It’s time to drop the college-for-all crusade

Original Article

Summary goes here!

Personally, I would attribute some of these kind of  bad American policies to the generosity of American and some to the idea of 'Political Correctness'.

As a foreign born American, I am totally impressed by the generosity of American and, at times, puzzled and resisted. Growing up, I took nothing for granted even though I have supporting parents. I was educated, taught and self-studied, that begging is of no dignity and god only help people that help themselves. Personally, I have been summon all these under the 'responsibility'.

As to the 'Political Correctness', for one thing, I would like to remind the reader that OPPORTUNITIES is all it should be considered. Given the opportunity, in the sense of promote responsibility, it is up to the people to work hard to get what they want.

More practically, we should realized that not all people were born equal, intellectually. The best a society can hopeful is to have everyone do their best. To have people reach their best is to teach them being responsible. To teach responsibility, the operation of the system and the society must, by itself, promote responsibility. For example, to entitle to education as a right, students must demonstrate their wiliness to put in efforts in studying. For a normal people, this can simply be a requirement to reach certain testing scores. This is nothing new, what is new is the infusion of the idea of responsibility.

In theory, I am willing to support the idea of free education for all those who did their best. On the other hand, since resources are limited, we should support those who will benefit the society the most. With the full support of the society, I am visioning the building of a system where the freely educated scholars recognizing the support from and the responsibility to the society. Formula may need be sought to build a practical system, the idea is to promote responsibility as the core value of education.

For people reaching their best but were not able to be the best, this is where the society come in to benefit the constituent of the whole society.

Can Financial Aid Improve Student Success at Louisiana’s Community Colleges?

Original Article

Summary goes here!

An old saying: "Help people who helped themselves."

Financial Aid can help if students were matured enough to realize the value of the extra time they got and put it into study. If not, I don't see how the extra money can improve students' success. It may even distract them from the study to enjoy other things in life.

This is a good demonstration of why building the sense responsibility is the number one task in education. Any attempt to improve the education outcome without promoting students' sense of responsibility is a wrong approach. You can hire personal coaches that following student around to improve his/her education. But does the society have the responsibility to support people this way? Will this ever been sustainable?

The histories of a lot of Federal Aid programs have shown that a lot of people will take advantages of these systems in undesirable ways and a lot of these programs were later re-tweaked or added responsibility strings to it.

US College Graduation Rates by Race by State - 2010 IPEDS

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Data release: College Graduation Rates by State for 2008-09 graduates

Race in United States is a much debated topic. Tying race to discrimination is a sequel of historical events. The subsistence of the racism is continually disputed. The data revealed here is too limited to settle the disagreement. But we do hope the data can pointed to the weak spot in our education system and, hopefully, solutions with emphasis on personal obligation can be developed. In author's opinion, some of today's approach in improving minorities' education attainment is overreaching and is themselves racial biased and undermined the important principle of personal responsibility. Services should be made available to all regardless of race. It takes responsible person to seek helps. Which race group actually uses these services is not a racial issue.

Opinion aside, objective view of the data is definitely in order.

This analysis is based on the data released earlier by the CL Higher Education Center. The analysis dis-regard the non-residence alien. The US total also exclude US minor islands and territories.

The College Graduation Rates by Race for the US states are shown in table 1 while the table 2 shows the same data with the inclusion of US minor islands and territories with differences highlighted. The difference for Asian are mainly caused by the inclusion of the Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The changes for Hispanic are the effect of including the Puerto Rico. The rest of the analysis would focus on the US states and Washington DC. Changes from last year's number are included in the parenthesis.

Compare with last year, the public-four-year, public-two-year and the private-not-for-profit-four-year sectors are seeing improvements. Basically, the graduation rate for all races in these sectors are either improved or stay the same. Viewing the data with respect to race, White-non-hispanic improved in all sectors while minorities showing mixed result.

Table 1 - US states - including DC

Sector	Native	Asian	Black	Hispanic	White	Total
Public 4Yr	35%	65%	36%	(+1)44%	57%	(+1)54%
NProfit 4Yr	(+3)49%	(+1)76%	44%	(+2)59%	67%	(+1)65%
Profit 4Yr	(-3)38%	(+4)46%	31%	(-2)41%	(+5)45%	(+3)41%
Public 2Yr	17%	(+1)26%	12%	16%	23%	20%
NProfit 2Yr	(-8)15%	51%	(-2)44%	(-1)46%	(+1)56%	(-1)50%
Profit 2Yr	(+1)59%	(-3)69%	(+2)49%	(+2)65%	(+2)65%	(+1)60%
Overall	32%	57%	32%	40%	50%	47%

Table 2 - With US minor islands and territories**

Sector	Native	Asian	Black	Hispanic	White	Total
Public 4Yr	35%	64%	36%	43%	57%	53%
NProfit 4Yr	(+3)49%	(+1)76%	44%	(+2)45%	67%	63%
Profit 4Yr	(-3)38%	(+4)46%	31%	(-2)39%	(+5)45%	(+2)40%
Public 2Yr	17%	25%	12%	(+1)17%	23%	20%
NProfit 2Yr	(-8)15%	51%	(-2)44%	(-1)62%	(+1)56%	(-2)53%
Profit 2Yr	(+1)59%	(-3)69%	(+2)49%	(+3)64%	(+2)65%	(+1)60%
Overall	32%	56%	32%	40%	50%	46%

Fig. 1 shows the US average graduation rates by race by sector. In general, White and Asian stand out in the public-four-year, public-two-year and private-not-for-profit-tour-year institutions. In other sectors, White and Asian college graduation rates are more comparable to other races. Overall, the public two year sector shows the lowest college graduation rates for all races (except the Natives). Within each sector, the Black usually exhibit the lowest rate except at the public four year sector, where the Native American show the lowest college graduation rate. It is also interesting to see that the private not-for-profit sectors have higher college graduation rates than their public counter parts.

Fig. 1 - US average graduation rates for each sector by race

Figure 2. present the same information as in Figure 1 except grouped by each race. Within all races, the private for-profit two year sector demonstrates high rates, only within White and Asian it seconds to the private not-for-profit four year sector. It is also remarkable to see how similar the rates within each race relative to each other - public-two-years are, in general the lowest. The private-not-for-profit-four-year and the private-for-profit-two-year are usually have the highest rate.

Fig. 2 - US average college graduation rates for each race by sector


== The following have not been updated to 2010 data yet =======
Figure 3 is an un-traditional display of a set of histogram for Asian. Each histogram/curve show the number of states at each graduation rate for a given sector. For example, there are 12 states that have college graduation rates for Asian greater than 55% and less than 60% for the public four year sector/curve while there are 9 states have college graduation rates greater than 30% and less than 35% for the private for-profit four year sector/curve.

Figure 3 demonstrates clearly that, for Asian, the average college graduation rates for each sector are representative except for the not-for-profit two year sector, where most of the states have a rate of 0% and rates are spread out without some kind of concentration or locality.

Fig. 3 - College graduation rate for Asian by sector


Figure 4 displayed similar information as in Figure 3 except it is for the Black. Even though the US average college graduation rate for the private not-for-profit four year sector is comparable to other sectors for Black, figure 4 shows that the rate varies a lot in regard to different states.

Fig. 4 - College graduation rate for Black by sector


Figure 5, 6 and 7 illustrate the same kind of information for Hispanic, Native American and White.

Fig. 5 - College graduation rate for Hispanic by sector


Fig. 6 - College graduation rate for Native American by sector


Fig. 7 - College graduation rate for White by sector


Figure 8 modeled after previous figures to display the college graduations rates for each race in the public four your sector. This chart clearly shows that the White and Asian are comparable except that there are some states where Asian exhibits higher rates.

Fig. 8 - College graduation rates for public four year sector by race


Figure 9 to 13 show the similar information as in Figure 8 for each sector.

Fig. 9 - College graduation rates for private not-for-profit four year sector by race


Fig. 10 - College graduation rates for private for-profit four year sector by race


Figure 11 is an very interested one. For one, this is the only one that all races are having good localities. Second of all, the White seems to be the one that is doing better even though the US average college going rates for public two year sector clearly show that the Asian is doing better than the White. The mystery is solved when dig deeper into the data. The data show that the high average college graduation rate for Asian in the public two year sector is caused by a single state with high Asian public two year sector enrollment, the California, which has a college graduation rate of 36% for Asian. This means that even though on average, Asian is doing good in public two year sector, it is not a Nation wide fact. It is also worth to note that the only state with meaningful high college graduation rates for the Native American is Wisconsin which enrolled 199 students. The other two states only enroll a total of 7 Native Americans. The other high rate state worth noting is the South Dakota, which post a rate of 64% for White.

Fig. 11 - College graduation rates for public two year sector by race


Figure 12 demonstrates that value of this kind of charts, where the meaning of average college graduation rates for private not-for-profit two year sector have very limited value.

Fig. 12 - College graduation rates for private not-for-profit two year sector by race


Fig. 13 - College graduation rates for private for-profit two year sector by race

US College Graduation Rates by State - 2010 Ranking

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Last Year's Ranking
US College Graduation Rates by State for 2009-10 graduates
College Graduation Rates by State for 2008-09 graduates
US College Graduation Rates by Race by State - 2009 IPEDS

Due partly to the economic downturn, college enrollments throughout the United State are going up and President Obama's call for more higher education have been partially answered. However, to fully respond to Obama's call for more education for our kids, we need pay attentions to students' success too. College graduation rate is one of such measures.

To pursue this agenda, we compiled the IPEDS graduation data collected by the US department of Education in a state by state basis. The idea is to put the data out in the public and, hopefully, it will be used to drive states' public education agenda and achieve the goal of improving our higher education's performance.

In doing so, we decided to publish the graduation rate data related to public institutions since, for most states, public institutions are what state governments have much more influence on. We also decided to concentrate on the public four year colleges and  the public two year colleges since, based on a published data, it had been shown that there are very few public institutions that fall into categories of less-than-two year or non-degree-granting institutions. The analysis excluded the non-resident alien.


By running summarized statistics on this two groups of schools, we found that, statistically, they deserved to be compared in separate groups. As shown in the following 2 charts, almost all states have a graduation rate between 40 and 70% for public four year institutions and a graduation rate between 10 and 40% for public 2 year institutions.

Public 4 year institutions:


Public 2 year institutions:


Exceptions to the rule above are the District of Columbia, the state of Alaska and the state of South Dakota. The District of Columbia has a very low rate (12%) for public four year institutions. But our data also show that District of Columbia had very low public four year enrollment. Most of the enrollment at District of Columbia are in private not-for-profit institutions. The state of Alaska has hardly any other type of institutions except the four year public institutions and the overall four year public institution rate is at a low of 29%. As to the state of South Dakota, it simply have a very high graduation rate (53%) for its public two year institutions.

Ranking of the graduation rates for both the public 4 year institutions and public 2 year institutions are presented below:

For public four year institutions:

State	Cohort	Graduates	Graduation Rate	Rank	Previous Rank	Previous Rate
Iowa	9,212	6,392	69%	1	1	69%
Delaware	4,439	3,051	69%	2	6	64%
Virginia	27,133	18,559	68%	3	2	68%
New Jersey	15,487	10,295	66%	4	3	66%
California	66,751	43,504	65%	5	5	65%
New Hampshire	4,787	3,089	65%	6	4	65%
Washington	15,512	9,822	63%	7	8	61%
Vermont	3,178	1,997	63%	8	10	61%
Illinois	24,920	15,558	62%	9	12	60%
Maryland	14,499	9,047	62%	10	7	63%
Pennsylvania	42,627	26,169	61%	11	9	61%
Connecticut	8,705	5,247	60%	12	13	60%
Michigan	38,029	22,743	60%	13	14	59%
South Carolina	14,716	8,695	59%	14	11	60%
North Carolina	28,677	16,938	59%	15	15	59%
Wisconsin	25,129	14,608	58%	16	16	57%
Rhode Island	3,516	2,035	58%	17	19	56%
Arizona	14,693	8,378	57%	18	23	55%
Minnesota	16,284	9,264	57%	19	18	56%
Massachusetts	13,019	7,318	56%	20	22	55%
Nebraska	6,926	3,850	56%	21	17	56%
Missouri	17,252	9,468	55%	22	24	55%
Oregon	9,145	4,955	54%	23	25	53%
Kansas	11,757	6,364	54%	24	21	55%
US Total	913,162	487,749	53%			53%
Wyoming	1,487	790	53%	25	20	55%
Colorado	20,640	10,896	53%	26	26	53%
Ohio	44,291	22,679	51%	27	30	50%
Mississippi	7,943	3,973	50%	28	27	52%
Indiana	30,356	15,094	50%	29	28	52%
New York	45,066	21,962	49%	30	29	51%
North Dakota	5,939	2,829	48%	31	34	47%
Florida	60,984	28,921	47%	32	31	48%
Texas	59,791	28,288	47%	33	36	46%
Alabama	17,080	8,066	47%	34	33	47%
Maine	3,991	1,852	46%	35	32	47%
West Virginia	10,325	4,789	46%	36	39	44%
South Dakota	4,607	2,127	46%	37	41	44%
Tennessee	17,432	7,929	45%	38	35	47%
Hawaii	2,484	1,118	45%	39	43	42%
Kentucky	16,516	7,414	45%	40	38	45%
Georgia	29,841	13,367	45%	41	37	45%
Montana	5,111	2,214	43%	42	40	44%
Oklahoma	15,337	6,405	42%	43	42	42%
Utah	8,748	3,509	40%	44	44	41%
New Mexico	6,622	2,651	40%	45	45	40%
Idaho	4,823	1,885	39%	46	48	37%
Louisiana	23,834	9,087	38%	47	47	38%
Arkansas	11,629	4,358	37%	48	46	38%
Nevada	6,430	2,385	37%	49	49	37%
Alaska	2,110	607	29%	50	50	26%
District of Columbia	322	39	12%	51	51	11%

Compare with last year's graduation rate, state of Delaware made the biggest improvement of 5% and moved up 4 spots to land on the second place, just behind state of Iowa. Both the Delaware State University and University of Delaware improved by about 5%.


For public two year institutions :

State	Cohort	Graduates	Graduation Rate	Rank	Previous Rank	Previous Rate
South Dakota	2,045	1,082	53%	1	1	61%
North Dakota	1,071	414	39%	2	2	38%
Florida	12,294	4,681	38%	3	3	37%
Utah	3,715	1,324	36%	4	5	34%
Iowa	12,621	4,164	33%	5	7	32%
Wisconsin	10,827	3,383	31%	6	6	34%
Alaska	29	9	31%	7	4	36%
Nebraska	4,112	1,268	31%	8	10	28%
Montana	1,379	424	31%	9	19	24%
Kansas	9,526	2,888	30%	10	8	32%
Wyoming	2,322	695	30%	11	9	29%
Maine	2,237	593	27%	12	14	25%
New Hampshire	1,775	467	26%	13	16	25%
Minnesota	16,985	4,468	26%	14	11	27%
Mississippi	17,902	4,516	25%	15	15	25%
Georgia	17,397	4,383	25%	16	18	25%
Washington	9,342	2,343	25%	17	12	26%
California	95,026	23,776	25%	18	13	25%
Kentucky	8,086	1,936	24%	19	17	25%
Arkansas	6,549	1,455	22%	20	22	21%
Colorado	5,753	1,210	21%	21	20	23%
Missouri	13,054	2,686	21%	22	21	21%
US Total	628,788	127,884	20%			20%
North Carolina	19,051	3,872	20%	23	27	20%
Idaho	1,749	354	20%	24	24	21%
New York	50,827	9,942	20%	25	26	20%
Illinois	27,556	5,342	19%	26	25	20%
Alabama	14,531	2,783	19%	27	23	21%
Virginia	17,074	3,094	18%	28	28	18%
New Jersey	26,496	4,593	17%	29	31	16%
Oklahoma	7,457	1,290	17%	30	29	17%
Nevada	679	110	16%	31	45	11%
Arizona	8,133	1,315	16%	32	32	15%
Massachusetts	12,599	2,023	16%	33	30	16%
Vermont	192	30	16%	34	42	12%
Louisiana	6,941	1,083	16%	35	33	15%
Michigan	19,886	2,972	15%	36	35	15%
New Mexico	6,230	917	15%	37	38	13%
Pennsylvania	17,274	2,417	14%	38	34	15%
Oregon	7,057	966	14%	39	36	14%
Maryland	13,757	1,874	14%	40	39	13%
Hawaii	2,488	334	13%	41	41	13%
Ohio	16,412	2,183	13%	42	40	13%
Texas	50,928	6,615	13%	43	43	12%
Delaware	2,296	277	12%	44	48	10%
South Carolina	12,617	1,437	11%	45	44	11%
Tennessee	11,848	1,345	11%	46	46	11%
West Virginia	2,804	290	10%	47	37	14%
Connecticut	6,161	637	10%	48	47	10%
Rhode Island	2,251	208	9%	49	49	9%
Indiana	6,874	593	9%	50	50	8%
District of Columbia	0	0	0%	51	51	0%

Regarding to last year's data, state of Montana shows the biggest improvement in graduation rate for public two year institutions. State of Montana moved its rate up by about 7% and moved up 10 spots to earn the state number 9 spot in the ranking. Browsing through Montana's two year public schools, it revealed that almost all schools contribute to the overall improvement with Miles Community College leading the way with an improvement of about 22%, from 38 to 60%.

As we all know, reasons for variations in the rates are many. For example, the open access policy of school enrollment could easily affect the graduation rates. The posting and ranking of the state college graduation rates, nevertheless, provides the context for dialogs between citizen, policy makers and educators. Further research should help to reveal the favorable mechanism to improve college graduation rates.

US College Graduation Rates by State for 2009-10 graduates

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CL Higher Education Center

Related articles:
US College Graduation Rates by State - 2010 Ranking

College Graduation Rates by State for 2008-09 graduates
College Graduation Rates Ranking by State - 2008-09 Graduates
US College Graduation Rates by Race by State - 2009 IPEDS

The CL Higher Education Center just released the compiled state by state college graduation rate data for 2009-10 college graduates. The compiled rates includes state rates for different types/sectors of institutions breaking down by race and gender. Graduation rates for non-resident alien are also included.


The released data is based on the 2010 Graduation Rate survey conducted by the IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) division of the National Center for Education
Statistics (NCES) of the US Department of Education. For the IPEDS graduation rate survey, IPEDS only collect the race, gender and non-resident alien status from schools that offer degrees that take two or more years to complete. For schools that offers degrees with less than two years to complete, only the total head counts are collected. Short discussion on the scope and limitation of the IPEDS graduation rate survey can also be found in my previous article : College Graduation Rates by State for 2008-09 graduates.

For 2010, the overall college graduation rate for US citizen is 49% for the continental US states and D.C. assuming that all students attending less-than-2-years schools are all US citizen. For degree-granting schools, the US continental graduation rate is 46%. The corresponding rate for non-degree granting schools is 67%. For the 2010 survey, about 12% students accounted for attended non-degree-granting schools and most (74%) of the students attending non-degree-granting schools attending less-than-2-years institutions.

In terms of gender profiles, which is only applicable to colleges offer at least 2 year degrees, women posted an overall graduation rate of 48% for degree-granting schools while men posted a rate of 43%. In comparison, the non-resident alien women posted a rate of 51% while the alien men posted a rate of 48%. For non-degree-granting schools, US women posted a rate of 68% while men posted a rate of 64%. There are very few (a total of 264) non-resident alien enrolled in US non-degree-granting schools with an average rate of 63% (64% for women and 63% for men).

Related articles will be posted later.

Transforming a Region

Original Article

Summary goes here!

Haven't blog for quite a while. This one resonant with me. So much of it matched perfectly with what I have been advocate: The responsibility, the culture, the work study, the adaptivity ...

Our unprepared graduates

Original Article

Summary goes here!

To me, I have read this kind of articles long enough and have heard enough of proposed solution and I am basically not very interested in this kind of articles anymore.

For this particular one, the value is that it pointed out the quality of college graduate is of concern. However, this is not the first time this idea been pointed out. Personally, I have asked this question for a long time and there are various others.

The bigger question is what we are going to do to solve this problem.

For the beginner, we have to understand couple of things. First of all, our higher education all like to be unique and all have their own mission and there is no way to compare them - claimed our higher education insider (Presidents, Professors ... alike). Second of all, all our higher education claimed to equipped our students with critical thinking skills that none of our higher education insider knows how to quantify it. Third and not the last, our higher education insiders believe United State has the best higher education system in the world and there is no need to fix.

As we all know, higher education insiders include a lot of well educated, sophisticate professors, whose words carry weights - right or wrong is a different issue. But, as we all know, protecting self-interest is not immunized by any human beings including professors. In order for us to inches to anywhere closer to the solution, we have to exam these myth.

To continue...

The University of Wherever

Original Article

Summary goes here!

This has been my idea all these times. Like the article said, a lot of those in question can be resolved. For example, the evaluation or test can be arranged at a test center similar to what ACT has been handled all these years.

The biggest problem I see is actually the accreditation. Just think about this, they can't even trust Thrun to issue a Standford credit. The 'statement of accomplishment' may good to show someone who knows who Thrun is. But in general, it is useless for any practical purpose. Do you think that is what a 'normal' student is looking for? I doubt it.

One thing I would like to point out is that the statement 'There would be huge audiences and paychecks for superstar teachers, but dimmer prospects for those who are less charismatic.' is not necessary true. In the learning world, it is not the best written book will have the best effect on all students. Based on student’s background, some less than stellar book may have the most effect on some students. The same is true for lecturer. Based on the growing-up experiences of a lecturer, their illustration of a topic can be totally different and affect the same audience at different level. So, there is no short of the need for lecturer. Even for that non-lecturer, they can serve the purpose of counselor and customize the information to students' need.

Again, I see the greatest obstacle in evaluation and accreditation. Given that none of the professors these days supporting some kind of uniformed evaluation and the accreditation is still based largely on none student-achievement based factors, I see no light in front of this yet.

5 Myths of Remedial Ed

Original Article

Summary goes here!

Quick notes on points:
1. College Ready Standard - more important is standard on HS outcome which should be based on the reasonable achievable goal.
2. Don't care what college do with it's incoming students, the outcome is what should be demonstrated and published.
3. All solution should encourage responsibility.

How to interpret and select Peer Institution Criteria - An Essay

Since we are interested in ranking the performance of the school management, our pick of peer institutions should have similar resources and constrains so that the differences in performance can be attributed to the management of the school.

Peer institution comparison is a common practice for gauging higher institution progresses.

However, the practice of selecting peer institution and how comparison should be examined are not well understood.

This article is trying to shad some light on these two topics.

For selecting peer institutions, the general idea is pick institutions with similar values on some variables/measures. Once these peer institutions are selected, other measures are commonly used to gauge institutions progresses. A logic question that raised from this process is whether a variable should be treated as the picking variable or the comparison variable? If we are interested in gauging progresses caused by an institution's management/administration team, the answer to the question can then be answered logically.

Since we are interested in ranking the performance of the school management, our pick of peer institutions should have similar resources and constrains so that the differences in performance can be attributed to the management of the school. The resources and constrains should referred to things that isn't normally changeable by the will of the school.

To demonstrate the point, let's compare the number of graduates and enrollment a year of an institution. In this comparison, the enrollment could be a better variable than the number of graduates to be used as the picking variable since the enrollment to a large degree are constrained by the size or resource of the school while the number of graduates can be influenced by the deployment of better student support system by the management team. On the other hand, the resources provided by government to public institutions can be a better picking variable than the enrollment since with given resources, institutions can still achieving different level of enrollment success by management team's recruiting efforts.

The topic on how comparison should be examined can also be demonstrated with examples. For example, library expenditure can be used to rank peer institutions. The assumption is that the higher the spending, the better is the school. However, we can argue that in the name of servicing the students and faculties, the library spending is not the meaningful measure since the thing that really matter to students and faculties is the amount of content that is available to students and faculties. An institutions could have lower the library spending by subscribing to online libraries. While the spending is less, the content available to students and faculties are increased.

The other common case is that of the faculty salary. Institutions constantly use the peer institutions to solicit State's support in increasing faculty's salaries. Even though these are legitimate use of peer institutions, there are usually untold stories. Suppose two peer institutions are similar in all measures, the increase of the faculty salaries will inevitably increase the cost of of a degree in that institution. What is mean is that in order to convincingly present its case, institution have to also show their competitiveness in their management too. Likely than not, when presented these kind of agenda, institutions will choose to ignore the other measures, it is, then, the responsibility of the overseeing professional agency, be it the coordination board or legislature, to articulate the case.

False Hope

Original Article

Summary goes here!

The original article is about a community college struggled to keep its open admission policy with tough budget time. With the low turn out of the remedial education, the article is intended to justify its move to move away from the open admission policy.

To offer my opinion, I would like to start with my believe of what education should be. Since human are not born equal intellectually, the best we can hope to come out of the education is for each person to reach their potential. In order for people to reach their potential, they need be inspired to be responsible and always do their best. Achievements may vary for each person, but the result is the best we can have.

This believe inevitably lead to the idea that college is not for everyone. However, this is a matter of 'to what extend'. To me, if all human being are doing their best, what left out will be those that are not capable. This is where the society should extend its helping hand for these people.

As point out above, the ultimate goal of education is, therefore, to teach and inspire students to be responsible and to do their best. Applying this to our K12 education, the question to ask is 'If all/most of our high school graduates did their best?' and 'How can we change that?'. To answer these two questions, we need to ask 'How do we know students aren't doing their best or reaching their potential?' and 'Why students aren't doing their best?'.

The answer to the first question can, at least, come from the comparing of students' achievement with their peers. The second question is much more difficult to answer since factors are many. Depend on what people believe, approaches differ. However, please remember that, no matter what approaches we take, we should emphasis the responsibility.

As we all know, like the intellectual, not all students are having the same support from home, family and communities. However, to focus our discussion on what school and teacher can do, we will deferred those factors for now.

In general, responsible is a much abstract concept that isn't easy to teach or evaluate. Common approach to teach responsibility, begin with some practical approaches like goal settings and progress evaluation.


My lines of thinking are students need be taught to understand the importance of taking up their responsibility and the importance of doing their best. Again, the basic idea is that, given nothing else is changed, doing their best is the best result we can come out of the situation. That being said, we understand that there are other things that we have to do to even teach students to understand the importance of being responsible.

As the history had taught us, we do not born with the inspiration of taking up responsibility and doing the best. The question is, then, how do we make them and how do we teach them and how do we inspire them?

To make them,





As I mentioned in my comment to the original article,


The open admission policy is a good thing. However, to be fair to the community, there isn't any reason to waste the public resources. If I am working hard to make my living, I expect anyone that I supported to pay the same earnest effort toward their life.

With that in mind, in my opinion, the open admission only make sense in a society where all citizen are inspired to work to their best. Given that not all our citizen are motivated to do their best, it is only reasonable to ask them to demonstrate their commitment by passing minimum requirements.

As an item I outlined in my 2008 campaign, the mission of a community college should be determined by the community, especially the remedial education.

=====My comments posted at InsideHigherEd.com =========
Connie is getting to the crux.

It is true that not everyone are intellectually equal. But for most people, the K12 curriculum is attainable. It is really a matter of studying.

If K12 were not able to bring students to that level, they should be hold accountable. So are those students and parents.

Community resources is not to be wasted. It should be used on people that put out earnest efforts. Otherwise, we are prompt people to cheat on the system.

The goal of the education, as always, is to teach people to be responsible and to do their best. The accountability measure is simply a passive safety net to ensure the minimum conformation. It will not produce a fast paced progress.

Our education have failed at its root, any effort of fixing it without addressing this basic concept is not going to obtain any significant progress.

Accountability and Resposibility

Summary goes here!

As the nation is working on the accountability in education. Please do not forget that a higher goal is to create responsible citizen.

An accountable system is necessary as human being aren't civilized/inspired enough to motivate themselves. The substance and indulgent are still driven the life of most human beings. However, building the accountable system is simply a passive safe net. By itself, it will not build a better future for human being or the nation. A passive system will only move the society at its tolerable slow pace. To accelerate, we need to create responsible citizens that motivate and drive themselves. Inspire them with the responsibility, the duty and the future of the human being.

Measuring Post-College Gainful Employment: New Government Rule Makes Sense

Original Article

Summary goes here!

The only thing I have trouble with the Department of Education's gainful employment is that what is the single reason these rules should not apply to all institutions? By the way, to be fair, the public tax dollar used in supporting the public institution should be included in the calculation.

The article mentioned: "Next, policymakers need to find a way to hold all education programs accountable". I can't see why next. Why not now? What the Department of Education is afraid of? Department of Education's job is the level the playing ground, not to play favoritism.

Personally, I applaud the intent. But I can't agree with Department of Education's favoritism. As an un-biased government agency, it should always hold the fairness to its highest standard.

What Degrees Should Mean

Original Article

The point is to focus on what student learned. Not how you teach them or how institutions structure their courses.

I think the work done by Lumina has it's implication and use in generally framing the shared understanding. But, as mentioned through out the article, there is a long way to go to get to the campus level.

I would like related back to points raised by two commentators:

Andy Rundquist: "Not all employers care where a candidate got their BA/BS degree, but those that do have a lot to aid in their decision. Does the school have a good reputation? Have we hired someone from there before? "

Patrick F. Bassett: "Demonstrations of Learning"

As we all know it, institutions and faculties have a lot to say about how they like their students to achieve. That is all very well. But, on the other hand, that do not impose or limit what employers are looking for.

At this point in time, employers, in general, do not have the resources to do a thorough evaluation of their applicant. They are relied on interviews, references and reputations ... etc. Part of the reason, of cause, is a judgmental call on how much cost is worth to spend to fill a particular job, especially when there is no ready made assessment tools that can tell candidates apart.

Now, what if there were such assessment tools available? Noted that I use the plural. Each institutions are free to set their directions, tools will evaluate various kind of achievements. Employer is free to look at various combination of achievements. For highly academic courses, there are still markets for it, since the appropriate employers will understand that the usual assessment tools are not suitable in these cases.

The point is to focus on what student learned. Not how you teach them or how institutions structure their courses.

Lumina and faculties' work in defining the learning are of great use in framing the assessment tools.

Are Undergrads Learning Much in College?

Original Article

Graduation rates and assessments are measures that balance each other.

I am in the opinion that the real study begins with students pondering on books.

As to solving today's problem, we need to support professors while, at the same time, evaluate students and publish the results.

I believe most of our professors are well qualified. It is our college kids that need to work hard. For these old kids, it is not the professors' job to tracking them down. Professors are there to provide guidance when these old kids run into obstacles while studying.

Part of the problems these day is that SOME professors are taking the easy way out when facing pressures from student evaluations and administrators and this is why we need to support our professors by evaluating students' learning and publishing the results.

If large percent of graduates failed assessments, it may indicate that professors may have been too easy on their students. This give professors voices to boost their grading system. Publishing the results will help professors to fend off pressures from administrators whose only goal is to boost the graduation rate.

Graduation rates and assessments are measures that balance each other.

For-Profit Colleges Could Do More on Shortage of Health-Care Workers

Original Article

Summary goes here!

The supply and demand is a complicate problem. But I am glad that at least some people begin to understand the idea of planned policy. As I point out in my various articles, one important role of government is to plan the future by bring in not just the vision but the practical considerations.

As to the question of matching the education to workforce need, a study done with the Nebraska data can provide a guide. There are, of cause, other factors to make the approach more precise, but it is a beginning.

Smarten up college students before adding more graduates

Original Article

I support the idea of holding quality before quantity. But I have doubts about critical thinking.

I am simply interested in the title of the article, given that I personally have doubts about the so called critical thinking - which I will detailed a bit later.

For now, I would suggest these researchers to start small with just science and engineer majors and test them with practical questions. For these majors, the gain in knowledge is much easy to measure and quantified - but, still, this will not degrade the conclusion since graduates from different school would still not be equal.

As to the critical thinking I promised to detail, I will begin couple of articles I read on the web. One article interviewed three professors and all of them claimed that their field of study trained students critical thinking skills. When asked about how they measure them, all they can say is from their observation. In another article, a professor was asked to offer courses about critical thinking. He ordered all books about critical thinking and studied. His conclusion? Those people writing about critical thinking are nuts, which is not exactly his words - but you got the idea.

For those people like to dwarf science and engineer to knowledge other than critical thinking, I challenge them to master these knowledge before claiming the superior of the critical thinking. Math is based everything on logic or, reasoning, if you will. Would you argue that critical thinking is not based on reasoning? Even though math formalized the expression, it does not diminish any of the reasoning process. Physics and Chemistry all derive their conclusions through reasoning.

Prior Learning Assessment

Original Article

Summary goes here!

So. How far away is this from evaluation students with various background? Likely these students were attending different institutions. So why is it inappropriate to evaluate graduates from various institutions?

I believe it is appropriate to evaluate graduates from various institutions. It is true that one test will not show a person's all ability. But that is a separate question on how to interpret the testing result. If someone is totally disagree with a testing result, he or she is free to hire the one with the lowest score. With multiple test results available to the public, public will vote with their feet to select the most appropriate school that meet their needs.

US College Graduation Rates by Race by State - 2009 IPEDS

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US College graduation Rate by Race by State - 2010 IPEDS
US College Graduation Rate by State for 2009-10 graduates
College Graduation Rates by State - 2009 Ranking
Data release: College Graduation Rates by State for 2008-09 graduates

Race in United States is a much debated topic. Tying race to discrimination is a sequel of historical events. The subsistence of the racism is continually disputed. The data revealed here is too limited to settle the disagreement. But we do hope the data can pointed to the weak spot in our education system and the solution with emphasis on personal obligation can be developed. In author's opinion, some of today's approach in improving minorities' education attainment is overreaching and is themselves racial biased and undermined the important principle of personal responsibility. Services should be made available to all regardless of race. It takes responsible person to seek helps. Which race group actually uses these services is not a racial issue.

Opinion aside, objective view of the data is definitely in order.

This analysis is based on the data released earlier by the CL Higher Education Center. The analysis dis-regard the non-residence alien. The US total also exclude US minor islands and territories.

The College Graduation Rates by Race for the US states are shown in table 1 while the table 2 shows the same data with the inclusion of US minor islands and territories with differences highlighted. The difference for Asian are mainly caused by the inclusion of the Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The changes for Hispanic are the effect of including the Puerto Rico. The rest of the analysis would focus on the US states and Washington DC.

Table 1 - US states - including DC

Sector	Native	Asian	Black	Hispanic	White	Total
Public 4Yr	35%	65%	36%	43%	57%	53%
NProfit 4Yr	46%	75%	44%	57%	67%	64%
Profit 4Yr	41%	42%	31%	43%	40%	38%
Public 2Yr	17%	25%	12%	16%	23%	20%
NProfit 2Yr	23%	51%	46%	47%	55%	51%
Profit 2Yr	58%	72%	47%	63%	63%	59%

Table 2 - With US minor islands and territories**

Sector	Native	Asian	Black	Hispanic	White	Total
Public 4Yr	35%	64%	36%	43%	57%	53%
NProfit 4Yr	46%	75%	44%	43%	67%	63%
Profit 4Yr	41%	42%	31%	41%	40%	38%
Public 2Yr	17%	25%	12%	16%	23%	20%
NProfit 2Yr	23%	51%	46%	63%	55%	55%
Profit 2Yr	58%	72%	47%	61%	63%	59%

Fig. 1 shows the US average graduation rates by race by sector. In general, White and Asian stand out in the traditional institutions (Public and Private not-for-profit institutions). In other sectors, White and Asian college graduation rates are comparable to other races. Overall, the public two year sector shows the lowest college graduation rates for all races. Within each sector, the Black usually exhibit the lowest rate except at the public four year sector, where the Native American show the lowest college graduation rate. It is also interest to see that the private not-for-profit sectors have higher college graduation rates than their public counter parts.

Fig. 1 - US average graduation rates for each sector by race



Figure 2. present the same information as in Figure 1 except grouped by each race. Within all races, the private for-profit two year sector demonstrates high rates, only within White and Asian it seconds to the private not-for-profit four year sector.

Fig. 2 - US average college graduation rates for each race by sector


Figure 3 is an un-traditional display of a set of histogram for Asian. Each histogram/curve show the number of states at each graduation rate for a given sector. For example, there are 12 states that have college graduation rates for Asian greater than 55% and less than 60% for the public four year sector/curve while there are 9 states have college graduation rates greater than 30% and less than 35% for the private for-profit four year sector/curve.

Figure 3 demonstrates clearly that, for Asian, the average college graduation rates for each sector are representative except for the not-for-profit two year sector, where most of the states have a rate of 0% and rates are spread out without some kind of concentration or locality.

Fig. 3 - College graduation rate for Asian by sector


Figure 4 displayed similar information as in Figure 3 except it is for the Black. Even though the US average college graduation rate for the private not-for-profit four year sector is comparable to other sectors for Black, figure 4 shows that the rate varies a lot in regard to different states.

Fig. 4 - College graduation rate for Black by sector


Figure 5, 6 and 7 illustrate the same kind of information for Hispanic, Native American and White.

Fig. 5 - College graduation rate for Hispanic by sector


Fig. 6 - College graduation rate for Native American by sector


Fig. 7 - College graduation rate for White by sector


Figure 8 modeled after previous figures to display the college graduations rates for each race in the public four your sector. This chart clearly shows that the White and Asian are comparable except that there are some states where Asian exhibits higher rates.

Fig. 8 - College graduation rates for public four year sector by race


Figure 9 to 13 show the similar information as in Figure 8 for each sector.

Fig. 9 - College graduation rates for private not-for-profit four year sector by race


Fig. 10 - College graduation rates for private for-profit four year sector by race


Figure 11 is an very interested one. For one, this is the only one that all races are having good localities. Second of all, the White seems to be the one that is doing better even though the US average college going rates for public two year sector clearly show that the Asian is doing better than the White. The mystery is solved when dig deeper into the data. The data show that the high average college graduation rate for Asian in the public two year sector is caused by a single state with high Asian public two year sector enrollment, the California, which has a college graduation rate of 36% for Asian. This means that even though on average, Asian is doing good in public two year sector, it is not a Nation wide fact. It is also worth to note that the only state with meaningful high college graduation rates for the Native American is Wisconsin which enrolled 199 students. The other two states only enroll a total of 7 Native Americans. The other high rate state worth noting is the South Dakota, which post a rate of 64% for White.

Fig. 11 - College graduation rates for public two year sector by race


Figure 12 demonstrates that value of this kind of charts, where the meaning of average college graduation rates for private not-for-profit two year sector have very limited value.

Fig. 12 - College graduation rates for private not-for-profit two year sector by race


Fig. 13 - College graduation rates for private for-profit two year sector by race



**Updated on March 1, 2012.

College Graduation Rates by State - 2009 Ranking

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US College Graduation Rates by State for 2009-10 graduates
College Graduation Rates by State for 2008-09 graduates
US College Graduation Rates by Race by State - 2009 IPEDS

Due partly to the economic downturn, college enrollments throughout the United State are going up and President Obama's call for more higher education have been partly responded. However, to fully respond to Obama's call and the need of college graduates for our workforce, we need pay attentions to colleges' graduation rates.

To pursue that agenda, it is tempting to create integrated state rates and to rank states to draw public's attention.

It is, however, in our opinion, that we can achieving such a goal without getting into the complexity of producing an appropriately integrated state rates as outline in a tech. article.

For most states, only public higher education institutions are under the direct control of state or the public. It is, therefore, of importance to look at college graduation rates for public institutions instead of private colleges in a state.

Based on the published data, it is clear that there are very few public institutions that fall into categories of less-than-two year or non-degree-granting institutions. The two major categories are, then, the public four-year schools and the public two-year schools.

By running summarized statistics on this two groups of schools, we found that, statistically, they deserved to be compared in separate groups. As shown in the following 2 charts, almost all states have a graduation rate between 40 and 70% for public four year institutions and a graduation rate between 10 and 40% for public 2 year institutions.

Public 4 year institutions:


Public 2 year institutions:


Exception to the above rules are the District of Columbia, the state of Alaska and the state of South Dakota. The District of Columbia has a very low rate(11%) for public four year institutions. But our data also show that District of Columbia had very low public four year enrollment. Most of the enrollment at District of Columbia are in private not-for-profit institutions. The state of Alaska has hardly any other type of institutions except the four year public institutions. The four year public institution graduation rate is at a low 26%. As to the state of South Dakota, it simply have a very high graduation rate (61%) for its public two year institutions.

Ranking of the graduation rates for both the public 4 year institutions and public 2 year institutions are presented below:

For public four year institutions:

State	US Cohort	US Graduates	Graduation Rates	Rank
Iowa	9,526	6,526	69%	1
Virginia	27,187	18,578	68%	2
New Jersey	15,460	10,215	66%	3
New Hampshire	4,737	3,081	65%	4
California	68,977	44,593	65%	5
Delaware	4,367	2,780	64%	6
Maryland	14,132	8,905	63%	7
Washington	15,537	9,550	61%	8
Pennsylvania	42,524	26,035	61%	9
Vermont	3,162	1,929	61%	10
South Carolina	14,266	8,565	60%	11
Illinois	25,350	15,167	60%	12
Connecticut	8,323	4,977	60%	13
Michigan	37,612	22,362	59%	14
North Carolina	27,898	16,438	59%	15
Wisconsin	24,955	14,257	57%	16
Nebraska	7,196	4,006	56%	17
Minnesota	16,258	9,038	56%	18
Rhode Island	3,565	1,980	56%	19
Wyoming	1,380	763	55%	20
Kansas	11,522	6,369	55%	21
Massachusetts	12,836	7,085	55%	22
Arizona	14,721	8,124	55%	23
Missouri	16,494	9,008	55%	24
US Total	903,647	481,687	53%
Oregon	9,232	4,901	53%	25
Colorado	20,140	10,659	53%	26
Mississippi	7,639	4,007	52%	27
Indiana	30,455	15,714	52%	28
New York	44,646	22,618	51%	29
Ohio	44,582	22,465	50%	30
Florida	55,264	26,515	48%	31
Maine	3,946	1,872	47%	32
Alabama	16,989	8,056	47%	33
North Dakota	5,888	2,784	47%	34
Tennessee	15,755	7,352	47%	35
Texas	59,456	27,409	46%	36
Georgia	29,771	13,434	45%	37
Kentucky	16,608	7,470	45%	38
West Virginia	10,840	4,823	44%	39
Montana	5,246	2,316	44%	40
South Dakota	4,820	2,118	44%	41
Oklahoma	15,580	6,545	42%	42
Hawaii	2,479	1,037	42%	43
Utah	8,420	3,471	41%	44
New Mexico	6,522	2,611	40%	45
Arkansas	11,495	4,418	38%	46
Louisiana	23,894	9,076	38%	47
Idaho	4,617	1,724	37%	48
Nevada	5,847	2,153	37%	49
Alaska	2,038	540	26%	50
District of Columbia	269	29	11%	51

For public two year institutions:

State	US Cohort	Graduates	Graduation Rate	Rank
South Dakota	2,086	1,280	61%	1
North Dakota	1,160	446	38%	2
Florida	15,669	5,762	37%	3
Alaska	11	4	36%	4
Utah	3,538	1,198	34%	5
Wisconsin	10,586	3,580	34%	6
Iowa	12,594	4,087	32%	7
Kansas	9,435	3,011	32%	8
Wyoming	2,177	641	29%	9
Nebraska	4,668	1,323	28%	10
Minnesota	16,558	4,462	27%	11
Washington	9,038	2,313	26%	12
California	89,289	22,733	25%	13
Maine	2,352	596	25%	14
Mississippi	16,674	4,224	25%	15
New Hampshire	1,711	425	25%	16
Kentucky	7,754	1,916	25%	17
Georgia	15,664	3,862	25%	18
Montana	1,362	333	24%	19
Colorado	6,891	1,568	23%	20
Missouri	12,453	2,644	21%	21
Arkansas	5,789	1,213	21%	22
Alabama	13,498	2,827	21%	23
Idaho	1,707	355	21%	24
US Total	601,982	122,996	20%
Illinois	26,487	5,197	20%	25
New York	47,158	9,249	20%	26
North Carolina	18,166	3,550	20%	27
Virginia	15,200	2,770	18%	28
Oklahoma	7,636	1,314	17%	29
Massachusetts	11,835	1,931	16%	30
New Jersey	25,464	3,995	16%	31
Arizona	7,865	1,205	15%	32
Louisiana	6,021	907	15%	33
Pennsylvania	16,823	2,518	15%	34
Michigan	19,669	2,893	15%	35
Oregon	6,447	885	14%	36
West Virginia	2,555	347	14%	37
New Mexico	5,512	735	13%	38
Maryland	13,169	1,753	13%	39
Ohio	15,638	2,038	13%	40
Hawaii	2,240	291	13%	41
Vermont	167	20	12%	42
Texas	48,893	5,663	12%	43
South Carolina	11,872	1,316	11%	44
Nevada	660	73	11%	45
Tennessee	12,090	1,310	11%	46
Connecticut	5,453	561	10%	47
Delaware	1,990	194	10%	48
Rhode Island	1,975	176	9%	49
Indiana	5,688	453	8%	50
District of Columbia	0	0	0%	51

As we all know, reasons for the rate variation are many. For example, the open access policy of institutions could easily affect the graduation rates. The posting and ranking of the state college graduation rates nevertheless provides the context for dialogs between citizen, policy makers and educators. Further research should help to reveal the favorable mechanism to improve college graduation rates.

College Graduation Rates by State for 2008-09 graduates

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CL Higher Education Center

Related articles:
US College graduation Rates by State - 2009-10 Graduates

College Graduation Rates Ranking by State - 2008-09 Graduates
US College Graduation Rates by Race by State - 2009 IPEDS

The CL Higher Education Center just released the compiled state by state college graduation rate data for 2008-09 college graduates.

The released data is based on the 2009 Graduation Rate survey conducted by the IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) division of the National Center for Education
Statistics (NCES) of the US Department of Education.

The IPEDS Graduation Rate Survey is constructed to track only the full-time, first-time college freshmen students. Part-time, transfer-in or other type of students is not considered in the survey. Even though not all students are counted, the resulting rates can be considered a general quality indicator of the institution.

For academic year based (e.g. semester, quarter ... etc.) institutions, only the full-time, first-time students who begin their college enrollment in the fall term are considered. For year round or program based schools, all full-time first-time students are account for in the IPEDS college graduation rate survey.

The graduation rates compiled in this data release is most commonly referred to as the 150% rate, which considered a student graduated only if the student graduated from a program within 150% of the length of the program. For bachelor program, only students graduated within 6 years are considered graduated. Students that take longer to graduates are not factored into the 150% graduation rate. For detailed information about the IPEDS Graduation Rate survey please check out the IPEDS graduation rate survey material.

The compiled rates includes state rates for different types/sectors of institutions breaking down by race and gender. For the purpose of comparing, the aggregated rate do not include the non-resident alien which is included in the IPEDS survey.

Related articles will be posted later.

Job outlook for college graduates - the supply and demand in Nebraska

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CL Higher Education Center

CL Higher Education Center has just released the data behind the 'workforce supply/demand higher education - Nebraska' report. The methodology is discussed in 'college workforce supply/demand - methodology'.

The released Excel workbook contains few worksheets. One for the oversupply academic programs and one for the under supply academic programs. Besides these two worksheets, there are worksheets that help reader look into how the oversupply and under-supply lists are derived.

In the case of oversupply academic programs, let's look at the academic program: 130301 - Curriculum and Instruction - Master Degree. If we look at the XWalk_ByCIP worksheet, we found that the only appropriate occupation for this CIP is the Instructional Coordinators. That occupation has an annual job opening of 37 while Nebraska colleges produced 523 graduates in the academic year of 2008-09.

An example for the under-supply academic program should provide enough exercises for reader to understand the result better. Look under the XWalk_ByCIP worksheet for the CIP of 521001, it is clear that seven occupations are appropriate for graduates from this CIP. The seven occupations provide a total of 340 job openings a year. By looking under the RvlCIP worksheet for this CIP, we notice that three of the seven occupations can also accept graduates from two other CIPs: 521005 and 521003. These 2 CIPs produce a total 5 graduates in the 2008-09 academic year. The net result is that there can have at least 335 job opening for our focus CIP of 521001. Since during the 2008-09 academic year, there were 226 Nebraska college graduates that are from this CIP, the net results is that there will be at least 109 jobs remain unfilled.

An interesting question to ask is what's the economic implication of all these?

college workforce supply/demand - methodology

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In conclusion, we have proofed that the methodology we used does allow us to identify both the definitely over supply and under supply academic programs. To put this in plain English, it means that if we labeled an academic program over supply, the program is definitely over supply - no matter how you simulate the hiring based on the crosswalks. The same is true for the under supply academic programs. Our designation, however, does not suggest to the policy maker to increase the number of graduates of all under supply academic programs to the amount of shortages since some of the programs are related.

This article is a technical note that described the research methodology employed in the analysis of my previous article titled 'workforce supply/demand higher education - Nebraska'.

The whole idea behind the analysis is what we called the worst case scenario analysis, which is commonly used in simplify a complicate problem so that some guidance for further analysis can be devised. A common result of such analysis is the lower bound or upper bound of a variable of interest.

The problem of the supply and demand interaction between higher education and workforce is a complex one. It is not mathematically challenge but nevertheless a complex one. The goal is aimed to understand how college/higher education graduates are fed into the workforce.

The ground work to the problem was laid years ago. Researcher and workforce development workers, after years of study, have documented the field and the level of knowledge needed for each occupation. In the same time, crosswalk tables were created that linked each academic program to the related occupation. In the crosswalk framework, the occupation is classified by the so called 'Standard Occupational Code' (SOC) and the academic program is classified by the 'Classification of Instructional Program' (CIP) code and the degree level awarded.

The complexity of the problem rooted at the fact that the crosswalks between the academic program and the occupation is not a single one to one map. As we can all image that graduates from one academic program can be fed into more than one occupation. The reverse of that is alos true: An occupation can accept graduates from more than one academic programs. It is this complexity that have limited most analysis to a smaller scale. For example, a Texas supply and demand study only focused on few big categories and the 'The Occupational Supply Demand System' website only provides tools for navigating between academic programs and occupations.

An additional complexity is also exist that the education classification system used to classify the occupation is not directly compatible with that used to classify the academic program either. For our study, since we are only interested in college educated graduates, all jobs classified with less than college degree requirement are discarded based on the idea that, for most cases, it wouldn't worth the investment for a college graduates to take that kind of jobs. In order to address the incompatibility between the two education classification system, a new education classification is improvised which allows the creation of a one to one map, in the mathematical sense, from both the academic and the occupational system to the new classification. The mapping is outlined below:

Academic	Ours	Occupational
Less Than 1 Year Awards	Less than 2 year certificates	Postsecondary vocational training
Between 1 and 2 Years Awards	Less than 2 year certificates	Postsecondary vocational training
Associates Degrees	Associate (+Less than 4 year)	Associate degree
Between 2 and 4 Years Awards	Associate (+Less than 4 year)	Associate degree
Bachelors Degrees	Bachelor (+Certificates)	Bachelor's or higher degree, plus work experience
Bachelors Degrees	Bachelor (+Certificates)	Bachelor's degree
Post-Bachelors Certificates	Bachelor (+Certificates)	Bachelor's degree
Post-Bachelors Certificates	Bachelor (+Certificates)	Bachelor's or higher degree, plus work experience
Masters Degrees	Master (+Certificates)	Master's degree
Post-Masters Certificates	Master (+Certificates)	Master's degree
Doctorate Degrees	Doctor	Doctoral degree
First Professional Degrees	First Professional (+Certificates)	First professional degree
Post-First Professional Certificates	First Professional (+Certificates)	First professional degree
Doctor's degree - research/scholarship	Doctor	Doctoral degree
Doctor's degree - professional practice	First Professional (+Certificates)	First professional degree
Doctor's degree - Other	Doctor	Doctoral degree

In theory, with enough computing power, we can simulate all possible scenarios and draw conclusions from the all possible assumptions. However, that kind of approach could easily bury the intuitive common sense and lost the researcher in the forest of data.

Since our goal is to identify the definitely over-supply and the definitely under-supply academic programs, we chose to use the worse case scenario analysis.

Since the process of establishing the lower bound for over-supply is much straightforward, we will describe it first.

By definition, an academic program is over-supply if there are fewer jobs appropriate for the program than the number of graduates from that academic program. By assuming that all appropriate jobs openings for an academic program are available to graduates from that academic program, we can calculate the number of graduates that could not find a job opening by subtracting the number of job openings from the number of graduates. If the result of the calculation is a postive number, we know the number of graduates would not be able to find the appropriate jobs. In reality, some of the appropriate job openings could be filled with graduates from other academic program and, hence, reduce the number of openings available to our focus academic program. However, the program we identified as over supply will still be over supplying its graduates, just to a bigger amount. The result we arrived is, therefore, a lower bound and the academic program we identified is, therefore, a definitely over supply program.

The process of producing the lower bound for the under-supply academic program is a bit more complicated. The idea begins with that if an academic program produced fewer graduates than what the industry can absorb, then that academic program is a under-supply program. The number of shortage in supply or the number of job openings to fill can be calculated by subtracting the number of graduates from the number of those job openings. As a first attempt, we could proceed the calculation using job openings from all appropriate occupations for a given academic program. However, in reality, some of the appropriate job openings could be filled with graduates from other academic programs. The number we arrived previous is, therefore, an over estimate of the shortage problem. The shortage may not even exist if all those appropriate jobs can be filled with graduates from other academic programs.

To resolve this problem, we begin our first step by identifying all the rival academic programs of our focus academic program. By definition, the rival academic programs are programs that could supply graduates to any of the appropriate job opening of our focus academic program. Once we identified all the rival academic program, we can calculated the total rival graduates by adding all the graduates from these rival academic programs. We, now, recalculate the shortage or the number of job opening to fill by subtracting both the number of graduates of our focus program and the rival graduates from the appropriate job openings of our focus program.In reality, not all rival graduates can fill those appropriate job openings. In that case, the number of job openings to be filled will be larger. The result we arrived is, therefore, an absolute minimum of the number of job openings need to be filled. We, therefore, termed that academic program a definitely under-supply program.

In conclusion, we have proofed that the methodology we used does allow us to identify both the definitely over supply and under supply academic programs. To put this in plain English, it means that if we labeled an academic program over supply, the program is definitely over supply - no matter how you simulate the hiring based on the crosswalks. The same is true for the under supply academic programs. Our designation, however, does not suggest to the policy maker to increase the number of graduates of all under supply academic programs to the amount of shortages since some of the programs are related. Increase the graduates in one academic program may reduce the number of job openings of a rival academic program and move that program off the under supply list.