Our Reality--Many Students, Less Money

Inside HigherEd reports on a new survey of 128 community college district chancellors and campus presidents, conducted by the League for Innovation in the Community College and the Campus Computing Project.  It found that two-year institutions are caught in a vise of growing student demands for enrollment and continuing financial strain due to diminished state funds.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/30/survey

Report About New Students And Success Just Released

Survey of Entering Student Engagement, or SENSE, provides six benchmarks for community colleges that are trying to improve students' habits during the critical first three weeks of class.
http://www.ccsse.org/sense/resources/publications/SENSE_Benchmarking_and_Benchmarks_3-29-10.pdf

The Scoop About Online Writing Classes

A recent article in Inside HighEd tells about the work of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, who are developing "best practices" guidelines for online writing classes.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/19/writing

State Budget's Dramatic Cuts-- N.J. Stars Program Eliminated For New Students Next Year

Here, from the 2011 Budget In Brief, is the bad news for New Jersey community colleges and their students:

Community Colleges
Operating support for county colleges is reduced by $14.3 million. This level will support the amounts required to maintain New Jersey’s eligibility for federal stimulus funding for higher education. Community colleges will continue to receive funds from the Supplemental Workforce Fund for Basic Skills to offset the cost of remedial courses provided by the institutions.

Tuition Assistance
State assistance is provided to college students through a myriad of aid and scholarship programs. The
largest of these, the Tuition Aid Grant (TAG) program, is a need-based entitlement program that supports
tuition costs for needy New Jersey students who attend New Jersey colleges and universities. For fiscal 2011, anticipated growth in the program will not be funded. Similarly, the Proposed Budget does not fund anticipated growth in the Part-Time Tuition Aid Grant program. In addition, the TAG awards for first-time recipients at Independent Institutions will be reduced to the comparable State college award level.  A slight reduction of 8.7% is proposed for the Educational Opportunity Fund. An allocation of $37.6 million will
remain available to provide higher education opportunities to students who come from low-income families in
economically distressed areas of the state.

NJ STARS I and NJ STARS II are merit-based scholarships that are awarded to high achieving students who attend a New Jersey county college and then continue at a four-year New Jersey college or university. For fiscal 2011, no incoming freshman will be accepted into the NJ STARS I program. No current STARS
scholarships will be affected by the funding reduction.

To see the complete Budget In Brief:  http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/omb/publications/11bib/BIB.pdf

Discussing Dollars For Community Colleges

The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which has been on the legislative back burner while Congress has been debating health care reform, is finally getting some attention.  The most significant part of the bill for many in the two-year sector is the American Graduation Initiative (AGI), $12 billion in federal grant funding for which community colleges can compete.  To read about in Inside HigherEd:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/11/acct

To read about the legislation from the House Committee on Education and Labor (which was voted on and passed September 2009)
http://edlabor.house.gov/blog/2009/07/student-aid-and-fiscal-respons.shtml

To read about the still pending legislation from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
http://help.senate.gov/

Important New K-12 Education Standards Just Released

The Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association have just released new sets of educational standards which apply to 48 states, including New Jersey.  The Common Core State Standards Initiatives cover classrooms from kindergarten -- where children should know their numbers up to 100 -- to high school -- where students should be able to write and research texts and narratives, and be able to use the Internet to produce, publish and update their work.  To read more:


http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/groups_release_academic_standa.html
 
To see the Core College and Career Readiness Standards:
http://www.corestandards.org/Standards/index.htm

Community Colleges Expand Degree Offerings

Edison State College, a Florida community college in Fort Myers, is planning to create an independent university offering baccalaureate and graduate degrees, arguing that existing four-year institutions in the region are not helping enough of the two-year institution's low-income and minority graduates continue their educations.  To read about their efforts to expand their degree offerenings as well as similiar initiatives by other community colleges:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/09/edisonstate

School Reform Needs New Direction--Noted Educator Changes Position On K-12 Initiative

Noted educator Dr. Diane Ravitch, once a supporter of No Child Left Behind, has reversed her opinion of this federal program.  She now believes that the United States is headed in the wrong direction and should heed examples of the best schools from other countries.  In a March 3, 2010 article in the New York Times she said, "Nations like Finland and Japan seek out the best college graduates for teaching positions, prepare them well, pay them well and treat them with respect.  They make sure that all their students study the arts, history, literature, geography, civics, foreign languages, the sciences and other subjects.  They do this because this is the way to ensure good education.  We're on the wrong track."  To read the full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/education/03ravitch.html?scp=2&sq=diane%20ravitch&st=cse

Goveranance Forum Presentation--March 9, 2010

Thank you for reading the IPEC blog and hope you know about our Governance Forum presentation on Tuesday, March 9, 2010.  To continue IPEC's charge regarding environmental scanning, please consider the following questions and share your responses in the comments section below:

What information would be most useful to have accessible on the blog?

How should updates to the blog be communicated to the stakeholders, the college community?

Is the information organized in a user friendly format?

What suggestions do you have to improve the scanning process?

Jim Collins--An American Management Guru

Jim Collins: How to Thrive in 2009 (and Beyond)

As part of its 30th-anniversary issue, Inc. asked Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last, what we might expect in the next 30 years. His answer: uncertainty, chaos, turbulence, and risk. In other words, it's not a bad time to be an entrepreneur.
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090401/in-times-like-these-you-get-a-chance.html

Videos, audios, articles, & tools to aid in understanding and applying the ideas from Jim Collins' books and research to both business and life.
http://www.jimcollins.com/index.html

"Jim Collins on Creating Enduring Greatness", a recent article from Success Magazine:
http://www.successmagazine.com/jim-collins-on-creating-enduring-greatness/PARAMS/article/1003

Great leaders are obsessed to build something exceptional, Jim Collins says. The American management guru talks about paranoia, turbulent times and his admiration for Beethoven and Steve Jobs in this 2009 interview:
http://www.hossli.com/articles/2009/03/02/steve-jobs-is-an-industrial-beethoven/

Complete College America--An Initiative To Increase College Graduates

Signifying their intent to take the bold action necessary to increase college completion rates, 17 states (not including New Jersey) have joined with Complete College America to dramatically increase the number of young adults with a college degree or credential. The states have agreed to set degree goals, develop and implement action plans to meet those goals, and collect and report student outcome data on progression toward the goals.  Adding to the states’ commitment, several national foundations have joined forces to provide $12 million in initial funding for a new nonprofit organization, Complete College America, to work with states.Established in 2009, Complete College America supports states to implement a range of strategies that will bring needed change to improve completion. Five national foundations are providing multi-year support to Complete College America, including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Lumina Foundation for Education.

http://www.completecollege.org/

Latest Research on Millennials Available From The Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center has a series of reports exploring the behaviors, values and opinions of the teens and twenty-somethings that make up the Millennial Generation.  The most current report, released on February 24, 2010 is, The Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1501/millennials-new-survey-generational-personality-upbeat-open-new-ideas-technology-bound?src=prc-latest&proj=peoplepress