Community College Enrollment Surge Comes to an End

The article from The Chronicle of Higher Education from the link below provides information on the expected downtown in community college enrollment.  This useful information can help inspire discussion on the ramifications of such a trend.

Community College Enrollment Downturn

The Aspen Prize -- One Million Dollars Awarded to Community Colleges

Valencia College, Florida takes top honors of the first offering of the Aspen Prize as reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education. 
http://chronicle.com/article/Valencia-College-Wins-First/130091/?sid=cc&utm_source=cc&utm_medium=en                                             (This link requires authentication for off-campus use.)
As noted on the Aspen Institute website: "The purpose of the Aspen Prize is to recognize community colleges with outstanding academic and workforce outcomes in both absolute performance and improvements over time. By focusing on student success and lifting up models that work, the Aspen Prize will honor excellence, stimulate innovation, and create benchmarks for measuring progress."  This link further describes the prize:
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/aspen-prize/about  
The Aspen Institute website has profiles of the ten finalists selected for the total million dollar prize. Each profile highlights a strategy that focuses on reducing the risk for at-risk students, mainly in developmental education, but quite a few in career/technical programs and industry partnerships.
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/aspen-prize/finalists
A total of 120 eligible colleges were selected during the competition using an analytic model drawn from IPEDS data described below. You can see the data dashboards in the pdf version of the Round 1 Model Description. Sad to say, no colleges in New Jersey were deemed eligible.
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/aspen-prize/eligibleinstitutions 
The evaluative rubric used gives shows the criteria deemed important by the Aspen Institute:  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27262972/Round%20One%20Model%20Description.pdf

NJ Stars Program

Below is a link to the latest information on the status of the New Jersey STARS Program.  The article namely aims at the proposed changes.

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/new-jersey-stars-program-proposes-changes-to-continue-college-aid/article_31d5f736-1faa-11e1-9a93-001871e3ce6c.html

Measures of Student Success

 The Voluntary Framework of Accountability is the first national system of accountability specifically FOR community colleges and BY community colleges.

Below find a link to the VFA website, which contains a very important draft report and summary of success measures  from the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Committee on Measures of Student Success. IPEC encourages you to read the entire report. 

http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Resources/aaccprograms/vfa/Pages/default.aspx

Obama Meets with Higher Education Leaders

Below is a link to an article from Inside Higher Education that describes President Obama’s recent meeting with a small group of higher education leaders.  Note the apparent shift in focus from increasing aid to affordability, cost, and productivity.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/12/06/obama-meeting-focuses-cost-affordability-productivity

For-Profit Educator In Trouble Over Misleading Success Data

As reported on National Public Radio, Career Education Corporation is in hot water because of misleading information it has stated about job placement rates for its students.
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/07/142111407/for-profit-education-provider-faces-trouble
Career Education Corportion is an international for-profit education provider with about 90 campuses located throughout the United States and in France, Canada, Italy and the United Kingdom and three fully-online academic programs.
http://www.careered.com/

Technology To Improve Student Success At Central Piedmont Community College

In an innovative move, Central Piedmont Community College connects with its students to increase their chances for success.  As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education the,"Online Student Portal learning system, a Web site, assesses the learning styles of at-risk students (whether they learn best through reading, hearing, or hands-on work) and helps them understand how their personality traits might connect to study and career choices. It also provides a ready link to college counselors and instructors, allowing them to send so-called "early alerts" if a student starts having trouble in a class. And it carries a record of these interactions from term to term, so students and advisers can easily see where students have been—and where they're going."  Note: Access to this article from off campus requires user authentication.
http://chronicle.com/article/7-Community-Colleges-Try-an/129605/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

New Jersey's Lost Decade -- Local Economic Decline Felt Most by Middle and Lower Income Groups

As reported by New Jersey Policy Perspective, "New Jersey real incomes were lower in 2010 than in 2007 for most households. Only high-income households were better off. Unemployment was at its highest rate in 35 years, and the number of children living in poverty increased by 16 percent in just two years."
What happened? Where did the income gains come from and where did they go? This is the focus of The State of Working New Jersey 2011: The Lost Decade:
http://www.njpp.org/reports/the-state-of-working-new-jersey-2011-the-lost-decade

California Community College Seeks a More Diversified Board of Trustees

The Associated Press reported that Cerritos Community College has changed its trustee election system so that it will be more culturally inclusive:
Posted: 10/05/2011 08:33:01 PM PDT

NORWALK, Calif.—The Cerritos Community College board of trustees has moved to change its trustee election system a week after a lawsuit was filed charging that the current system discriminates against Latino voters. A statement from the college says the board introduced a resolution Wednesday night to change to a system where trustees are elected from their own residential areas. Currently, trustees are elected at-large. The board anticipates the change will take effect in December. Last month, three Latino voters sued the college, saying the at-large system does not give Latinos fair representation on the board and violates the California Voter Rights Act. The college says it wants the lawsuit withdrawn since the change, which was already under consideration, is now being adopted.

College Graduation Rates Are Stagnant Even as Enrollment Rises

A recent New York Times article speaks about the work of Complete College America, which has gathered data with the cooperation of 33 governors.  It reports how many of the students in states completed their degrees, whether enrollment is full- or part-time, or at a two- or four-year institution.
"In Texas, for example, of every 100 students who enrolled in a public college, 79 started at a community college, and only 2 of them earned a two-year degree on time; even after four years, only 7 of them graduated. Of the 21 of those 100 who enrolled at a four-year college, 5 graduated on time; after eight years, only 13 had earned a degree."

The following link provides the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/education/27remediation.html
 
In New Jersey, overall graduation rates are among the lowest in the nation.  According to data reported by NCHEMS, The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, of the 26,580 students beginning at a New Jersey community college in Fall 2006, only 4,456 had graduated by Summer 2009.  This is a graduation rate of 16.8.  To see NCHEMS national data, see the following link:
http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?submeasure=24&year=2009&level=nation&mode=data&state=0
 
How should Brookdale interpret and act upon these reports?  Are there other indicators of success beyond graduation rates which should be examined and stressed?  As we plan 5 years ahead to 2017 it is crucial to consider national expectations of what constitutes college student success. 

Committee on Measures of Student Success Issues Draft Report

The Committee on Measures of Student Success advises the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, in assisting two-year degree-granting institutions of higher education in meeting the completion or graduation rate disclosure requirements.  Here's the draft of their report about measuring student success released on September 2, 2011:
http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/cmss-committee-report.pdf

To learn more about the members and work of the Committee on Measures of Student Success visit their website:
http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acmss.html

Testing and Improving Gauges of Student Learning

Read about The Quality Collaboratives Project; the three-year, $2.2-million effort seeks to help the states chart a path by which they can raise, and document, students' level of achievement.

http://chronicle.com/article/Project-Will-Pay-for-8-States/129259/