US colleges plan differential tuition for different majors

Different college majors require different kind of infrastructure. While humanities majors only need seminar rooms and libraries, engineering and science majors require expensive laboratories.

Several US universities consider charging higher tuition for undergraduates depending on their major - a system called "differential tuition".

According to the Omaha World Herald, 57% of 162 public research universities employ some form of differential tuition.

Some universities defend the practice of differential tuition by arguing that "studies where students will have strong earnings and the capacity to take on more debt, or where there’s a special case for investing more in a particular field" (from the World Herald).

Charging science and engineering students higher tuition could be counterproductive to encouraging more students to enter these fields.

Should Universities Base Tuition Off of a Student’s Major? | Geekosystem

80% of US college admissions departments check your Facebook Profile

A recent Kaplan survey found that admissions departments at 80% of US top colleges “visit potential students’ online Facebook profiles during their recruiting process.” The obvious advice is to keep your Facebook profile private.

Read more here: Report: 80% of College Admissions Departments Check Applicants’ Facebook Pages | Geekosystem

Could online courses fully replace traditional courses?

In his 2010 annual letter for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates suggested that have at least one great course online for each subject rather than lots of mediocre courses. The idea is that students could freely access these "best possible" lectures online - which might in turn replace more mediocre real-life lectures.


Several top universities already offer some of their lectures online for free, including the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University,  M.I.T.’s OpenCourseWare program, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the University of California, Berkeley. The UK-based OpenUniversity offers free online courses. Aggregator website Academic Earth offers a collection of over 150 full courses from different universities. Additionally, youtube edu offers a collection of lectures.


However, could such online lectures truly replace traditional education? There are several issues to hinder online courses to replace human-taught courses. First, online courses are notorious for high dropout rates. Personal relationships with instructors and other students might help students persevere. Second, many universities may now offer online lectures but complete courses consists of more than just the lecture, for example discussion groups, feedback from instructors, study groups, and office hours. These elements are currently missing in free online courses. Third, while lectures might be freely available, universities do not give credit for studying them. Free online courses do not (yet) lead to academic degrees. A step in this direction was taken last year by the regents of the University of California when they approved a proposal to test the viability of offering a bachelor’s degree that could be earned entirely online.


Read more in this New York Times article: Online Courses, Still Lacking That Third Dimension - NYTimes.com

Revising Advanced Placement Biology

30 years ago, the Advanced Placement biology textbook was daunting enough, at 36 chapters and 870 pages. But the current textbook has 56 chapters and 1,400 pages, along with a profusion of animated videos and Web-based aids that supplement the text. This volume of material which all needs to be covered for the AP test, forces teachers to rush through the material.

Next month, the College board, the nonprofit organization that owns the A.P. exams, is going to change A as well as the SAT, will release a wholesale revamping of A.P. biology. Read whole article here: Rethinking Advanced Placement - NYTimes.com

Graduate Student Christmas Tree :)

http://www.likecool.com/Christmas_tree--Pic--Gear.html

How much do US college students work, sleep, and play?

On average, college students slept 8.4 hours, engaged in educational activities (such as attending classes or studying) for 3.6 hours, and enjoyed leisure and sports activities for 3.5 hours on a typical weekday during the school year over the 2005–2009 period.

More interesting statistics about college education here

My panel talk with the UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau about inter-cultural competency

I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion in the "Bear in Mind" program with UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau. The discussion revolved around the question of how studying abroad and having an international student community at UC Berkeley increases inter-cultural competencies.

Is it worth going to college? How strengthening vocational education could improve US education.

President Obama declared that he wants to send every U.S. student to college. Is this a reasonable goal? Is a college degree the best way to get a good job?

The U.S. does not have a developed vocational school/apprentice system present in many European countries. This gives young U.S. students few options. The video shows an ABC report that concludes that entering a craft instead of going to college might be a better career decision for students who don't excel in academic learning.

From one of my earlier posts:
In other countries, the belief is that schools educate and select the students that show academic excellence, while other students enter vocational training. As the U.S. does not have a vocational school alternative, K-12 education became a try-to-fit-all solution. The president of Bard college, Leon Botstein, suggests that junior high schools should be removed and replaced with a K-10 school, and the graduation age of 18 should be dropped to 16. At the age of 16, students can either go to college or get a job.

An example is Switzerland that established a dual-education system (and wikipedia on dual education system): At the age of sixteen, students choose to follow an higher academic education or the enter an apprenticeship. Apprentices are employed by companies and receive a small salary. They work for their employer while spending 1-2 days each week at vocational school where they continue their general education and learn skills related to their craft. After completing their apprenticeship, students can decided to remain in their craft or attend a professional university. Professional university offer bachelor and master degrees equivalent to the traditional university. Professional university graduates are often in high demand as their portfolio includes both practical experience and theoretical knowledge. Swiss craftsmen are among the highest skilled in the world and they frequently win international craftsmen championships.


Additional discussion about vocational education in these blog post and How higher education has failed the U.S.

How Higher Education Has Failed America

ZenCollegeLife.com posted an interesting essay on the value of US college education (given the ever rising costs of tuition).

Two points from the essay:

-Colleges teach skills that are removed from workplace skills.

-A cause for this disconnection lays in the tenure system that focuses on research and not education.

The essay raises a few interesting points, but I consider the issue to be much more complex to reduce to a critique of the tenure system.

How Higher Education Has Failed America

Top 10 benefits of a college degree

The list below describes ten benefits of a college education. While the list is encouraging, I found it interesting that none of the ten benefits of college education had anything to do with gaining personal knowledge...

A college degree pays off financially and intangibly for the graduate – and for society at large, says a report from the College Board. Here are 10 top benefits:

10. Better-prepared kids
Parents with advanced degrees are three times more likely to read to their kids every day than parents who haven’t finished high school, and twice as likely to participate in other educational activities like visiting museums and libraries.
The payoff? Children of highly educated parents are three times more likely to start school already knowing their alphabet and how to count to 20.

9. Fewer social costs
High school graduates are three times more likely to live in poverty than college graduates, and eight times more likely to depend on public assistance programs
For every female high school student who goes on to attend college, society saves $48,600 over her lifetime. For every African-American male who goes on to finish college instead of dropping out of high school, society saves $294,000.

8. More tax revenue
Higher salaries for college means more money for the government, which matters to policymakers. “The typical college graduate pays, on average, 80 percent more in taxes each year than the typical high school graduate,” according to the College Board report. For those with advanced degrees, the tax benefits to the government are even better. Doctors and lawyers might grouse that they pay 3-1/2 times as much in taxes as high school graduates do. Then again, they earn three times as much.

7. More volunteering and voting
The share of people who donate their time to organizations and the number of hours that they spend in volunteer activities are higher among individuals with higher levels of education. Most volunteer for religious organizations (34 percent) or youth-related services (26 percent).
At every age group, the more educated someone is, the more likely she is to vote. It’s most dramatic among 18- to 24-year-olds, where college graduates are 2-1/2 times as likely to vote as those who haven’t finished high school.

6. Fewer smokers
Between 1998 and 2008, the smoking rate declined from 14 percent to 9 percent among college grads, while the rate for high school grads barely dropped, from 29 percent to 27 percent.
Of people with advanced degrees, 70 percent never smoked, only 3 percent choose to keep smoking, and the rest have quit or are trying to. Of people who didn’t finish high school, half have never smoked, a third have quit or are trying to, and 15 percent choose to maintain the habit.

5. More exercise, less fat
Those with more education are more likely to exercise than those with less education. College-educated adults are also less likely than others to be obese or have obese children. These results hold for all age groups.

4. Higher job satisfaction
In 2008, about 60 percent of people who had attended college – whether or not they’d completed a degree – reported that they were very satisfied with their jobs. Only 50 percent of high school graduates and 40 percent of high school dropouts could say the same. People with job satisfaction were three times as likely to say that they were very happy.

3. Better recession protection
College graduates’ employment rose 2 percent between the first quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2010, despite the great recession. Every group with lower education levels saw employment numbers decline. Those hardest hit were those who hadn’t finished high school. One in 5 for them has lost a job, compared with 1 in 100 for high school graduates and those with some college education.

2. More benefits, higher pensions
Only half of high school graduates have employer-provided health insurance or pension plans, but almost 70 percent of college graduates do. Also, while 93 percent of college grads participate in employer-matching pension plans if they're available, only 3 in 4 of those who didn’t complete high school do, meaning that 1 in 4 pass up essentially free money from their employer.

1. Increased earning potential
Everyone knows the price of a college degree, but fewer know the price of not getting one: $22K a year.
In 2008, median earnings of college graduates were $55,700, which was $21,900 more than the median earnings of high school graduates who hadn’t attended college.
See the list at: Top 10 benefits of a college degree