“As colleges obsess over rankings, students shrug”

Taken from: http://news.yahoo.com/colleges-obsess-over-rankings-students-shrug-171654887.html

February 5, 2012

When US News & World Report debuted its list of “America’s Best Colleges” nearly 30 years ago, the magazine hoped its college rankings would be a game-changer for students and families. But arguably, they’ve had a much bigger effect on colleges themselves.

Yes, students and families still buy the guide and its less famous competitors by the hundreds of thousands, and still care about a college’s reputation. But it isn’t students who obsess over every incremental shift on the rankings scoreboard, and who regularly embarrass themselves in the process. It’s colleges.

It’s colleges that have spent billions on financial aid for high-scoring students who don’t actually need the money, motivated at least partly by the quest for rankings glory.

It was a college, Baylor University, that paid students it had already accepted to retake the SAT exam in a transparent ploy to boost the average scores it could report. It’s colleges that have awarded bonuses to presidents who lift their school a few slots. And it’s colleges that occasionally get caught in the kind of cheating you might expect in sports or on Wall Street, but which seems especially ignominious coming from professional educators.

The latest example came last week at Claremont McKenna, a highly regarded California liberal arts college where a senior administrator resigned after acknowledging he falsified college entrance exam scores for years to rankings publications such as US News. The scale was small: submitting scores just 10 or 20 points higher on the 1,600-point SAT math and reading exams. Average test scores account for just 7.5 percent of the US News rankings formula. Still, the magazine acknowledged the effect could have been to move the college up a slot or two in its rankings of top liberal arts colleges. And so it was hard not to notice Claremont McKenna stood at No. 9 in this year’s rankings, which to people who care about such things sounds much sweeter than No. 11.

“For Claremont, there is I would think a psychologically large difference between being ninth and 11th,” said Bob Schaeffer of the group FairTest and a rankings critic. “We’re a top 10 school,’ (or) ‘we’re 11th or 12th’ — that’s a big psychological difference. It’s a bragging rights difference.”

If it was an effort to gain an edge, it backfired badly. Another popular list, Kiplinger’s “Best College Values,” said Friday it was removing Claremont McKenna from its 2011-12 rankings entirely because of the false reporting. The college had been No. 18 on its list of best-value liberal arts colleges.

Competitiveness may be naturally human, but to many who work with students, such behavior among fellow educators is mystifying. Contrary to widespread perceptions, they say, students typically use the rankings as a source of data and pay little attention to a school’s number. ”When I started in this business, I thought, ‘The rankings are terrible,’” said Brad MacGowan, a 21-year-veteran college counselor at Newton North High School outside Boston. “But spending all this time with students, I just don’t hear that much about them. I’m sure it’s colleges that are perpetuating it.”

It’s hard to know how common cheating like that reported at Claremont McKenna is, given that while US News cross-checks some data with other sources, it relies largely on colleges themselves to provide it. Modest forms of fudging through data selection are undeniably common, especially in law school rankings. The most high-profile case of outright cheating involved Iona University in New York, which acknowledged last fall submitting years of false data that boosted its ranking from around 50th in its category to 30th.

But most rankings critics say by far the most pernicious failure of colleges isn’t blatant cheating, but what they do more openly — allowing the rankings formula to drive their goals and policies.

Colleges, they argue, have caved to the rankings pressure in a range of ways. A big one is recruiting as many students as they can to apply, even if they’re not likely to be a good fit, just to boost their selectivity numbers. And they’ve showered shower financial aid on high-achieving, and often wealthy, kids with high SAT scores.

In the mid-1990s, roughly one-third of grant aid, or scholarships colleges of all types awarded with their own money, was given on grounds other than need (typically called “merit aid’). A decade later, they gave away three times as much money — but well over half was based on merit.

Yes, some colleges recruited better students, but there was a price to be paid. Consider a 2008 study by The Institute for College Access and Success that examined the $11.2 billion annually four-year colleges were awarding in grant aid. Of that, $3.35 billion was awarded as merit aid. That would have easily covered the $2.4 billion in unmet need-based aid that the colleges said their low-income students still faced.

Rankings critic Lloyd Thacker, founder of the group Education Conservancy, calls that a shift in financial aid from “charitable acts to competitive weapons.” Or, as Schaeffer describes it, “they end up giving the money to rich white kids.”

The vast majority of students attend college within three hours of home, so national rankings have little meaning. What matters? Usually more mundane or subjective concerns. One student who went to MacGowan’s office last week for a college planning meeting, junior Bridget Gillis, said she’d yet to even see a college ranking guide. Her criteria: “If they have my major, if it’s a nice campus, how big it is, if they have the sport I want to play in college (field hockey).”

The latest version of a huge national survey of college freshman conducted annually by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute asked students to list various factors affecting their choice of college. Rankings in national magazines were No. 11 for current college freshmen, with roughly one in six calling them very important, well behind factors such as cost, size and location.

Those findings may be somewhat misleading. The leading factor cited, by almost two-thirds of students, was their college’s “academic reputation,” which can be hard to disentangle from its ranking. A reputational survey ranking accounts for 25 percent of a college’s score in US News, and fame from a high US News rankings contributes to reputation, even if students say the ranking itself wasn’t a factor. Such circularity is one of many things critics dislike about the US News methodology.

But the survey data do suggest students generally heed the magazine’s advice not to use the rankings to make fine-grained distinctions between schools. ”As someone who is asked every year to comment on the rankings, it seems to me that who cares most is the media,” John Pryor, who directs the UCLA survey, wrote in a blog post last year. “Second would be college presidents and development officers. Way down the list seem to be those who are actually trying to decide where to go to college.”

Thacker says the rankings do have negative psychological effects on students, though usually only the top 10 to 15 percent who are applying to competitive colleges. But it has affected a much broader swath of colleges that have been unable to suppress their competitive urges for the educational common good. ”It has more an impact on colleges, presidents and trustees than it does on students,” Thacker said. “The colleges have shifted resources and changed practices and policies that were once governed by educational values to serve prestige and rank and status.”

That effect, he says, is dishonorable, even if some colleges at least feel guilty about it. More than 80 percent of college admissions officers surveyed for a report last fall by the National Association for College Admission Counseling felt the US News rankings offered students misleading conclusions, and roughly the same proportion agreed they caused counter-productive behavior by colleges. Yet more than 70 percent said their schools promoted their ranking in marketing materials.

The fact that the highly regarded dean apparently involved in the scandal at Claremont McKenna may have been driven to submit inflated test scores is an indicator of the scale of pressure that surrounds the rankings, said David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at NACAC, the counseling group. That pressure comes from all corners of the university — trustees, alumni, presidents, even politicians. ”It’s clear from the (Claremont McKenna) story that admission offices are under pressure,” he said. “The key question is, how do you stop the madness?”

Bob Morse, who oversees the US News rankings as director of data research, says many of the behaviors the rankings have incentivized in colleges are benign. He points to universities like Northeastern and Southern California that have moved up in recent years through concerted efforts to improve their stats in variables that go into the formula — but which also are good for students. Things like more small classes, programs to boost retention, higher faculty-to-student ratios. And why, Morse asks, should colleges be criticized for casting a wider recruiting net?

But even Morse, who says colleges paid the rankings little attention when they debuted in 1983, says he’s been shocked by how seriously they now take their standing, and the lengths they go to move up. ”None of those things when we first started we had in mind would even happen or even could happen,” he said. “It’s evolved in ways that have taken on a life of their own. To us, it’s proof people are paying attention.”

“How the Future Looks From High School”

Taken from: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/22/how-the-future-looks-from-high-school/?ref=education

November 24, 2011

This is a stressful stretch for high school seniors, who, to judge by the stories at the top of most-e-mailed lists, are taking the SATs, racing to file early-decision and financial-aid applications and sweating to earn the last AP grades that matter. But others feel different pressures, having tough conversations with their parents about working after graduation to afford community college, or joining the military.

How does the future look to a high school senior?

We checked in with 15 of them, at four American high schools. These public schools are not intended to be statistically representative, but they are also not random: they are the high schools from which the editors of Room for Debate graduated. We hope readers, from high school seniors to senior citizens, will respond in comments: What are the pressures on students at your high school? What are 18-year-olds in your hometown expecting from their careers?

Read more here.

“Regents Plan Push for Aid to Illegal Immigrants”

Taken from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/nyregion/new-york-regents-plan-a-push-for-the-dream-act.html?_r=1&hpw

October 14, 2011

When they vote on their legislative agenda on Tuesday, New York State’s top education officials will focus for the first time on the contentious topic of illegal immigration.

The agenda, proposed by the state education commissioner, John B. King Jr., to the Board of Regents, has as a top priority a proposal to push Congress to pass legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who go to college. Included in that legislation, known as the Dream Act, is a provision that would give students who are in the country illegally access to tuition assistance at city and state universities. The agenda is expected to be approved.

The lobbying effort would thrust the State Education Department into the heart of a highly politicized debate that has divided communities for years and spawned a hodgepodge of state regulations in response to the federal government’s inaction on reforming the country’s immigration laws. New York already allows illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at state universities. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas signed a similar measure into law in 2001; controversy surrounding it has threatened to derail his effort to gain the Republican presidential nomination.

In an interview, Dr. King said that the Regents’ strategy on the Dream Act would address one of the most significant roadblocks faced by an estimated 345,000 illegal immigrants who attend public schools in New York. By providing help with tuition and with residency documents, the federal law would allow those who graduate from college to strive for more than the menial jobs they must often accept because of their status. “It’s about making sure that students are able to fulfill their aspirations after they graduate from high school, which is something that’s currently not available to those who happen to be undocumented,” Dr. King said. In addition, he said, “it aligns perfectly with our college-and-career readiness goals.” Dr. King said that lobbying Congress would be the “first step” in a campaign that could progress to asking the State Legislature to do what California did just a few days ago: offer state-financed scholarships and aid to illegal immigrants attending state universities.

For now, the plan is to write to and visit the members of Congress from New York, as well as legislators from other states who could play decisive roles in the Dream Act’s passage. The bill, first introduced in 2000, has yet to gain enough support for passage. It would create a path to citizenship for certain young illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children, completed two years of college or military service and met other requirements, like passing a criminal background check.

For the past several months, Dr. King and the Board of Regents’ chancellor, Merryl H. Tisch, have taken an interest in addressing the needs of the state’s immigrant students, most of whom go to school in New York City. “These people are going to be citizens of this country some day, and we need to prepare them for a life of independence,” Dr. Tisch said.

On Wednesday, Dr. King announced an agreement to improve the services offered in city schools to students who are still learning English, like more access to certified teachers and to the language lessons to which they are legally entitled.

Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, an advocacy group, said the Regents’ agenda was a natural evolution of a process begun years ago to refine the state’s policies regarding students who are not proficient in English. “It really brings the focus back to what the issue is about,” she said. “It’s about education, and it’s about our children.”

Some critics of immigration reform criticized the Regents’ plan as going too far. “This amounts to a much broader amnesty than the New York State Board of Regents wants to portray it,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation of American Immigration Reform, which has called for reducing the levels of illegal immigration.

But Daniela Alulema, a board member of the New York State Youth Leadership Council, a supporter of access to higher education for illegal immigrants, said she hoped the Regents would eventually throw their support behind a version of the Dream Act introduced in the State Legislature in March. Among other things, the bill would give illegal immigrants access to tuition assistance and driver’s licenses, a provision that crumbled under intense criticism in 2007, after it was proposed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Ms. Alulema has pinned her hopes on state action. “The truth is, it’s very hard for something to happen in Congress because of the climate there now,” she said.

“None of the Above”

Taken from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/your-money/for-children-of-same-sex-couples-a-student-aid-maze.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

October 14, 2011

It took five attempts for one prospective college student and her mother to fill out the 106-question federal form that would determine whether she would be eligible for financial aid. And that was not just because the form was frustratingly complicated. What tripped them up was the fact that the student had two legal mothers — and the form had room for only one. Further confusing matters, her mothers had since split and married other women; they have six children among them. “It was so stressful and so frustrating to try to fit our family into those forms when so clearly it wasn’t going to fit,” said the student, who is now a senior at a university in Illinois and wanted to remain anonymous to keep her family’s financial affairs private. “You feel like you are lying no matter what you do.”

The aid form, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is the single most important document in determining how much and what type of financial aid students receive. But the form, informally called Fafsa, has not kept up with the changing composition of families, in large part because the federal agency that issues it has to abide by the Defense of Marriage Act, which recognizes only heterosexual marriage. Because these students cannot fully portray their family’s finances, the amount of aid they receive may not fairly reflect their needs. “In some cases, they are robbed of aid they would have otherwise received, and in other instances they benefit from it,” said Crosby Burns, special assistant for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress, a research organization that recently published a report about these issues in the financial aid process.

This is not solely an issue for children of same-sex parents. Any children with unusual family circumstances — whether their parent is in jail, involved in a messy divorce or simply refuses to provide support — can have trouble filling out the form. No numbers are available on the number of students from gay and lesbian families who are affected, though Gary Gates, a demographer with the Williams Institute, which studies sexual orientation law and policy issues, has calculated that about 220,000 children under age 18 are being raised by same-sex parents.

Though it is not immediately clear from the actual form, officials from the Department of Education, which issues it, said that applicants with two married mothers or fathers must fill out the Fafsa as if the couple were divorced. They must choose the legal parent who provides more support, which means that the other parent’s income and assets are often ignored. That can give the impression that the student requires more aid — or less — than one from an identical family headed by heterosexual parents.

Applicants with same-sex partners, meanwhile, may not be able to include their spouses or other dependents on the form. Other gay students, who are now out on their own because their families have cut off support on learning about their sexual orientation, have difficulty establishing themselves as financially independent. (In some instances, however, colleges could choose to include more information provided by the student and include it in their calculations.) “Since most other financial aid depends on the application for federal aid, these distortions will trickle down throughout the entire financial aid application process, even outside the federal government’s support,” Mr. Burns said.

The section of the financial aid form that asks for parental information has two lines: one for the applicant’s father/stepfather and another for mother/stepmother. The form also asks for the parents’ marital status, as well as the applicant’s marital status, using the federal definition. “There is the stigma and indignity of having to list them as divorced, when they are, in fact, not,” said Emily Hecht-McGowan, director of public policy at the Family Equality Council, “It creates confusion and this extra step that children raised by L.G.B.T. parents have to go through,” she added referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals.

An undergraduate at Harvard, meanwhile, said his challenge was trying to figure out how to get financial aid while excluding his parents. He said that when he was home during winter break in his sophomore year, he told his parents he could not change his sexual orientation. His parents promptly decided to cut off their financial contribution to his studies, he said, and asked him to leave the family home. (The student wanted to remain anonymous to protect his parents’ identities.) He scraped together the last of his savings to get a plane ticket back to Harvard, and his resident dean helped him find a place to stay for the remainder of the break.

But figuring out how to pay tuition was a bigger hurdle. Students under the age of 24 generally must have their parents fill out the Fafsa, unless they can persuade their institution to grant them independent status, which colleges have the power to do. But the Harvard student said that he was told that the university typically required students to take two years off to be deemed independent. “When I first heard this, I was mildly panicking,” he said. “I had no idea what I could do for two years or where I could do it.”

Ultimately, the university agreed to grant him independent status, as long as he took out about $10,000 in total loans, kept a part-time job, and visited a counselor (which made him uncomfortable, since his only experience with therapists was with those who tried to convince him that he could change his sexuality). He was also required to get a letter from his parents explaining why they cut off financial support — something he knew he could not possibly do.

Eventually, Harvard relented and told him it would not require him to get the letter and allowed him to continue his studies. But college officials did urge him to take a short break to clear his head. “It was a pretty intense series of steps to get into this independent status,” he said. He is taking the current semester off, and will start his senior year in January. “I know if I had been at any other university, I would have had to drop out,” he said, since he had a support system that included his dean. Even so, “It was a pretty excruciating experience.”

Vincent Garcia, director of the scholar relations and selections program at the Point Foundation, which provides scholarships to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students, said he gets calls a couple of times a month from gay and lesbian campus directors, financial aid directors or students who were in similar situations. “The federal government has given the colleges the ability to declare the student independent, but they don’t want to tell them that from the outset because they don’t want to commit the financial aid dollars to someone who suddenly has so much financial need.”

Part of the problem, he said, is that many colleges do not have a protocol for dealing with these students, whether they are abandoned by their families or are from families like the Illinois student with two mothers. In his report, Mr. Burns suggested that the Department of Education investigate whether it could revise its policies to recognize families headed by same-sex couples without violating the Defense of Marriage Act. At the very least, he said, the department could issue guidelines and training materials to financial aid administrators to help the families.

Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of the FinAid and Fastweb Web sites, agreed that “the Fafsa does not provide a lot of guidance for students in such situations.” And if they qualify for less aid, this may make it more difficult for such students to enroll in and graduate from college. He added, “This is especially problematic for children of same-sex parents, since they are discriminated against through no fault of their own.”

“California Governor Signs Dream Act”

Taken from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203476804576619292756560716.html

October 8, 2011

California Governor Jerry Brown on Saturday finished signing the California Dream Act, under which California students who are undocumented immigrants will qualify for state-funded financial aid for college.

The controversial bill is the highest-profile act to expand undocumented students’ access to higher education after a federal Dream Act, which would have given undocumented students a path to short-term permanent residency status, failed last year to attract enough support in Congress.

“The Dream Act benefits us all by giving top students a chance to improve their lives and the lives of all of us,” Mr. Brown said.

Under current law, undocumented students pay resident tuition rates if they have graduated from a California high school and affirmed that they are in the process of applying to legalize their immigration status. Starting January 1, 2013, those students will be eligible to apply for state-funded Cal Grants and other public aid.

The legislation builds on a previous bill signed into law in July, which makes financial aid from private sources available to the same pool of students. The two laws are collectively known as the California Dream Act.

The California Department of Finance estimates that 2,500 students will qualify for Cal Grants as a result of the bill, at a cost of $14.5 million. The overall Cal Grant program is funded at $1.4 billion, meaning that 1% of all Cal Grant funds will be potentially impacted.

The bill’s passage comes as several states have revisited their immigration laws in the wake of last year’s defeat of the federal Dream Act. In Alabama, a controversial new law lets officials check the immigration status of students in public schools, which the federal government is seeking to block.

Meanwhile, Illinois in August passed its own Dream Act, which gives undocumented students access to privately funded grants. But California’s bill is especially significant because it is the nation’s largest state and home to far more undocumented residents than any other. It is also the first bill that uses public funds to help undocumented students.

“As a result of the failure of Congress to pass the Dream Act, we now have both pro-immigrant youth legislation and anti-immigrant youth legislation” that states are pursuing on their own, said Kent Wong, an immigration expert at the University of California, Los Angeles.