IPEDS college freshmen retention rate - 2008 state level released

Release note at CL Higher Education Center

The CL Higher Education Center just released the 2008 state level college freshmen retention rate data.

The CL Higher Education Center is releasing the 2008 state level IPEDS college freshmen retention rate data.

The data is compiled from the National Center for Education Statistics'(NCES) IPEDS(Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) survey. The release detailed each State's student retention rate for each sector (e.g. Public 4 Year, Public 2 Year, Private non-for profit 4 year ...). The release also separated out rates just for degree-granting institutions.

The college freshmen retention rate, in essence, measures the percent of students that still enrolled in the same institution after one year of their initial enrollment. For official definition, please check out the IPEDS survey site.

Teacher Q | How Should Teachers Be Evaluated?

Original Article

Summary goes here!

Well. I will continue to add idea to this.

For now, how about reverse proportional to the differences between Test_Scores and the Course_Grades?

Why? Personally, I believe teachers should only be held responsible for part of a student's learning. However, if a teacher award a student an A and that student failed a statewide or nation wide objective test, the teacher is definitely failed. On the other hand, if a student do not complete assignments, the teacher should only be held responsible is he or she did not contact parents about the situation. I know there could be loopholes in this proposal. So, don't jump the gun. I simply try to point out that we need first defines what is the responsibility of a teacher.

IPEDS Higher Ed Residence and Migration - 2008 state level Imputed released

CL Higher Education Center

Do you like to know where your high school graduates went to college? What percentage of your high school graduates went to out of state colleges? To what kind of colleges? Private or public? The recent data release from CL Higher Education Center can answer your questions.

The CL Higher Education Center just put forward the state level summaries for the 2008 NCES IPEDS¹ residence and migration survey. This release uses the imputed data which, in theory, provide a better estimate to the real picture.

The report shows that Texas Higher Education as a whole enrolled the highest per cent (94.0) of their own recent high school graduates followed by California (92.5), New Jersey (91.3) and Michigan (90.7). For public 4 year schools, again, the Texas enrolled the highest per cent(95.7) of their own recent high school gradates who went to public 4 year school followed by California (95.3) and New Jersey (93.4).

The analysis also shows that 71.0% of recent high school graduates of District of Columbia who went to 4 year public schools went to out-of-state institutions followed by Minnesota (40.6) and New Jersey (38.7).

The data show that, on average, 16% of high school graduates who went to public 4 year institutions went to out of state institutions. On the other hand, only 3 percent of high school students who went to 2 year public institutions went to out of state institutions. Looking at private 4 year non-for profit institutions, it shows that 47% of high school graduates who attended private 4 year non-for profit institutions went to out of state institutions.

¹The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System is managed by the National Center for Education Statistics of US Education Department.

Making College ‘Relevant’

Original Article

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Now this is fresh. I had read so many articles that insists on the academic vs. career education. For most part, those articles stress the importance of liberal arts education without been able to quantify the benefit of it. It's not that the liberal art is not important, the problem I have is the passive response from experts in those fields to the question: How can you quantify the benefits of liberal arts? If you can't, how should others, say the employer, trust your work, aka, the students.

For career education, there are usually specific tasks or skill that can be measured and this translated to the verification of skills and, hence, the employment.

Immigrant law faces challenge

Original Article

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Couple of points I would like to express my opinion on. First of all, the label applied to these kids that was brought to the US illegally. Are they guilty? It seems most people are agreed on this. If this is the case, I think the issue is non-existence. Beside that, I like to point out one thing that I always have trouble with - the argument that we should always consider our citizen's benefit first.

In general, I have no trouble supporting the idea that a government is serving their people's interest. The thing that troubles me is the entitlement mindset that is behind it. I would like people to think about what this attitude have brought down our nation in all fields.

Let's think about the entitlement in the automobile industry for a moment. The idea of Union is a genuine one. But the question is if the considered environment do exist. Do we over protect the employee to the point that it became an entitlement? Is this what failed our domestic auto companies?

Policy makers should keep the entitlement in mind when they make policies. Whenever a grant is proposed, they should think about do we promote our citizen's sense of responsibility or do we promote the entitlement?

For the education, I would like to ask most of our parents: Do we really put our money where we think is important (i.e. education)? Have you try to save every penny for the education? Do you consider big HDTV more important than a bare dial-up to the internet?


As for the general immigration debate, it is a different issue.