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aGameOfThrones
09-04-2013, 12:03 PM
As President Obama focuses on lowering the cost of college education, he is overlooking another equally important challenge: ensuring that all students, regardless of their income level, have the opportunity to attend selective colleges.

Every year thousands of low-income students in the U.S. “under-match” in college admission, landing at colleges that are not the strongest academic fit for them. Most of these students never even apply to the best colleges they could be admitted to because they have no idea what their college options really are.


A study by Stanford professor Caroline Hoxby and Harvard professor Christopher Avery showed that students in the top quartile of academic achievement and the bottom quartile of family income are more likely to apply to lower-priced local schools that do not prepare them for a successful career, while students in the top quartile of family income are more likely to apply to more selective schools regardless of their academic qualifications.

A second study showed that when high-achieving, low-income students were informed about their college options, they applied and matriculated to more selective colleges than their peers who were not given this information.

What can we do to help low-income students attend the best universities possible?

One approach involves better collaboration between nonprofits, high schools and colleges. Colleges can work directly with national organizations like The Posse Foundation and A Better Chance, which indentify top students from disadvantaged communities and begin preparing them for college, in some cases while they are still in middle school. Colleges can provide these students with after-school and enrichment programs that prepare them for college and work. Yale provides this type of program for New Haven’s most talented arts students.

High schools and colleges can work together to ensure that low-income students study on college campuses while they are still in high school. The University of Rochester works with the CollegeBound Initiative in New York City, offering a two-year program to the most academically talented students from CollegeBound Initiative high schools. The summer before senior year, students attend a rigorous pre-college program on the University of Rochester campus. “We are investing in students’ long-term academic success,” says Assistant Dean of Diversity and Outreach Joseph Latimer. “They meet professors. They have to get themselves to class, to lunch, to the gym. All of this makes a difference when they arrive on campus for college.”

These college access programs help parents and students understand the realities of financing and attending college. “They make a huge difference both in where students apply and how they manage once they get there,” says Craig Robinson, director of the nonprofit KIPP Through College, which works in low-income communities.

The next level of access involves lowering structural barriers that reinforce inequities. The new Common Application, released on August 1, is much simpler than earlier versions, but each college still has its own labyrinth of required and optional supplements, making the process overly complicated and cumbersome. Colleges should agree on one common admissions date and one way to apply, instead of dozens of different types of rolling, early and regular admission policies. This policy would make it much simpler for students to connect with colleges that are a good fit for them academically and financially.

Once enrolled, the number one reason students fail to complete college is that they run out of financial aid. There is little utility to “lowering the cost of college” generally, since tremendous inequities throughout the financial aid process actually prevent the students who need the money the most from receiving it. So to broaden college access we need to make financial aid simpler and saner. We must create a national system for college scholarships and other forms of financial aid that is need-based on a sliding scale, relative to family income.

Schools must eliminate all scholarships that are not based on financial need. These are often called “merit” scholarships. While you can make a case that merit scholarships go to highly qualified students in a wide range of academic disciplines and extracurricular activities, the effect, overall, is to redistribute money from equally-qualified students who do not understand the merit scholarship system to wealthy students who hire paid advisors to exploit this system.

http://news.yahoo.com/expand-college-access-low-income-students-154030250.html

tod evans
09-04-2013, 12:06 PM
Keep it up, there's not enough unskilled "graduates" who think their time is worth $50-75k year....

Occam's Banana
09-04-2013, 06:25 PM
As President Obama focuses on lowering the cost of college education, he is overlooking another equally important challenge: ensuring that all students, regardless of their income level, have the opportunity to attend selective colleges.

I stopped reading after this first sentence.

Any ignoramus capable of uttering such illiterate nonsense has NO business opining on the subject of education.

Lucille
09-04-2013, 06:42 PM
Oh FFS. The last thing this country needs is more dumbass college grads (http://fredoneverything.net/HSThen.shtml).

green73
09-04-2013, 06:50 PM
Reps to all!

I<3Liberty
09-04-2013, 06:57 PM
This video from Learn Liberty pretty much sums up the problems with the current views of higher ed. Definitely take note of the college grad and debt statistics! :eek:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ivyhCHpGw

madengr
09-04-2013, 07:11 PM
I suppose if you go to a local (state) university, as opposed to Yale or Stanford, you are a worthless dumbass. At least that's my conclusion from the article.

Getting rid of merit based scholarships is asinine.

80% percent of students shouldn't even be in college. Sheesh, 80% flunked out of engineering when I was there 20 years ago. It's either worse now, or they lowered the standards.

TruckinMike
09-04-2013, 07:41 PM
MIT offers free non-accredited courses. Anybody can access them online. Many of them include the TA notes, problems/solutions, along with the actual course on youtube. MIT even has online study groups for the non-accredited courses. However course selection is mostly lower division.. (This was all funded privately)

And To answer the OP's question--->


How can we expand (more) college access to low-income students?

Put it all online --- for free. Its not like the courses aren't given every semester X 10000 different tax funded Universities across the nation.
If the .gov folks and lovers of all things government really cared about education That would have been done YEARS ago! Its not like a student from the barrio doesn't have access to a computer.

Brian4Liberty
09-04-2013, 07:48 PM
In some third world countries, students get an education in a dirt floored, tin-roofed shack. Education doesn't have to be that expensive. Competition is all it takes. Public schools eliminated low-priced competition.

heavenlyboy34
09-04-2013, 07:56 PM
In some third world countries, students get an education in a dirt floored, tin-roofed shack. Education doesn't have to be that expensive. Competition is all it takes. Public schools eliminated low-priced competition.
Anti-discrimination laws didn't help either. :P

LibertyEagle
09-04-2013, 08:01 PM
It was government meddling that caused the cost of college to skyrocket. Back when I went to college, people could actually put themselves through. They had to have a night job and work in the summers; some even took a semester or two off to earn money, but a lot of people did it this way.

Others weren't cut out for college or simply didn't want to go. Some of these went to vocational school. It worked quite well.

So, the last thing that is needed is for the government to add another program, since it was them that screwed it up in the first place.

I<3Liberty
09-04-2013, 08:22 PM
MIT offers free non-accredited courses. Anybody can access them online. Many of them include the TA notes, problems/solutions, along with the actual course on youtube. MIT even has online study groups for the non-accredited courses. However course selection is mostly lower division.. (This was all funded privately)

And To answer the OP's question--->



Put it all online --- for free. Its not like the courses aren't given every semester X 10000 different tax funded Universities across the nation.
If the .gov folks and lovers of all things government really cared about education That would have been done YEARS ago! Its not like a student from the barrio doesn't have access to a computer.

I'm also all for MOOCs and believe they're going to improve education for the better.


I suppose if you go to a local (state) university, as opposed to Yale or Stanford, you are a worthless dumbass. At least that's my conclusion from the article.

Getting rid of merit based scholarships is asinine.

80% percent of students shouldn't even be in college. Sheesh, 80% flunked out of engineering when I was there 20 years ago. It's either worse now, or they lowered the standards.

My uni's drop out rate for engineering is also really high. So many kids get pressured into it by parents or their own desires to just find a high-paying job. Many of them don't have the dedication or a desire for engineering. The drop outs typically switch to things like computer science, pre-med, biology, or chemistry. They then end up graduating with a degree they aren't 100% passionate about and a low GPA from their engineering days. Eventually, there will be so many engineers on the market, they won't be making as much as the once did. That's what happened with the life sciences and pharmacists.

Yes, merit scholarships need to stay, as long as they're paid for by private donations or the university.

Lucille
09-05-2013, 10:46 AM
Move Over, Obamacare. Here Comes Obamaschool
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/09/hunter-lewis/obamaschool/


The president’s specific proposals for student loans will have some other presumably unintended effects as well. If schools get more federal money as their graduation rate increases, they will simply stop taking students who are more likely to drop out. That of course means they will stop taking disadvantaged students who need help the most.

The Planners are bastardizing the language again (http://theumlaut.com/2013/05/23/what-has-market-based-become/):


Here’s the plan. The government will rate colleges based on fees (the lower the better) and graduation rates (the higher the better) and student success in finding a job. Then student loan funds will be allocated to schools according to the rating. Students will also be guided to the best-rated schools via government web sites. And schools will get more funding if they set up demonstration projects to reduce costs. This will all encourage more “competition” among schools. Yes, you heard that right: more government control of colleges will increase market “competition.”

I can't wait until this whole filthy fascist system implodes.

Occam's Banana
09-05-2013, 07:15 PM
Here’s the plan. The government will rate colleges based on fees (the lower the better) and graduation rates (the higher the better) and student success in finding a job. Then student loan funds will be allocated to schools according to the rating. Students will also be guided to the best-rated schools via government web sites. And schools will get more funding if they set up demonstration projects to reduce costs. This will all encourage more “competition” among schools. Yes, you heard that right: more government control of colleges will increase market “competition.”


I can't wait until this whole filthy fascist system implodes.

So, let's see here ... they're going to incentivize cranking out as many "graduates" as possible - as "cheaply" as possible.
Sounds like it might be a good time to get into the diploma mill business.
Can you say "race to the bottom," boys and girls? There! I knew you could ...

Scrapmo
09-05-2013, 07:32 PM
So, let's see here ... they're going to incentivize cranking out as many "graduates" as possible - as "cheaply" as possible.
Sounds like it might be a good time to get into the diploma mill business.
Can you say "race to the bottom," boys and girls? There! I knew you could ...

They managed to cheapen an already watered down university system. Many colleges cirriculum are already woefully pathetic. I can count on one hand the number of classes I acctually had to study for my B.S. of biology and I am no savant. It wasnt until my M.S. classes that I had to put forth some effort. Generally speaking, thinking is no longer a requirement for undergraduate degrees

P.S. I can also count the number of job offers I recieved with those degrees on one finger.

69360
09-05-2013, 07:36 PM
Get rid of federal student loans. Because they are so easily available, college tuition costs skyrocket.

Low income kids used to be able to work their way through a good college, not anymore they get signed up for 100k in federal debt.

Brian4Liberty
09-06-2013, 10:12 AM
Get rid of federal student loans. Because they are so easily available, college tuition costs skyrocket.

Low income kids used to be able to work their way through a good college, not anymore they get signed up for 100k in federal debt.

Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts.

squarepusher
09-06-2013, 10:17 AM
Internet education has the possibility to make things very cheap, and still good quality for people who want to learn.

Philhelm
09-06-2013, 12:36 PM
Can you say "race to the bottom," boys and girls? There! I knew you could ...

Sure. We just can't spell it or write it in cursive.