Download or read book Making the Most of College written by Richard J. Light and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-30 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some students make the most of college, while others struggle and look back on years of missed deadlines and missed opportunities? What choices can students make, and what can teachers and university leaders do, to improve more students’ experiences and help them achieve the most from their time and money? Most important, how is the increasing diversity on campus—cultural, racial, and religious—affecting education? What can students and faculty do to benefit from differences, and even learn from the inevitable moments of misunderstanding and awkwardness? From his ten years of interviews with Harvard seniors, Richard Light distills encouraging—and surprisingly practical—answers to fundamental questions. How can you choose classes wisely? What’s the best way to study? Why do some professors inspire and others leave you cold? How can you connect what you discover in class to all you’re learning in the rest of life? Light suggests, for instance: studying in pairs or groups can be more productive than studying alone; the first and most important skill to learn is time management; supervised independent research projects and working internships offer the most learning and the greatest challenges; and encounters with students of different religions can be simultaneously the most taxing and most illuminating of all the experiences with a diverse student body. Filled with practical advice, illuminated with stories of real students’ self-doubts, failures, discoveries, and hopes, Making the Most of College is a handbook for academic and personal success.
Download or read book Making College Work written by Harry J. Holzer and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practical solutions for improving higher education opportunities for disadvantaged students Too many disadvantaged college students in America do not complete their coursework or receive any college credential, while others earn degrees or certificates with little labor market value. Large numbers of these students also struggle to pay for college, and some incur debts that they have difficulty repaying. The authors provide a new review of the causes of these problems and offer promising policy solutions. The circumstances affecting disadvantaged students stem both from issues on the individual side, such as weak academic preparation and financial pressures, and from institutional failures. Low-income students disproportionately attend schools that are underfunded and have weak performance incentives, contributing to unsatisfactory outcomes for many students. Some solutions, including better financial aid or academic supports, target individual students. Other solutions, such as stronger linkages between coursework and the labor market and more structured paths through the curriculum, are aimed at institutional reforms. All students, and particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, also need better and varied pathways both to college and directly to the job market, beginning in high school. We can improve college outcomes, but must also acknowledge that we must make hard choices and face difficult tradeoffs in the process. While no single policy is guaranteed to greatly improve college and career outcomes, implementing a number of evidence-based policies and programs together has the potential to improve these outcomes substantially.
Download or read book Making College Count written by Patrick S. O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making College Count is a comprehensive resource that will help students excel in college and create great career opportunities after graduation. Much more than a college survival guide, it offers students (and parents) a proven framework to achieve at a high level in the classroom, in extracurricular activities, and in their work experiences. The book also positions students for success in their future job searches. Making College Count features an eye-catching, two-color design with 78 illustrations, and is written in an approachable, student-friendly voice.
Download or read book The Making of the Modern University written by Julie A. Reuben and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-09-15 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on extensive research at eight universities - Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Stanford, Michigan, and California at Berkeley - Reuben examines the aims of university reformers in the context of nineteenth-century ideas about truth. She argues that these educators tried to apply new scientific standards to moral education, but that their modernization efforts ultimately failed.
Download or read book Unacceptable written by Melissa Korn and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FORBES TOP 10 HIGHER EDUCATION BOOKS OF 2020 The riveting true story behind the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, a cautionary tale of parenting gone wrong, the system that enabled families to veer so far off course, and the mastermind who made it all happen. When federal prosecutors dropped the bombshell of Operation Varsity Blues, it broke open the crimes of exclusive universities and wealthy families all over the country, shattering the myth of American meritocracy. In Unacceptable, veteran Wall Street Journal reporters Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz dig deep into how otherwise smart, loving parents became caught up in scandal, led through the side door by one man: college whisperer Rick Singer. Unacceptable traces how, over decades, the charismatic Singer easily reeled in parents hoping to guarantee top educations for their children, and exploited a system rigged against regular people. Exploring the status obsession that seduced entitled parents in search of an edge, Korn and Levitz unfurl a scheme that entangled more than fifty conspirators, from wealthy CEOs to famous actresses, leading to imprisonments, ruined careers, and terminated enrollments. An eye-opening account of corruption in America’s most exclusive institutions, Unacceptable tells the story of helicopter parenting, coddled teens, and the man who thought he couldn’t be caught. Detailing Singer’s steady rise and dramatic fall, Korn and Levitz expose the ugly underbelly of elite college admissions, and the devastating consequences of buying success.
Download or read book Making College Pay written by Beth Akers and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading economist makes the case that college is still a smart investment, and reveals how to increase the odds of your degree paying off. “Full of easy-to-understand advice grounded in deep expertise and research.”—Martin West, William Henry Bloomberg Professor of Education, Harvard University The cost of college makes for frightening headlines. The outstanding balance of student loans is more than $1.5 trillion nationally, while tuitions continue to rise. And on the heels of a pandemic that nearly dismantled the traditional college experience, we have to wonder: Is college really worth it? From a financial perspective, says economist Beth Akers, the answer is yes. It’s true that college is expensive, but once we see higher education for what it is—an investment in future opportunities, job security, and earnings—a different picture emerges: The average college graduate earns an additionalmillion dollars over their career (compared to those who stopped their education after high school), and on average, two- and four-year schools deliver a 15 percent return on investment—double that of the stock market. Yet these outcomes are not guaranteed. Rather, they hinge upon where and how you opt to invest your tuition dollars. Simply put, the real problem with college isn’t the cost—it’s the risk that your investment might not pay off. In Making College Pay, Akers shows how to improve your odds by making smart choices about where to enroll, what to study, and how to pay for it. You’ll learn • why choosing the right major can matter more than where you enroll • the best criteria for picking a school (hint: not price, selectivity or ranking) • why working part-time while enrolled might set you back financially • why it’s often best to borrow, even if you don’t have to • the pros and cons of innovative alternatives to traditional college • how to take advantage of new, low-risk financing tools Full of practical advice for students and parents, Making College Pay reminds us that higher education remains an engine for opportunity, upward mobility, and prosperity.
Download or read book Practice for Life written by Lee Cuba and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-15 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the day they arrive on campus, college students spend four years—or sometimes more—making decisions that shape every aspect of their academic and social lives. Whether choosing a major or a roommate, some students embrace decision-making as an opportunity for growth, while others seek to minimize challenges and avoid risk. Practice for Life builds a compelling case that a liberal arts education offers students a complex, valuable process of self-creation, one that begins in college but continues far beyond graduation. Sifting data from a five-year study that followed over two hundred students at seven New England liberal arts colleges, the authors uncover what drives undergraduates to become engaged with their education. They found that students do not experience college as having a clear beginning and end but as a continuous series of new beginnings. They start and restart college many times, owing to the rhythms of the academic calendar, the vagaries of student housing allocation, and other factors. This dynamic has drawbacks as well as advantages. Not only students but also parents and faculty place enormous weight on some decisions, such as declaring a major, while overlooking the small but significant choices that shape students' daily experience. For most undergraduates, deep engagement with their college education is at best episodic rather than sustained. Yet these disruptions in engagement provide students with abundant opportunities for reflection and course-correction as they learn to navigate the future uncertainties of adult life.
Download or read book The Making of a College written by Franklin Patterson and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Making the Grade written by Howard S. Becker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on three years of detailed anthropological observation, this account of undergraduate culture portrays students' academic relations to faculty and administration as one of subjection. With rare intervals in crisis moments, student life has always been dominated by grades and grade point averages. The authors of Making the Grade maintain that, though it has taken different forms from tune to time, the emphasis on grades has persisted in academic life. From this premise they argue that the social organization giving rise to this emphasis has remained remarkably stable throughout the century. Becker, Geer, and Hughes discuss various aspects of college life and examine the degree of autonomy students have over each facet of their lives. Students negotiate with authorities the conditions of campus political and organizational life--the student government, independent student organizations, and the student newspaper--and preserve substantial areas of autonomous action for themselves. Those same authorities leave them to run such aspects of their private lives as friendships and dating as they wish. But, when it comes to academic matters, students are subject to the decisions of college faculties and administrators. Becker deals with this continuing lack of autonomy in student life in his new introduction. He also examines new phenomena, such as the impact of -grade inflation- and how the world of real adult work has increasingly made professional and technical expertise, in addition to high grades, the necessary condition for success. Making the Grade continues to be an unparalleled contribution to the studies of academics, students, and college life. It will be of interest to university administrators, professors, students, and sociologists.
Download or read book Beyond Free College written by Eileen L. Strempel and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Free College outlines an audacious national agenda—consistent with, but far more comprehensive than, the current “free college” movement—that builds on the best of US higher education’s populist history such as the G.I. Bill and the community college transfer function. The authors align a wide constellation of higher education trends—online learning, prior learning assessment, competency-based learning, high school college-credit— with a rapidly shifting student transfer environment that privileges college credit as the pivotal educational catalyst to boost access and completion. The book’s agenda seeks greater productive investment in postsecondary education by privileging a single metric—lower-cost-per-degree-granted—as the animating driver of a transfer pathway that will fulfill the potential of its historical, progressive innovators. Beyond Free College’s goal is as simple as it is urgent: To galvanize higher education advocates in an effort to reorganize, reorient, and reignite the transfer function to serve the needs of a neotraditional student population that now constitutes the majority of college-goers in America; and in ways that advance completion, not just access to higher education.
Download or read book How College Students Succeed written by Nicholas A. Bowman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Receiving a college education has perhaps never been more important than it is today. While its personal, societal, and overall economic benefits are well documented, too many college students fail to complete their postsecondary education. As colleges and universities are investing substantial resources into efforts to counter these attrition rates and increase retention, they are mostly unaware of the robust literature on student success that is often bounded in disciplinary silos. The purpose of this book is to bring together in a single volume the extensive knowledge on college student success. It includes seven chapters from authors who each synthesize the literature from their own field of study, or perspective. Each describes the theories, models, and concepts they use; summarizes the key findings from their research; and provides implications for practice, policy, and/or research. The disciplinary chapters offer perspectives from higher education, public policy, behavioral economics, social psychology, STEM, sociology, and critical and post-structural theory.
Download or read book Choosing College written by Michael B. Horn and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-09-11 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cut through the noise and make better college and career choices This book is about addressing the college-choosing problem. The rankings, metrics, analytics, college visits, and advice that we use today to help us make these decisions are out of step with the progress individual students are trying to make. They don't give students and families the information and context they need to make such a high-stakes decision about whether and where to get an education. Choosing College strips away the noise to help you understand why you’re going to school. What's driving you? What are you trying to accomplish? Once you know why, the book will help you make better choices. The research in this book illustrates that choosing a school is complicated. By constructing more than 200 mini-documentaries of how students chose different postsecondary educational experiences, the authors explore the motivations for how and why people make the decisions that they do at a much deeper, causal level. By the end, you’ll know why you’re going and what you’re really chasing. The book: Identifies the five different Jobs for which students hire postsecondary education Allows you to see your true options for what’s next Offers guidance for how to successfully choose your pathway Illuminates how colleges and entrepreneurs can build better experiences for each Job The authors help readers understand not what job students want out of college, but what "Job" students are hiring college to do for them.
Download or read book The Real World of College written by Wendy Fischman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why higher education in the United States has lost its way, and how universities and colleges can focus sharply on their core mission. For The Real World of College, Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner analyzed in-depth interviews with more than 2,000 students, alumni, faculty, administrators, parents, trustees, and others, which were conducted at ten institutions ranging from highly selective liberal arts colleges to less-selective state schools. What they found challenged characterizations in the media: students are not preoccupied by political correctness, free speech, or even the cost of college. They are most concerned about their GPA and their resumes; they see jobs and earning potential as more important than learning. Many say they face mental health challenges, fear that they don’t belong, and feel a deep sense of alienation. Given this daily reality for students, has higher education lost its way? Fischman and Gardner contend that US universities and colleges must focus sharply on their core educational mission. Fischman and Gardner, both recognized authorities on education and learning, argue that higher education in the United States has lost sight of its principal reason for existing: not vocational training, not the provision of campus amenities, but to increase what Fischman and Gardner call “higher education capital”—to help students think well and broadly, express themselves clearly, explore new areas, and be open to possible transformations. Fischman and Gardner offer cogent recommendations for how every college can become a community of learners who are open to change as thinkers, citizens, and human beings.
Download or read book Who Gets In and Why written by Jeffrey Selingo and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From award-winning higher education journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Selingo comes a revealing look from inside the admissions office—one that identifies surprising strategies that will aid in the college search. Getting into a top-ranked college has never seemed more impossible, with acceptance rates at some elite universities dipping into the single digits. In Who Gets In and Why, journalist and higher education expert Jeffrey Selingo dispels entrenched notions of how to compete and win at the admissions game, and reveals that teenagers and parents have much to gain by broadening their notion of what qualifies as a “good college.” Hint: it’s not all about the sticker on the car window. Selingo, who was embedded in three different admissions offices—a selective private university, a leading liberal arts college, and a flagship public campus—closely observed gatekeepers as they made their often agonizing and sometimes life-changing decisions. He also followed select students and their parents, and he traveled around the country meeting with high school counselors, marketers, behind-the-scenes consultants, and college rankers. While many have long believed that admissions is merit-based, rewarding the best students, Who Gets In and Why presents a more complicated truth, showing that “who gets in” is frequently more about the college’s agenda than the applicant. In a world where thousands of equally qualified students vie for a fixed number of spots at elite institutions, admissions officers often make split-second decisions based on a variety of factors—like diversity, money, and, ultimately, whether a student will enroll if accepted. One of the most insightful books ever about “getting in” and what higher education has become, Who Gets In and Why not only provides an unusually intimate look at how admissions decisions get made, but guides prospective students on how to honestly assess their strengths and match with the schools that will best serve their interests.
Download or read book Relationship Rich Education written by Peter Felten and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mentor, advisor, or even a friend? Making connections in college makes all the difference. What single factor makes for an excellent college education? As it turns out, it's pretty simple: human relationships. Decades of research demonstrate the transformative potential and the lasting legacies of a relationship-rich college experience. Critics suggest that to build connections with peers, faculty, staff, and other mentors is expensive and only an option at elite institutions where instructors have the luxury of time with students. But in this revelatory book brimming with the voices of students, faculty, and staff from across the country, Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert argue that relationship-rich environments can and should exist for all students at all types of institutions. In Relationship-Rich Education, Felten and Lambert demonstrate that for relationships to be central in undergraduate education, colleges and universities do not require immense resources, privileged students, or specially qualified faculty and staff. All students learn best in an environment characterized by high expectation and high support, and all faculty and staff can learn to teach and work in ways that enable relationship-based education. Emphasizing the centrality of the classroom experience to fostering quality relationships, Felten and Lambert focus on students' influence in shaping the learning environment for their peers, as well as the key difference a single, well-timed conversation can make in a student's life. They also stress that relationship-rich education is particularly important for first-generation college students, who bring significant capacities to college but often face long-standing inequities and barriers to attaining their educational aspirations. Drawing on nearly 400 interviews with students, faculty, and staff at 29 higher education institutions across the country, Relationship-Rich Education provides readers with practical advice on how they can develop and sustain powerful relationship-based learning in their own contexts. Ultimately, the book is an invitation—and a challenge—for faculty, administrators, and student life staff to move relationships from the periphery to the center of undergraduate education.
Download or read book Diversity at College written by James Stellar and published by Ideapress Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The demography of America is changing and it is showing up on college campuses as an increasingly diverse student body. Universities typically handle changes within the academic tradition of courses or programs, but to prepare students to live and work in an increasingly diverse world something else is needed. This little book was created to serve this need. Five stories told by recent college graduates from public universities to highlight the learning about diversity in college from the students themselves. The stories are curated to key social science phenomena in diversity, such as implicit bias or stereotype threat. They are set in a context of experiential learning from the students themselves and are informed by advances the social neuroscience of unconscious decision-making. The goal is to highlight the ways these factors can complement the ongoing diversity course work and other university programming. While the project was led by a professor with serious university administrative history, the storytellers and other organizers are all authors, making this little a book a unique contribution that is written about students by those students themselves. The first chapter sets the stage by introducing at the lay level with social neuroscience principles that drive diversity issues in society and in the college-age population. The first story chapter is written by a Latino former student who explores the experience of being taught by a largely non-diverse faculty. The second chapter represents the struggle of a female student to overcome self-handicapping and enter the sciences in the field of medicine. The third chapter explores growing up Dominican in a large metropolitan area, going to a small-city university, and finding necessary group support in an established diversity program. The fourth chapter discusses in-group/out-group issues from a student who move from a small-town Jewish population to achieve student leadership in a large diverse university. The final story chapter looks at being an immigrant and non-native speaker, but making it in college overcoming stereotype threat. The final chapter is our collective recommendations of what a university or college can do with this student-rich perspective to more deeply educate about the fundamental issues of living in a diverse world.
Download or read book The Making of a College written by Franklin Patterson and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
