is a very personal decision and there is no one right answer. One thing the current economic climate has taught many is there are no guarantees in life, even with a college degree. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/why-go-to-college/

Resources:

A publication by the government Why Attend College? Is a good overview http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/Prepare/pt1.html

Article in USA Today about gap year http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-06-18-gap-year_N.htm

Advantages of Going to a Vocational School http://www.gocollege.com/options/vocational-trade-schools/

Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology http://www.accsc.org/Resources/Links.aspx

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A diploma mill may derail your dreams

3 Jul

Many people are unemployed or underemployed and they seek additional education to improve their employment chances. Not all education opportunities will benefit one’s future and diploma mills may derail your future prospects. Scott Mc Lemee wrote in the Inside Higher Education article, A Degree of Fraud:

It’s surprising how many house pets hold advanced degrees. Last year, a dog received his M.B.A. from the American University of London, a non-accredited distance-learning institution. It feels as if I should add “not to be confused with the American University in London,” but getting people to confuse them seems like a pretty basic feature of the whole AUOL marketing strategy.
The dog, identified as “Peter Smith” on his diploma, goes by Pete. He was granted his degree on the basis of “previous experiential learning,” along with payment of £4500. The funds were provided by a BBC news program, which also helped Pete fill out the paperwork. The American University of London required that Pete submit evidence of his qualifications as well as a photograph. The applicant submitted neither, as the BBC website explains, “since the qualifications did not exist and the applicant was a dog.”
The program found hundreds of people listing AUOL degrees in their profiles on social networking sites, including “a senior nuclear industry executive who was in charge of selling a new generation of reactors in the UK.” (For more examples of suspiciously credentialed dogs and cats, see this list.)
Inside Higher Ed reports on diploma mills and fake degrees from time to time but can’t possibly cover every revelation that some professor or state official has a bogus degree, or that a “university” turns out to be run by a convicted felon from his prison cell. Even a blog dedicated to the topic, Diploma Mill News http://diplomamillnews.blogspot.com/ , links to just a fraction of the stories out there. Keeping up with every case is just too much; nobody has that much Schaudenfreude in them…. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/29/mills#sthash.KUHA4NFD.dpbs

Jennifer Williamson wrote, Six Signs Your Online School is a Diploma Mill for Distance Education.Org:

There are two common types of diploma mills. The first will simply mail you a degree for a fee of a few hundred dollars. They sometimes ask to see your resume first, and will pretend to vet you for “life experience credit.” Of course, everybody who applies gets enough life experience credit to earn an entire degree.
The second type will actually require some work, but it will be minimal. Your dissertation may be five pages long instead of fifty, and you’ll be able to earn a degree in months, not years. These diploma mills are a bit more dangerous than the first type, because they more closely resemble legitimate schools. However, there are still a few warning signs:
Lightning-Fast Degrees
It should take you four years to earn an undergraduate degree, two or three years to earn a Master’s degree, and another three to five—depending on the subject—to earn a Ph.D. Many diploma mills claim you can earn degrees in months, not years. Be cautious if a school you’re considering is making this claim.
Bogus Accreditation
Legitimate schools are reviewed by accreditation agencies: third-party nonprofits that hold schools to rigorous standards. There are six regional accreditors, and it’s best to go to a school that lists one of these as its accrediting agency.
Many online schools are accredited by one of a long list of national agencies in the U.S. instead. National accreditors are not always considered as rigorous as regional accreditors, but they are still legitimate.
The Council of Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) maintains a database of legitimately accredited schools. You can also check our list of regional, national, and known illegitimate accreditors. If the accrediting agency listed by your school is in the third category—or if it isn’t on this list at all—it’s probably a diploma mill.
They Charge per Degree
Legitimate schools charge per credit hour, per course, or per semester. Diploma mills often charge by degree. Some offer discounts if you order a second degree, which a legitimate school would never do. A small handful of legitimate schools do offer programs for a flat fee, but it’s rare.
It’s Easy To Get Credit For Life Experience
Some diploma mills will ask you to send in your resume, and will give you almost unlimited credits for life experience. In some cases, you can get all the credits you need for a degree through life experience. Just pay the school’s fees—usually a few hundred dollars or so—and they’ll mail you a degree.
This is tricky, because legitimate schools offer life experience credits as well. But it’s very rare to be able to earn your entire degree through life experience credit—and impossible with a post-graduate degree.
In addition, they’ll ask to see more than your resume to prove your competence. Legitimate schools will ask you to assemble a prior learning portfolio, write personal essays, take standardized tests, or undergo an interview process to determine whether you’ve really earned those life experience credits.
The Work Required Is Minimal
If you’re required to read a few articles, write a few simple papers, and hand in a five-page dissertation at the end, it’s not likely you’ve learned enough to earn a legitimate degree.
The School Is Located In A State With Little Regulation
Some states make it easier for diploma mills to operate than others. Alabama, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, and Wyoming are all common locations for diploma mills, because of loopholes in local law or lax regulation. Of course, there are many legitimate schools located in these states as well. But if your school looks suspicious already, check to see if it’s based in one of these states. If it is, it may be a bad sign.
http://www.distance-education.org/Articles/Six-Signs-Your-Online-School-is-a-Diploma-Mill-30.html#.T5RbdgbZ8tI.email

Ulinks has 16 Key Questions to Ask a Vocational School http://www.ulinks.com/vocationalschools-tradeschools.htm

The Missouri Department of Higher Education defines a “diploma mill” as:

What is a “diploma mill?”
A dictionary definition is “an unaccredited school or college that grants relatively worthless diplomas, as for a fee.”
Alternatively, a diploma mill might be described as an institution of higher education operating without supervision of a state or professional agency and granting diplomas which are either fraudulent or, because of the lack of proper standards, worthless…. standards. http://dhe.mo.gov/ppc/diplomamills.php

The key point is “diploma mills” have few standards.

How to Spot a Diploma Mill?

There is an excellent article at ELearners.Com which tells you how to spot a “diploma mill.”

They often have names similar to well-known colleges or universities, but fail to mention an accrediting agency or name a fake accrediting agency.
The organization frequently changes addresses, sometimes moving from state to state.
Written materials typically include numerous spelling and grammatical errors, sometimes on the diploma itself.
Overemphasis on the speed and brevity with which someone can receive a degree (e.g. “Call now and have your degree shipped to you overnight!”).
Degrees can be earned in far less time than normal (e.g. 27 days) or the diploma is printed with a specific backdate.
There is no selectivity in admissions, or any questions about previous test scores or detailed academic history.
No interaction with professors or faculty (e.g. only two emails are received from a professor).
Degree requirements are vague or unspecified, lacking class descriptions and without any mention of how many credit hours are required to complete a program.
Tuition and fees are typically on a per-degree basis.
Grade point average (GPA) and academic honors (e.g. Summa Cum Laude) can be specified at the time of purchase. http://www.elearners.com/online-education-resources/degrees-and-programs/diploma-mills/

Buyer beware, if it seems too easy and too good to be true, you probably should investigate the accreditation of the school.

What to Do If You are enrolled in a Diploma Mill?

The first step is not to enroll in a diploma mill in the first place. Jennifer Williamson of Distance-Education.org wrote the great article, What to Do If You’re Enrolled in a Diploma Mill:

But maybe you didn’t spot these signs up front—for whatever reason—and you’ve been fooled by a diploma mill into parting with your money. While it’s not likely you’ll get your money back, there are a few things you can do.
First: stop giving them your money
If you’re involved in paying tuition with the school, stop paying immediately.
Do not, under any circumstance, list the degree on your resume
List an unaccredited degree on your resume and you not only risk your reputation—you risk your job. It’s better not to have a degree at all than to have a degree from a diploma mill—and companies do check these credentials, sometimes years after the person has been hired.
Ask for a refund in writing
If you’re sure you’re enrolled in a diploma mill, send a letter immediately requesting a refund of all tuition money you’ve paid. Send it by registered mail, explain why you want the refund, and make a copy for your own records. It’s doubtful that the diploma mill will send back your money, but it’s worth a shot—and the letter may be useful if you want to take your complaint to court.
Notify the authorities
Tell your state’s attorney general office what’s happened—there should be a way to file complaints on the attorney general’s website. It’s possible that the attorney general’s office will choose to go after the diploma mill.
Report to the Better Business Bureau
Reporting to the Better Business Bureau is a good move because it will serve to warn other potential students about the school. The reporting process only takes a few minutes and can be done entirely online, and the Bureau may be able to help you resolve the complaint.
If you’ve been had by a diploma mill, you don’t have a lot of options. But you can go public with your grievance and it’s possible law enforcement will decide to go after the school. Tell your attorney general and notify the Better Business Bureau. Stop doing assignments and paying tuition to the school. Send a registered letter outlining the reason why you want a refund, but don’t count on getting your money back. Don’t list your unaccredited degree on your resume or try to let your employer think your degree is real. If you do, you could experience some negative repercussions. http://www.distance-education.org/Articles/What-to-Do-If-You-re-Enrolled-in-a-Diploma-Mill-220.html

If you have been sucked into a diploma mill scheme, at the federal level, you can file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. You can go to Federal Trade Commission Complaint http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0206-diploma-mills and you can report fraud to your state. Consumer Fraud Reporting.Org lists how to contact your state attorney general. http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/stateattorneygenerallist.php

During periods of crisis or uncertainty the scam artists emerge and try to take advantage of the unsuspecting. Before making a decision about any school, students, parents, and guardians must research the options.

Resources:
Diploma Mill Degrees Too Good to Be True http://www.cmn.com/2012/06/diploma-mill-degrees-too-good-to-be-true/

How to Spot a Diploma Mill
http://www.onlinecollegedegrees.net/avoiding-cheap-education

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Not ready for college, perhaps a gap year is in order

4 Mar

One Tennessee Study found that quite often kids are encouraged to choose college over vocational or trade options. The societal push the last few years has been to have more kids go to college. Quite often schools are ranked on the percentage of kids that go directly to college from high school. So, counselors are following cultural cues they have received from administrators, parents, and the media. http://www.tennessee.gov/education/cte_council/doc/career_college_advice.pdf

Pros and Cons of Going to A Four Year College

A. Five Reasons to Go to College

Chris Stout lists Top Five Reasons to Go to College

1.The undergraduate degree is the new high school diploma
There was once a time when college was entirely optional. Even today, smart, hard working people can develop excellent careers and stable lives without the aid of a university education. College is by no means mandatory, but when you’re ready to start building a career for yourself, you will increasingly discover that a college degree is a prerequisite for many entry-level employment opportunities….
2.College will satisfy and expand your curiosity
If you possess a general curiosity about how and why the world works the way it does, then you owe it to yourself to attend college. Education is a personal project. If you want to develop your mental faculties and increase your knowledge base, then you have to college. If you feel that you’ve learned all you possibly can in high school, if you think that there’s nothing else that you need to absorb, then don’t go to college. If you have a passion for improved understanding, then college is mandatory.
3.College is a process of continual maturation
College is freedom. When you attend college, you are free to live on your own, according to your own priorities. As you carve out your own custom tailored living and learning experience, you can’t help but grow as a person. College is a time for self-improvement and development, so if you want to grow and mature as an individual, college is the perfect playground for self-progress.
4.College is all about networking
In college, you have the unique ability to create life-long associations in a structured environment. Networking is important, but it can also be difficult. If you want to build relations with students and faculty members, you have to put forth effort. Unlike the real world, in college, it’s easy to combine your individual interests with supportive allies who subscribe to those same interests. Take advantage of this environment and build up relationships that will help you in the future.
5.College exposes you to things you would not normally experience
When you set about choosing your path through life, it’s important to remember that finding yourself is as much a process of elimination as it is a process of discovery. Just as you seek out interests and identities, you need to rule out certain life-options and mental frameworks that you do not agree with. College exposes you to new risks, rewards, people, places, ideas, lifestyles, eating habits and career choices. Exposure is critical. You can’t form a genuine opinion on something if you’ve never been exposed to it. College is a place for you to improve yourself, to satiate your curiosities, to mature, to network, and to be exposed to new things. College is an important, irreplaceable experience in life. Going to college is highly recommended. http://ezinearticles.com/?Top-Five-Reasons-Why-You-Should-Choose-To-Go-To-College&id=384395

Stout places the emphasis on the college experience and the fact that college is not just a place for possible career training.

B. Five Reasons Not to Go to College

Forbes. Com published Five Reasons Not to Go to College

1. You’ll be losing four working years.
There’s an opportunity cost associated with going to college: Not only will you lose the money you’ll have spent on tuition, you’ll also be out the amount of money that you could have made if you’d worked during those four years. And if your family isn’t wealthy enough to pay for your education on their own, you’ll also owe a hefty amount in interest payments for your student loans. Perhaps more importantly, with four years of experience on your resume, you’ll be far better off when looking for work than the average 22-year-old college graduate.
2. You won’t necessarily earn less money.
College grads earn an average 62% more over the course of their careers than high school grads. But economist Robert Reischauer of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., argues that those numbers are skewed by the fact that smarter kids are more likely to go to college in the first place. In other words, the profitability of higher education is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
3. In fact, you could probably make more money if you invested your tuition.
Put $160,000–the approximate cost of a Harvard education–into municipal bonds that pay a conservative 5%, and you’ll have saved more than $500,000 in 30 years. That’s far more than the average college grad will accumulate in the same amount of time.
4. You don’t need to be in a classroom in order to learn something.
Truly motivated learners can teach themselves almost anything with a couple of books and an Internet connection. Want to learn a hands-on skill or trade? Consider an apprenticeship.
5. Plenty of other people did fine
Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Quentin Tarantino, David Geffen, and Thomas Edison, among others, never graduated from college. Peter Jennings and John D. Rockefeller never finished high school. http://www.forbes.com/2006/04/15/dont-go-college_cx_lh_06slate_0418skipcollege.html

Some people discover their passion earlier in life than others. Forbes.Com addresses its comments at those folks. The calculation is that if one already knows what they want to do, college could be an unnecessary detour.

A college degree is no guarantee of either employment or continued employment.

Alternatives to a Four Year College Degree

Great Schools has a concise overview of various options should a child decide they do not want to go from high school to a four year college. What if Your Teen Wants to Skip College http://www.greatschools.org/college-prep/alternatives/660-what-if-your-teen-wants-to-skip-college.gs There are several options. Options include a gap year, trade school, vocational school, community college, and for some the military. The only option that should be off the table is to do nothing.

Victor Lukerson wrote the excellent Time article, Gap Year: The Growing Appeal of Not Going Right to College:

About 1.2% of first-time college freshmen choose to defer enrollment for a year, according to the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. What these students choose to do with their time varies widely, from expensive study abroad programs, to volunteer programs like City Year, to staying at home and saving up for college.
“In 1980, no one was talking gap year,” says Holly Bull, the president of The Center for Interim Programs, a company that offers parents and students consulting in choosing the appropriate gap year program. “I’ve watched this whole concept go basically from its inception to present day. I wouldn’t call it mainstream, but there’s way more awareness and support and colleges are now beginning to endorse it as a really positive thing.”http://moneyland.time.com/2012/10/05/gap-year-the-growing-appeal-of-not-going-right-to-college/#ixzz28eFKj1Ce

According to Kirk Carapezza of NPR more students are taking a gap year. Carapezza reported in the story, Mind The Gap (Year): A Break Before College Might Do Some Good http://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/283533644/mind-the-gap-year-a-break-before-college-might-do-some-good?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=share&utm_campaign=storyshare

Whether a person chooses to attend a four year college after high school is a very personal decision and there is no one right answer. One thing the current economic climate has taught many is there are no guarantees in life, even with a college degree. The trades may offer some a means to earn a living and a fulfilling life.
A one-size-fits-all approach does not work.

Resources:
1. A publication by the government Why Attend College? Is a good overview http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/Prepare/pt1.html

2. Article in USA Today about gap year http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-06-18-gap-year_N.htm

3. Advantages of Going to a Vocational School http://www.gocollege.com/options/vocational-trade-schools/

4. Accreditation Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology http://www.accsc.org/Resources/Links.aspx

5. The Federal Trade Commission has Choosing A Career Or Vocational School http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0241-choosing-vocational-school

6. How to Choose The Best Trade School http://www.ehow.com/how_2107557_choose-best-trade-school.html

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

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COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©
http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

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http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

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University of Chicago Urban Education Lab study: Targeted tutoring can reduce the education gap

28 Jan

People want an education for a variety of reasons. Some have a love of learning. Others want to attend a good college or vocational school. Still others, see an education as a ticket to a good job. Increasingly for schools, the goal is to prepare kids with the skills to attend and succeed at college. In order to give children the skills to succeed, schools need teachers who are effective at educating their population of kids. There are many themes in the attempt to answer the question, what will prepare kids for what comes after high school. What will prepare kids for what comes after high school is a good basic education. The schools that provide a good basic education are relentless about the basics.

Sharon Otterman wrote a good news story in the New York Times about how a relentless focus on the basics can yield results. In Brooklyn School Scores High Despite Poverty Otterman reported:

To ace the state standardized tests, which begin on Monday, Public School 172 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, finds money for coaches in writing, reading and math. Teachers keep detailed notes on each child, writing down weaknesses and encouraging them to repeat tasks. There is after-school help and Saturday school.
But at the start of this school year, seven or eight students were still falling behind. So the school hired a speech therapist who could analyze why they and other students stumbled in language. A psychologist produced detailed assessments and recommendations. A dental clinic staffed by Lutheran Medical Center opened an office just off the fourth-grade classrooms, diagnosing toothaches, a possible source of distraction, and providing free cleanings.
Perfection may seem a quixotic goal in New York City, where children enter school from every imaginable background and ability level. But on the tests, P.S. 172, also called the Beacon School of Excellence, is coming close — even though 80 percent of its students are poor enough to qualify for free lunch, nearly a quarter receive special education services, and many among its predominately Hispanic population do not speak English at home.
In 2009, the 580-student primary school, tucked between fast-food restaurants and gas stations in a semi-industrial strip of Fourth Avenue, topped the city with its fourth-grade math scores, with all students passing, all but one with a mark of “advanced,” or Level 4. In English, all but one of 75 fourth graders passed, earning a Level 3 or 4, placing it among the city’s top dozen schools.
On average, at schools with the same poverty rate, only 66 percent of the students pass the English test, and 29 percent score at an advanced level in math, according to a New York Times analysis of Department of Education statistics. And though it is less well known, P.S. 172 regularly outperforms its neighbors in Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, where parents raise hundreds of thousands a year for extra aides and enrichment.
The school’s approach, while impressive in its attention to detail, starts with a simple formula: “Teach, assess, teach, assess,” said Jack Spatola, its principal since 1984.
Mr. Spatola attributed the coaches and other extra help to careful budgeting and fighting for every dollar from the Department of Education; the school’s cost per pupil, in fact, is lower than the city’s average. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/education/26test.html?pagewanted=all?pagewanted=all

What this school does well is know its student population and design assessments and interventions targeted at its population of kids. It is an example of the think small not small minded philosophy. Motoko Rich reported about another example of the think small and focus on the individual philosophy in her story about the University of Chicago study focused on targeted tutoring.

Rich reported in the New York Times article, Intensive Small-Group Tutoring and Counseling Helps Struggling Students:

A new paper being released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests a promising approach for helping the most challenged students, who often arrive in high school several years behind their peers.
The study, which was conducted by a team led by Jens Ludwig, the co-director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Lab, provided a program of intense tutoring, in combination with group behavioral counseling, to a group of low-income ninth- and 10th-grade African-American youths with weak math skills, track records of absences or disciplinary problems. Those students learned in an eight-month period the equivalent of what the average American high school student learns in math over three years of school, as measured by standardized test scores, over and above what a similar group of students who did not receive the tutoring or counseling did…..
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/education/intensive-tutoring-and-counseling-found-to-help-struggling-teenagers.html
ref=education&_r=0

Jann Ingmire reported in the Phys.Org article, Targeted tutoring can reduce ‘achievement gap’ for CPS students, study finds:

For the new report, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the UChicago team tracked the impact of tutoring and mentoring among 106 ninth- and tenth-grade students at Harper High School in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood for six months in 2012 and 2013. Students were selected randomly to permit rigorous analysis of the outcomes. In addition to a significant jump in math test scores, students receiving tutoring and mentoring failed two fewer courses per year on average than students who did not participate, and their likelihood of being “on track” for graduation rose by nearly one-half.
“These results come from a randomized experiment of the sort that generates gold-standard evidence in medicine, but remains far too rare in the area of social policy,” noted Roseanna Ander, Executive Director of the UChicago Urban Education Lab. The lab is part of the UChicago Urban Education Institute, which is dedicated to creating knowledge to produce reliably excellent schooling.
One benefit of the Match tutoring approach is that it takes on the “mismatch” between a student’s grade level and the actual skills he or she has developed, which in disadvantaged urban settings like Chicago can be four to ten years behind grade level in math, which is a key gateway to high school graduation, said Jens Ludwig, Co-Director of the Urban Education Lab and McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy.
“So much of the energy in education policy is in improving the quality with which grade-level material is taught in classrooms,” Ludwig said. “But that’s not going to help a ninth-grader who is struggling with third- or fourth-grade math problems.”
Perhaps because students in the study got the targeted help they needed to catch up, Ludwig said, “These effects on schooling outcomes are larger—much larger—than what we see from so many other educational strategies.”
To help students catch up to grade level and re-engage with regular classroom instruction, the Match program administered a regimen sometimes described as “tutoring on steroids.” Virtually all participants were African American males from low-income families. Some of the 106 participants were selected via random lottery to receive the Match program’s individualized math tutoring for one hour per day, every day; each math tutor works with just two students at a time. In addition, students in this group received to non-academic intervention for one hour a week through the BAM mentoring program. BAM, developed by Chicago non-profit Youth Guidance and World Sport Chicago, uses elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy and non-traditional sports activities to strengthen social-cognitive skills, including self-regulation and impulse control. Other students participated in BAM alone, and the rest received the school’s existing programming.
“In addition to gains in achievement test scores we also saw improvements in engagement with school, such as an increase in attendance of about 2.5 weeks per year” said Jonathan Guryan, Associate Professor of Human Development and Social Policy in the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University and Co-director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Lab. “The results indicate this combination of programs may potentially be one way to narrow the black-white test score gap.”
The expansion of the BAM mentoring and Match tutoring approach to serve more CPS students will allow researchers to better understand the mechanisms of how these programs work and whether they can produce the same results on a larger scale.
The UChicago team’s NBER study concludes, “The impact of the pilot intervention reported in this paper are large enough to raise the question of whether the field has given up prematurely on the possibility of improving academic outcomes for disadvantaged youth.”
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-gap-cps-students.html

Citation:

The (Surprising) Efficacy of Academic and Behavioral Intervention with Disadvantaged Youth: Results from a Randomized Experiment in Chicago
Philip J. Cook, Kenneth Dodge, George Farkas, Roland G. Fryer, Jr, Jonathan Guryan, Jens Ludwig, Susan Mayer, Harold Pollack, Laurence Steinberg
NBER Working Paper No. 19862
Issued in January 2014
NBER Program(s): CH DAE DEV ED EFG HC HE LE LS PE
There is growing concern that improving the academic skills of disadvantaged youth is too difficult and costly, so policymakers should instead focus either on vocationally oriented instruction for teens or else on early childhood education. Yet this conclusion may be premature given that so few previous interventions have targeted a potential fundamental barrier to school success: “mismatch” between what schools deliver and the needs of disadvantaged youth who have fallen behind in their academic or non-academic development. This paper reports on a randomized controlled trial of a two-pronged intervention that provides disadvantaged youth with non-academic supports that try to teach youth social-cognitive skills based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and intensive individualized academic remediation. The study sample consists of 106 male 9th and 10th graders in a public high school on the south side of Chicago, of whom 95% are black and 99% are free or reduced price lunch eligible. Participation increased math test scores by 0.65 of a control group standard deviation (SD) and 0.48 SD in the national distribution, increased math grades by 0.67 SD, and seems to have increased expected graduation rates by 14 percentage points (46%). While some questions remain about the intervention, given these effects and a cost per participant of around $4,400 (with a range of $3,000 to $6,000), this intervention seems to yield larger gains in adolescent outcomes per dollar spent than many other intervention strategies.

The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

It is going to take coordination between not only education institutions, but a strong social support system to get many of these children through school. This does not mean a large program directed from Washington. But, more resources at the local school level which allow discretion with accountability. For example, if I child is not coming to school because they have no shoes or winter coat, then the child gets new shoes and/or a coat. School breakfast and lunch programs must be supported and if necessary, expanded. Unfortunately, schools are now the early warning system for many families in crisis. In addition, to families and schools, corporate support can be useful in helping to move at-risk children into the mainstream.

Related:

‘Becoming A Man’ course: Helping young African-American men avoid prison https://drwilda.com/2013/07/03/becoming-a-man-course-helping-young-african-american-men-avoid-prison/

Study: The plight of African-American boys in Oakland, California https://drwilda.com/2012/05/27/study-the-plight-of-african-american-boys-in-oakland-california/

Schott Foundation report: Black and Latino boys are not succeeding in high school https://drwilda.com/tag/african-american-male/

We give up as a society: Jailing parents because kids are truant https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/we-give-up-as-a-society-jailing-parents-because-kids-are-truant/

Jonathan Cohn’s ‘The Two Year Window’ https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/jonathan-cohns-the-two-year-window/

Who says Black children can’t learn? Some schools get it
https://drwilda.com/2012/03/22/who-says-black-children-cant-learn-some-schools-gets-it/

Inappropriate discipline: The first step on the road to education failure
https://drwilda.com/2011/12/13/inappropriate-discipline-the-first-step-on-the-road-to-education-failure/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

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Beware of diploma mills

24 Apr

Tara Siegel Bernard has a great article in the New York Times about researching career training to see if a particular option is a good choice. In Making Career Development Pay Bernard advises:        

IN shaky economic times, going back to school needs to be treated like any other investment: you need to weigh the potential returns while closely managing the costs.

Paula Hogan, left, a financial planner, and Jane Schroeder, a career counselor, in Ms. Hogan’s office.

So before you enroll in a program, you should ask the same sorts of questions that a portfolio manager might ask when analyzing conventional investments, like stocks: Am I buying a reputable credential? What is demand like in the field I’m interested in? What is the earnings potential? What are the long-term prospects? And how can I minimize my expenses?

The more radical the shift in careers you contemplate, the more research you should do. You might, for example, visit O*Net OnLine, a Web site maintained by the Labor Department, to check out salaries or estimates of employment opportunities for different professions.

Or you might test the waters in a field you are interested in. See if you can find an employee to shadow, making sure to ask questions about the job, the satisfactions, the downsides and industry trends.

“They will tell you the truth in your area before you put any money down on schools,” said Beverly Baskin, executive director of BBCS Counseling Services, a career counseling firm in Marlboro, N.J.

Even better, see if you can find a job, even part time, or an internship in the field you plan to pursue. If no paid positions are available, considering volunteering, if that is permitted.

Bernard has some excellent resources for researching the career decision. The decision to re-train for a new career or to go back to school for additional training should be thoroughly researched. After the decision is made, then any school or training program should be researched to ensure that it is accredited and licensed.

Jennifer Williamson has written a great article, Six Signs Your Online School is a Diploma Mill for Distance Education.Org:

There are two common types of diploma mills.  The first will simply mail you a degree for a fee of a few hundred dollars.  They sometimes ask to see your resume first, and will pretend to vet you for “life experience credit.” Of course, everybody who applies gets enough life experience credit to earn an entire degree.

The second type will actually require some work, but it will be minimal.  Your dissertation may be five pages long instead of fifty, and you’ll be able to earn a degree in months, not years.  These diploma mills are a bit more dangerous than the first type, because they more closely resemble legitimate schools.  However, there are still a few warning signs:

Lightning-Fast Degrees 

It should take you four years to earn an undergraduate degree, two or three years to earn a Master’s degree, and another three to five—depending on the subject—to earn a Ph.D. Many diploma mills claim you can earn degrees in months, not years.  Be cautious if a school you’re considering is making this claim. 

Bogus Accreditation

Legitimate schools are reviewed by accreditation agencies: third-party nonprofits that hold schools to rigorous standards.  There are six regional accreditors, and it’s best to go to a school that lists one of these as its accrediting agency.

Many online schools are accredited by one of a long list of national agencies in the U.S. instead.  National accreditors are not always considered as rigorous as regional accreditors, but they are still legitimate.

The Council of Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) maintains a database of legitimately accredited schools.  You can also check our list of regional, national, and known illegitimate accreditors. If the accrediting agency listed by your school is in the third category—or if it isn’t on this list at all—it’s probably a diploma mill.

They Charge per Degree 

Legitimate schools charge per credit hour, per course, or per semester.  Diploma mills often charge by degree.  Some offer discounts if you order a second degree, which a legitimate school would never do. A small handful of legitimate schools do offer programs for a flat fee, but it’s rare.

It’s Easy To Get Credit For Life Experience

Some diploma mills will ask you to send in your resume, and will give you almost unlimited credits for life experience.  In some cases, you can get all the credits you need for a degree through life experience.  Just pay the school’s fees—usually a few hundred dollars or so—and they’ll mail you a degree.

This is tricky, because legitimate schools offer life experience credits as well.  But it’s very rare to be able to earn your entire degree through life experience credit—and impossible with a post-graduate degree.

In addition, they’ll ask to see more than your resume to prove your competence.  Legitimate schools will ask you to assemble a prior learning portfolio, write personal essays, take standardized tests, or undergo an interview process to determine whether you’ve really earned those life experience credits.

The Work Required Is Minimal

If you’re required to read a few articles, write a few simple papers, and hand in a five-page dissertation at the end, it’s not likely you’ve learned enough to earn a legitimate degree. 

The School Is Located In A State With Little Regulation

Some states make it easier for diploma mills to operate than others.  Alabama, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, and Wyoming are all common locations for diploma mills, because of loopholes in local law or lax regulation.  Of course, there are many legitimate schools located in these states as well.  But if your school looks suspicious already, check to see if it’s based in one of these states.  If it is, it may be a bad sign.

http://www.distance-education.org/Articles/Six-Signs-Your-Online-School-is-a-Diploma-Mill-30.html#.T5RbdgbZ8tI.email

Ulinks has 16 Key Questions to Ask a Vocational School:

Before visiting the vocational school or trade school

  • Is the vocational school or trade school you are considering accredited by a reputable accrediting agency?
  • Is the vocational school or trade school properly licensed in the state in which it is operating?
  • What are the admissions requirements and how does it compare to similar vocational schools and trade schools?
  • Do other schools allow students to transfer credit from the vocational school or trade school you are considering?
  • What is the crime rate like at the vocational school or trade school you are considering and how does it compare to other schools
  • Does the vocational school or trade school have any complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau, the Department of Consumer Affairs, or the Department of Education?
  • Are the fees being charged by a vocational school or trade school in-line with the fees at other comparable schools?
  • What do potential employers in your chosen industry think about vocational school or trade school programs you are researching and would they hire graduates from that school?

While visiting the vocational school or trade school

  • Do the vocational school instructors seem knowledgeable and do they teach effectively?
  • Do students enrolled in the vocational school or trade school you are considering like the programs and recommend it?
  • Do current students feel that they are learning what they need to know to get a good job in the future?
  • What do current students say about the instructors on campus?
  • Have students had any issues or problems with the school, the curriculum, the instructors, or the facilities?
  • What do the current students like the most and the least about the vocational school or trade school?
  • What percentage of students successfully complete their programs?
  • Is it possible to obtain a list of past students whom you can contact?

During periods of crisis or uncertainty the scam artists emerge and try to take advantage of the unsuspecting. Before making a decision about any school, students, parents, and guardians must research the options.

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Why go to college?

28 Nov

Adam Davidson has written an interesting New York Times article, It’s the Economy: The Dwindling Power of a College Degree:

A general guideline these days is that people are rewarded when they can do things that take trained judgment and skill — things, in other words, that can’t be done by computers or lower-wage workers in other countries. Money now flows around the world so quickly, and technology changes so fast, that people who thought they were in high demand find themselves uprooted. Many newspaper reporters have learned that their work was subsidized, in part, by classified ads and now can’t survive the rise of Craigslist; computer programmers have found out that some smart young guys in India will do their jobs for much less. Meanwhile, China lends so much money to the United States that mortgage brokers and bond traders can become richer than they ever imagined for a few years and then, just as quickly, become broke and unemployed.

One of the greatest changes is that a college degree is no longer the guarantor of a middle-class existence. Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from nonelite schools. A bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability. To get a good job, you have to have some special skill — charm, by the way, counts — that employers value. But there’s also a pretty good chance that by some point in the next few years, your boss will find that some new technology or some worker overseas can replace you.

Though it’s no guarantee, a B.A. or some kind of technical training is at least a prerequisite for a decent salary. It’s hard to see any great future for high-school dropouts or high-school graduates with no technical skills. They most often get jobs that require little judgment and minimal training, like stocking shelves, cooking burgers and cleaning offices. Employers generally see these unskilled workers as commodities — one is as good as any other — and thus each worker has very little bargaining power, especially now that unions are weaker. There are about 40 million of these low-skilled people in our work force. They’re vying for jobs that are likely to earn near the minimum wage with few or no benefits, and they have a high chance of being laid off many times in a career.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine/changing-rules-for-success.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

The societal push the last few years has been to have more kids go to college. Quite often schools are ranked on the percentage of kids that go directly to college from high school. So, counselors are following cultural cues they have received from administrators, parents, and the media.

Chris Stout lists Top Five Reasons to Go to College Stout places the emphasis on the college experience and the fact that college is not just a place for possible career training. Forbes. Com published Five Reasons Not to Go to College Some people discover their passion earlier in life than others. Forbes.Com addresses its comments at those folks. The calculation is that if one already knows what they want to do, college could be an unnecessary detour. A US News and World Report article estimated the value of a college degree

Amanda Paulson of the Christian Science Monitor has a great article, Does Everyone Need A College Degree? Maybe Not Says Harvard Study about a new Harvard study.   

A new report released by Harvard Wednesday states in some of the strongest terms yet that such a “college for all” emphasis may actually harm many American students – keeping them from having a smooth transition from adolescence to adulthood and a viable career.

“The American system for preparing young people to lead productive and prosperous lives as adults is clearly badly broken,” concludes the report, “Pathways to Prosperity” (pdf).

Marcus Wohlsen of AP has posted the article, Tech Mogul Pays Bright Minds Not to Go to College at Seattle PI.Com. Wohlsen reports that tech tycoon Peter Thiel has set up a scholarship which two dozen gifted young people $100,000 not to go to college but to become entrepreneurs for the next two years.

A college degree is no guarantee of either employment or continued employment. Still, because of the economic uncertainty there is an “arms race” in education. Laura Pappano is reporting in the New York Times article, The Master’s As the New Bachelor’s

Call it credential inflation. Once derided as the consolation prize for failing to finish a Ph.D. or just a way to kill time waiting out economic downturns, the master’s is now the fastest-growing degree. The number awarded, about 657,000 in 2009, has more than doubled since the 1980s, and the rate of increase has quickened substantially in the last couple of years, says Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. Nearly 2 in 25 people age 25 and over have a master’s, about the same proportion that had a bachelor’s or higher in 1960.

Great Schools has a concise overview of various options should a child decide they do not want to go from high school to a four year college. What if Your Teen Wants to Skip College There are several options. Options include a gap year, trade school, vocational school, community college, and for some the military. The only option that should be off the table is to do nothing.

Whether a person chooses to attend a four year college after high school is a very personal decision and there is no one right answer. One thing the current economic climate has taught many is there are no guarantees in life, even with a college degree. The trades may offer some a means to earn a living and a fulfilling life.

Follow your passion, and success will follow you.
— Arthur Buddhold

There are no easy answers in the current economic climate.

Resources:

  1. A publication by the government Why Attend College? Is a good overview
  2. Article in USA Today about gap year
  3. gap year articles
  4. Advantages of Going to a Vocational School
  5. Vocational School Accreditation
  6. Accredidation Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology
  7. The Federal Trade Commission has Choosing A Career Or Vocational School
  8. How to Choose a Vocational School
  9. How to Choose The Best Trade School


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