TCCTA Blog

July 1 is Deadline for TCCTA Event

There is still time to register for the Leading from the Middle Conference, which will be held July 17-19, at the Omni Southpark Hotel in Austin.

The event is designed for mid-level administrators at Texas two-year colleges. It is a kind of "boot camp" for deans, division chairs, IT directors, student services directors, or others who may aspire to such positions, as an impressive list of presenters provide key information and insights to help participants succeed professionally.

The conference addresses legal issues, educational technology, legislative and budget orientation, leadership skills, ethics, and other areas that directly affect performance.

Here's a link with more information.

The Dog Ate My Apple

For the past three years Abilene Christian University has conducted an interesting experiment with possible implications for all institutions. As reported here earlier, ACU supplies its students with Apple's iPads. Naturally the tablets have become quite popular on campus, not only as conduits for Facebook, but also as e-readers.

Recently the school surveyed its incoming freshman population, asking them whether they would purchase their own such device if half the textbooks were available in digital form. Seventy-five percent said yes. (Since it's a private school, it's likely they got a different response at ACU than we would at a community college, but still…).

Another finding indicates that students won't use such tools if they are unable to write comments, highlight text, and perform complex tasks that cheaper varieties of e-readers can't do. For instance, students don't want to manipulate a PDF file—too slow and cumbersome for their tastes. This makes sense, but the market is currently proliferating with more sophisticated devices, and they are getting cheaper, too. The outlook seems pretty good that a "new normal" is coming.

"Smart" phones can also serve as readers, of course, and it's impressive how many community college students have these already.

In 2010, digital books accounted for only three percent of textbook sales, according the National Association of College Stores, as reported in the online publication Higher Ed. Morning. (This article is also the source for the survey information above.) So there is plenty of room for growth, which attracts the attention of potential vendors—not to mention investors. See this additional data from the piece:

Twenty percent of college students will possess iPads and other tablets by 2012, and digital book sale growth will double to $1.5 billion by 2015, accounting for twenty-five percent of market share.

Faculty members often comment that students who are given digital reading assignments sometimes come back saying the equipment "wouldn't work." To avoid this, a backup plan (such as a hard copy on reserve at the library) may be appropriate, according to some instructors. Teachers have always contended with "dog ate my homework" scenarios, so it would be shocking if such tales didn't persist, regardless of the format.

 

Reverse Transfers: A Follow-Up

It turns out the 2011 Regular Session addressed reverse transfers after all. (For background please see this previous post. Many thanks to Ray Martinez, chief of staff and general counsel of the Senate Committee on Higher Education, for the heads up.)

The issue is about helping community college students receive associate degrees, even when some courses are completed later at a university. As all educators know, many students transfer prior to graduation.

In the final days of the Session, SB 945, a bill co-authored by Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo) that intended a number of significant changes to current policy, failed to achieve final passage. However, crucial language was inserted subsequently into another bill, HB 3025, which did pass and was signed into law. Sen. Zaffirini also sponsored this bill in the Senate.

HB 3025 takes effect immediately.

Henceforth, if a student has earned at least 30 semester hours at a community college, transfers to a university, and then earns the credits to qualify for an associate degree, the university is required to notify the community college, after permission is granted to release the transcript. The student must have earned at least 90 semester hours at the university (including the hours from the community college).

If all credits match up, the community college may then grant the degree. The exact language is included below.

This new law should produce an increase in associate degrees from community colleges. And, most importantly, more students will possess a two-year degree in case they don't complete their baccalaureate program.

Here's the language from HB 3025:

Sec. 61.833.  CREDIT TRANSFER FOR ASSOCIATE DEGREE.  (a)  In this section, "lower-division institution of higher education" means a public junior college, public state college, or public technical institute.
(b)  This section applies to a student enrolled in a general academic teaching institution who:
(1)  transferred to the institution from or previously attended a lower-division institution of higher education;
(2)  earned at least 30 credit hours for course work successfully completed at the lower-division institution of higher education; and
(3)  has earned a cumulative total of at least 90 credit hours for course work successfully completed.
(c)  As soon as practicable after a student who is enrolled in a general academic teaching institution has met the criteria established by Subsection (b)(3), the institution by e-mail or other reasonable method shall request authorization from the student for the institution to release the student's transcript to the lower-division institution of higher education that the student previously attended for the purpose of determining whether the student has earned the credits required for an associate degree awarded by the lower-division institution of higher education.  On receipt of a student's authorization under this subsection, the general academic teaching institution shall release the student's transcript to the lower-division institution of higher education.
(d)  After receiving a student transcript from a general academic teaching institution under Subsection (c), a lower-division institution of higher education shall review the transcript and, if the lower-division institution of higher education determines the student has earned the credits required to receive an associate degree awarded by the lower-division institution of higher education, may award the student the degree.

Budget Cuts: Midland College

We continue to witness local effects of grim budgetary projections for next year, as community college trustees formulate their plans. Previous posts have profiled schools from various regions of the state. It's all happening because of a no-growth state appropriations formula for two-year schools for the next biennium.

When enrollments go up statewide, and state money is not there to pay for the instruction of these students, local schools must find the money somewhere (and new taxes are usually impossible these days, according to most reports), or engage in selective or across-the-board reductions. Most schools appear to be raising tuition, too. At least one district (the Alamo Colleges in San Antonio) is considering unprecedented enrollment caps.

Midland College, in addition to the usual cost-cutting (non-replacement of retirees, larger classes, fewer sections, no raises, etc.), is set to eliminate two vocational programs, in veterinary technology and aviation. It's covered in an article in the Midland Reporter-Telegram, by Audrie Palmer.

A key passage:

"It's real unfortunate," said MC President Steve Thomas who made the recommendation to the board. "We were forced to make major cuts. ... We didn't have any choice."

The board will vote on the final budget in August, but officials said they've had to make cuts to include the anticipated 7.5 percent decrease in funding by the state. Those cuts include no salary increases for any employees and a reduced number of employees who will have benefits with the college.

Other major adjustments the college has made is eliminating positions and reorganizing and replacing positions with those receiving a lower salary, said Rick Bender, vice president of Administrative Services.

For some long-term employees who have retired or will retire, he said the school will either not replace them or hire someone who will be paid less.

Officials anticipate a $1,189,068 increase in education and general expenses this year, up from a little more than $36.4 million to about $37.6 projected for the 2011-12 school year and a 3.3 percent increase in budgetary needs, documents showed.

The preliminary budget shows a decrease of $573,897 from state funds, down from roughly $9.1 million to $8.5 this upcoming year. The recently approved tuition and fees increase along with an increase of about a half million in property taxes is expected to generate an additional $1,346,673 this year in revenue for the college.

Skip College for Success!

As with Bieber Fever, one is tempted to ignore media fashions as they make their way through popular culture. This, too, shall pass, the proverb goes. (No offense, Justin. You seem like a nice kid.)

Some trends stick around. Some shouldn't.

You may have noticed recently that a few commentators—and at least one impressive benefactor—are trying to persuade some young Americans to skip higher education. The discussion has crept into mainstream outlets.

Here's a link to the Thiel Foundation, and here is an outfit called the UnCollege Movement. A quick perusal of these sites, with some clicking around, will tell you all you need to know. The sponsors don't claim their advice is for everyone (the Thiel Foundation supports 20 bright young people), but it's hard to escape an unfortunate inference that winners avoid college.

The obvious response is…well, obvious. Here's the site of GenerationTX, from the Coordinating Board, for instance.

Simply put, aggregate personal income rises with educational level, notwithstanding celebrity drop-outs Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. As Louis Menand observed recently in The New Yorker, it should be readily apparent that you and I are not Bill Gates nor Mark Zuckerberg. For starters, they were privileged Harvard men when they chose to leave school. They had a net under them.

There are genuine "rags to riches" stories, but the basic math is clear: It would be a huge mistake for almost anyone to skip or drop out of college, especially if the individual is from a poor background. The odds are overwhelmingly against such a decision ending well—less likely, probably, than Mr. Bieber returning your calls.

A private college education today (assuming four years at a highly selective institution) can cost up to $200,000. Here in Texas, the governor has proposed a $10,000 degree—a prospect that relies heavily upon an assumption of low-cost community colleges and plentiful online instruction. This claim may be shaky, but you can find what you are looking for regarding incentives and probabilistic scenarios. It's fertile ground for misinformation.

Let's hope that poor families, who may at this moment be weighing whether or not to send their offspring to college, think deeply before pulling the trigger on such an important decision.

There is probably no harm in Bieber Fever, but this is different. Notions such as the UnCollege can't be helpful.

Here's a related article in the San Antonio Express-News by Melissa Ludwig, regarding Hispanics and higher education in Texas.

"Reverse Transfers" Can Improve Statistics

Community college leaders have complained for years that a student who transfers to a university without finishing an associates degree, but goes on to complete all the basic courses required for the degree, doesn't count as a success under currently sanctioned national metrics.

The controversy stems from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which registers only "first-time, full-time students who finish a degree at the institution at which they began in one and a half times the duration it would normally take to complete the degree (i.e., three years for a two-year associate degree, and six years for a four-year bachelor's)."

This complicated issue is captured concisely in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) by Donna Ekal, associate provost for undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at El Paso, and Paula M. Krebs, ACE Fellow at the University of Massachusetts president's office, and a professor of English at Wheaton College. Their schools have pioneered, with the help of grants, a methodology and data system to link up with the principal community college in their vicinity. In El Paso it's El Paso Community College, for instance. It's all about finding a way to track these students so they can be counted, and rewarded, properly.

The concept is known as "reverse transfer."

With such a move toward improved quantification, a better case can be made to policy makers that reported low success rates for two-year college students don't tell the whole story.

From the Chronicle piece:

So a student who transfers from a community college to a four-year institution and completes a bachelor's degree counts as a failure, in graduation-rate terms, for both the community college and the four-year institution. Until the government changes its data gathering to account in a positive way for such transfer students, thousands of students who complete their college degrees will continue unrecorded in government reporting. Furthermore, many such students will overlook the full value of the community-college experience that started them on their degree paths.

Help is coming from an unexpected quarter, however: the four-year institutions to which such students transfer. Our institutions, the University of Texas at El Paso and the University of Massachusetts at Boston, along with others across the country, have established systems to ensure that transfer students with significant credits from two-year colleges are awarded associate degrees once they have completed the necessary coursework at their new institutions.

The University of Texas at El Paso, in a pioneering arrangement with El Paso Community College, has developed a fully automated reverse-transfer system that allows transfer students to earn their final credits at the university, then have those credits sent back to the community college. A Title V Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program grant from the Department of Education enabled the two institutions to create the EPCC-UTEP Transfer Program, a seamless electronic environment of shared student services. The new data-sharing agreements, along with the student-information system's degree-audit program, allows the university to track down students who have completed a minimum of 25 percent of their degree at community college, as required by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Those students can fulfill the balance of the associate-degree requirements at the university, then receive their degrees from El Paso Community College, complete with a festive graduation celebration. Up go the graduation rates at the community college, up goes the self-esteem of the newly credentialed student, and up goes the retention rate at the university: It's the ultimate win-win situation.

Advance in Text Purchases Offered

Online textbook companies are nothing new, as college educators know. Students can save a great deal of money by comparison shopping on the Internet. A new site take it a step further, however, using a search engine that allows students to input their school and courses instead of the author and title of each required book. Importantly, the site also assembles quick comparisons from all available vendors.

A quick examination reveals that not all Texas community colleges are listed yet, but many are.

Here's a passage from an interview with Jonathan Simkin, Co-founder of SwoopThat.com, in EducationNews, an online publication. The interview was conducted by Michael F. Shaughnessy of Eastern New Mexico University.

SwoopThat is unique because it’s based around the concept of course search technology. Students come to SwoopThat.com, enter their school, and select the 4-6 courses they are enrolled in. Once they click “Find Books,” our system creates their complete book list and finds the best prices for each book simultaneously. The student can view book prices online from all the major textbook merchants, and can see important information such as seller ratings, shipping times, and comments on the book’s condition. SwoopThat then automates the process of buying those books through shopping cart integration with the major booksellers. Suppose a student decides they want to buy 5 of their books at Amazon – we take them to Amazon with their books in the Amazon shopping cart ready for purchase. The entire process takes about 10 minutes!

 

Governor Vetoes Exemption for Drops

Governor Rick Perry has vetoed a bill that would have partially exempted community colleges from the so-called Six Drop Rule—a statutory limit on the total number of courses a student may drop.

The bill, HB 992, was supported by the Texas Association of Community Colleges. School officials have argued that the restriction is unfair to two-year college students, who often have economic and family situations that necessitate more class withdrawals than university students.

In the governor's official veto message, he stated that the bill "would encourage students to waste time and money, along with taxpayer dollars, and would prevent students and community colleges from being held accountable for responsible academic planning and advising." The message was issued on Friday, June 17.

The bill was authored by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) and sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo). Here's a link to the bill's history and text.

From an article in the Dallas Morning News by Erin Mulvaney (subscription):

The governor has been bullish about efficiency in higher education. On Friday, he vetoed a bill that would have given community college students leniency with Texas’ semester credit hour cap and the number of classes they can drop. Perry said in a veto statement that the bill would “encourage students to waste time and money, along with taxpayer dollars.”

Community college students are overly penalized by Texas’ rules against dropping more than six courses because many drop a higher number of courses “due to work and family obligations,” said the bill’s author, Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio.

Intervention Helps Minority Students

A brief "intervention" with minority students early in the semester has shown great promise in improving their rates of success, based on an experiment conducted by a pair of Stanford researchers. The study was published in the highly-regarded magazine, Science.

Psychologists Greg Walton and Geoff Cohen report how a structured meeting lasting only one hour boosted the grades of minority students over three years and cut the racial achievement gap in half. The study focused on African-American students.

The results seem consistent with research on student "engagement." Those who feel connected to the academic and social environment at their school are more likely to stick around. The interesting part is that student success, based on such reports, may not be related to academic rigor, pedagogy, or the curriculum.

Here's a key passage from an article by Daisy Grewal, in Miller-McCune magazine, an online publication (the article also includes a link to the Science study):

The intervention itself was simple. A group of black and white college freshmen at a U.S. campus were brought together for a discussion about college life. These freshmen read essays written by both black and white senior students at the school. In the essays, the seniors wrote about the types of problems they faced when they first got to campus, such as getting snubbed by a professor or feeling lonely. Importantly, their essays emphasized how these problems tended to get better over time. After reading these essays, the freshmen wrote their own essays about how difficulties adjusting to college are normal and temporary. The entire exercise took only one hour.

For the next three years Walton and Cohen tracked the performance of this group of students, along with another group who had not received the intervention. The intervention had no effect on white students. However, the black students who participated ended up earning much higher grades compared to their peers of the same race. About 22 percent of them made it into the top quarter of their graduating class, compared to only 5 percent of the black students who had not participated. Overall, the intervention reduced the gap between white and black students by a staggering 52 percent.

 

Young Students Given More Time to Sleep Will Sleep More

Anyone who has shared a home with a teenager knows about their sleep habits. Perhaps inevitably, some advocates argue that college class schedules should be shifted to later in the day.

The Education Curmudgeon (with a footnote to Frank Deford's Sports Curmudgeon on NPR) can't resist.

Scene from the pre-dawn D-Day invasion, June 6, 1944: "Jeez, Sarge, what time is it?! What? Dude, I have SLEEP ISSUES! Just sayin'!"

From job interview: "What time does your company start? EIGHT? EIGHT? REALLY?"

At least one study indicates that accommodating student sleep habits would be a bad idea. Part of the problem involves the risk of increased alcohol use and, once students realize they get to sleep later the next morning, staying up later the night before. We can pretend that (young) community college students are different. Otherwise…

From United Press International:

Some sleep advocates call for later class schedules for college students, but U.S. researchers say some students would just drink and sleep more.

The study by lead author Pamela Thacher at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., and co-author Serge Onyper found not only did later class start times predict more drinking and sleeping, but also modestly lower grades, overall.

"Later class start times seemed to change the choices students make: They sleep longer, and they drink more," Thacher says in a statement.

Thacher and Onyper say their study involved 253 college students who completed cognitive tasks and a one-week retrospective sleep diary, as well as questionnaires about sleep, class schedules, substance use and mood.

"The effects of later class start times might include more sleep," Thacher says. "But this might be offset by lower quality sleep, which in turn might affect their ability to engage, intellectually, with their coursework."