EdPond - Education Pondered

Chinese Villagers Under Siege Mourn Man Who Died Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/12/16/chinese-villagers-under-siege-mourn-man-who-died

2011-12-16T06:08:00.000-08:00

Original Article

Sorry! Not a Education Related topic. But please spread the support for Chinese People.

I hope this is it for China!

Our unprepared graduates

2011-10-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-03T18:19:00.000-07:00

2011-01-27T14:51:00.000-08:00

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?

2011-01-25T10:32:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-24T05:49:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-20T17:50:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-22T10:45:00.000-08:00

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

2010-10-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

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Related Articles:
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 are shown in table 1.

Table 1

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

College Graduation Rates by State - 2009 Ranking

2010-10-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

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Related Articles:
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

2010-10-21T05:32:00.000-07:00

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CL Higher Education Center

Related articles:
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

2010-10-03T17:22:00.000-07:00

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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

2010-09-30T05:51:00.000-07:00

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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.

For-profit colleges under fire over value, accreditation

2010-09-29T09:50:00.000-07:00

Original Article

... we shall all do the the right and justice decision through the course of this revolution.

I think you can find all the related news post and reports.

I believe the title of the article is probably very close to the reality. However, it don't have to be. What I mean is that the for-profit nature of a institution does not have to always produce low value product. It is the regulations that matters. Just think about this, almost of our daily use products are produced by for-profit companies. Even in the world of space industry, NASA isn't over achievement compared with the Scaled.

The current affair is a typical case of finding the weakest to attack. It does not attempt to solve the bigger problem - the accountability. It is reported that while the rule proposed by the Obama administration is intended for the for-profit higher education institutions, non-for-profit institutions voice to against the regulation too - for afraid that the rule may one day applied to the non-for-profit institutions. As far as I am concern, I can't see why not. At least the idea of 'gainful employment' should also applied to public institutions. The low tuition of public institution should not be considered as an exemption since public institution are usually heavily subsidized by tax dollars.

As the article said, it all comes down to the standard. If you have been following education news about accountability, you know the amount resistance from institutions and professors/teachers. I were a teacher before and even though I don't have to like to be evaluated but I am definitely not afraid of being evaluated. Sometimes, I feel that people are over-reacting to the evaluation. In my case, not all my students are the brightest or the hard working type. But to prove that I am not a good teacher, you need more than a test score - for example, they will have to prove that given the same kids, other teacher can do a better job than I can. Yes, I do against firing teachers based sololy on students' test score. But test score itself is not the subject. After all they are objective indicators. The subject is on how to move forward from there. For one, teachers should definitely be given opportunities to present their cases.

For higher education, we all understand that trainings are diverse. However, again, objective measurement is never hurt. Institutions can provide their feedback to the way measurement is done and can ask to clarify what is been measured and can voice their disagreements on their goals of education. The public can look all these information and make decisions and create the market interaction. For example, certain people may considered that the math concept is a definite requirement for a engineer degree and they can choose to attend school with solid math concept program. On the other hand, certain other people may consider, with the computer in mind, that the concept of math isn't as important as it seems, they could be listening to institutions explanation and agreed with them.

With these information in place, people will know exactly what they get and it may happens that it is no longer worth to fabricate a big lie than to actually provide a good services or product.

Personally, I think the for-profit provides a 'private option' to the higher education mix. With its very nature of for-profit, it paid for them to focus everything in efficiency. This could provide a obvious contrast to how public institution is operated. Can these institution success? Given the success of our capitalized private industries, I believe they can given enough flexibility and appropriate regulation - just like all our private companies, we do not specify how much assets they much have, as long as they can produce a good product and did not label anything the product will not do on the product.

Of cause, like we all can image that the success of these institutions could impact our current higher education institutions in big ways. The resistance and hostility from other sectors of the higher education is also expected. But we shall all do the the right and justice decisions through the course of this revolution.

workforce supply/demand higher education - Nebraska

2010-09-29T06:24:00.000-07:00

Interact with the author through EduStats - We value your input.

For governing, the leader should look past the status quo and project the better future for the community. For education, the survival is a necessary and minimum. Seeking to reaching the learning limits of a human being is the goal.

More than 25 years ago, Ronald Reagan's 'A Nation at Risk' called for education reform. Since then, various projects aimed to improve American's education debuted.

Most recently, Barack Obama called for the increase of postsecondary education population. Due part to the economic downturn, the enrollment in postsecondary education do increase. The questions, however, is what kind of education these students are pursuing? In what field? Will the degrees they are getting fit the needs of the community? And, therefore, be able to find a job opening.

Through the years, researchers and workforce developers have been working hard in trying to answer this question. Education levels needed for jobs have been studied and tabulated. Fields of knowledge needed for particular jobs are also studied. Crosswalks between the academic program and the standard occupation code (SOC) have been built. However, even with all these advances the analysis of the data still post challenges.

As we can all imaging, the crosswalks between academic programs (classified by CIP code) and occupations is not a direct one to one mapping. A single academic programs may provides knowledge for several occupations. On the other hand, a single occupation classification may accepts graduates from various academic programs. And it is exactly this madness that limited the mass analysis of the workforce supply and demand data since manually sorting through each academic program or occupation is most likely needed. For example, a Texas supply and demand study only focused on the big categories. Also, the 'The Occupational Supply Demand System' website only provides tools for navigating between academic programs and occupations.

The data and methodology used to present the finding here represents a first attempt to answer this analysis need. The methodology used can be refined at a much higher processing cost but will be attempted later by the author. For now, our first order approach do provide some useful information for researchers and policy makers. This implies that now the governor, the education authorities and the policy maker can really put their thoughts in DESIGNing the future of Nebraska. Contrasting to the past, the decision of approving new academic program can now based on both the market's supply and demand and the students' interest.

Before presenting the findings, the author like to provide a word of caution. Fulfill the job market is not the ultimate goal for governing or education. For governing, the leader should look past the status quo and project the better future for the community. For education, the survival is a necessary and minimum. Seek to reaching the learning limits of a human being is the goal. The author would also like readers to keep perspectives on earnings and personal interest. None of the data presented is intended to emphasis the higher earning of a job.

The top 10 of our oversupplied academic programs are:

520201 Business Administration and Management (Bachelor training) - at least 539 graduates would not find a degree appropriate job.
520101 Business/Commerce, General (Bachelor training) - at least 526 graduates ...
130301 Curriculum and Instruction (Master training) - at least 486 graduates ...
260101 Biology/Biological Sciences, General (Bachelor training) - at least 470 ...
511613 Licensed Practical/Vocational Nurse(LPN, LVN, Cert, Dipl, AAS) (less than 2 year certificates) - at least 228 ...
131202 Elementary Education and Teaching (Bachelor training) - at least 217 ...
220101 Law (LL.B., J.D.) (First Professional) - at least 195 ...
521401 Marketing/Marketing Management, General (Bachelor training) - at least 177 ...
511201 Medicine (MD) (First Professional) - at least 150 ...
512001 Pharmacy (PharmD, BS/BPharm [Canada]) (First Professional) - at least 148 ...

The top 10 of our under-supplied academic programs are:

490205 Truck/Bus/Commercial Vehicle Operation (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 578 academic-training-appropriate job openings remain to be filled.
511601 Nursing - Registered Nurse Training (RN, ASN, BSN, MSN) (Associate training) - at least 330 ...
139999 Education, Other (Bachelor training) - at least 172 ...
460302 Electrician (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 133 ...
521001 Human Resources Management/Personnel Administration, General (Bachelor training) - at least 109 ...
110301 Data Processing and Data Processing Technology/Technician (Associate training) - at least 105 ...
310501 Health and Physical Education, General (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 96 ...
011102 Agronomy and Crop Science (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
011106 Range Science and Management (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
011105 Plant Protection and Integrated Pest Management (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
011103 Horticultural Science (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...

A very interesting observation of these two top 10 list is that the Registered Nurse is in shortage supply while the Practical/Vocational Nurse is oversupplied - I think you can imaging how this can happen with the mis-guided marketing campaign. I would like to see how much money have been wasted in producing these over supplied graduates.

*Detailed data table will be published in the up-coming articles. For interacting with the author, please go to here.

College going rates by state 2008 analysis

2010-08-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

Interact with the author through EduStats - We value your input.

CL Higher Education Center

Related blogs:
College Going Rates by State - 2008 Early Release
2006: College Going Rates by State - an Analysis
Estimated US College Going Rates by State - 2005-06

Is it the economic down turn or is it in response to Obama's call for more higher education enrollment? It doesn't seem to matter. The overall US college going rate for 2007-08 high school graduates do climb up for about 1.5%. The biggest gain occurred in the public 2-year colleges.

The overall US averages showed that the college going rate for degree-granting institutions increased from 61.7% in 2006 to 63.3% in 2008, an increase of 1.6%. At the mean time, the college going rate for non-degree-granting institutions decreased from 1.5% in 2006 to 1.4% in 2008 resulting in a net increase of 1.5% in the total college going rate.

overall rates by state

State	% Going Degree-Granting	% Going Non-Degree-Granting	% Going Colleges
Alabama	66.7%	0.2%	66.9%
Alaska	45.8%	1.7%	47.4%
Arizona	51.4%	1.5%	52.9%
Arkansas	62.5%	1.2%	63.8%
California	65.4%	1.3%	66.7%
Colorado	62.7%	0.8%	63.5%
Connecticut	68.1%	2.9%	70.9%
Delaware	66.2%	1.0%	67.2%
District of Columbia	53.4%	4.5%	57.9%
Florida	58.8%	1.9%	60.7%
Georgia	70.0%	1.6%	71.6%
Hawaii	62.4%	0.2%	62.6%
Idaho	50.2%	1.3%	51.5%
Illinois	57.4%	1.4%	58.8%
Indiana	65.7%	0.7%	66.4%
Iowa	64.3%	1.0%	65.3%
Kansas	65.4%	1.1%	66.6%
Kentucky	60.9%	1.0%	61.9%
Louisiana	65.3%	1.2%	66.5%
Maine	61.3%	1.1%	62.5%
Maryland	63.0%	1.4%	64.4%
Massachusetts	74.7%	1.7%	76.4%
Michigan	59.9%	1.2%	61.1%
Minnesota	69.2%	1.1%	70.3%
Mississippi	77.4%	0.7%	78.1%
Missouri	60.0%	1.1%	61.1%
Montana	57.5%	0.7%	58.2%
Nebraska	65.5%	0.9%	66.4%
Nevada	55.6%	1.8%	57.4%
New Hampshire	63.9%	1.4%	65.3%
New Jersey	71.2%	2.4%	73.6%
New Mexico	67.7%	0.6%	68.3%
New York	74.2%	1.9%	76.1%
North Carolina	66.0%	0.5%	66.5%
North Dakota	63.8%	1.6%	65.4%
Ohio	62.8%	1.2%	64.0%
Oklahoma	56.0%	4.2%	60.3%
Oregon	46.5%	0.9%	47.5%
Pennsylvania	64.1%	1.5%	65.6%
Rhode Island	67.4%	3.2%	70.6%
South Carolina	69.5%	0.7%	70.2%
South Dakota	72.1%	0.6%	72.7%
Tennessee	61.7%	2.8%	64.5%
Texas	56.9%	1.5%	58.4%
Utah	58.5%	1.4%	59.9%
Vermont	48.3%	0.5%	48.9%
Virginia	68.7%	0.6%	69.3%
Washington	50.8%	1.1%	51.9%
West Virginia	59.0%	2.3%	61.4%
Wisconsin	59.1%	0.6%	59.7%
Wyoming	58.9%	0.3%	59.2%

US Total	63.3%	1.4%	64.8%

For the non-degree-granting schools, the highest rates are that for the District of Columbia (4.5%), the state of Oklahoma (4.2%) and the state of Rhode Island (3.2%) - all other states are below 3.0%. In 2006, the rate for the District of Columbia was 8.6%, which is way above the rate of all other states.

Chart: % non-degree-granting

Focusing on the degree-granting institutions, it is showed that the public-2-year colleges made the biggest stride to increase the college going rate, it jumped from 17.8% in 2006 to 19.7% in 2008, an increase of 1.9%. Other rate changes include the decrease of 0.4% for the private not-for-profit 4-year colleges and the increase of 0.2% in the private for-profit 4-year sector.

Sector rates by state

State	% to Public 4 Year	% to Private 4 Yr Not For Profit	Trad. 4 Year	% to Private 4 Year For Profit	% to Public 2 Year	% to Private 2 Year Not For Profit	% to Private 2 Year For Profit	% to Degree Grntng

Alabama	31.5%	7.9%	39.3%	0.8%	26.1%	0.0%	0.4%	66.7%
Alaska	35.3%	6.9%	42.2%	1.9%	1.6%	0.0%	0.1%	45.8%
Arizona	21.5%	3.3%	24.7%	1.4%	23.6%	0.0%	1.6%	51.4%
Arkansas	35.0%	6.7%	41.6%	0.5%	20.1%	0.0%	0.3%	62.5%
California	22.6%	6.7%	29.3%	1.2%	34.1%	0.1%	0.7%	65.4%
Colorado	37.6%	10.6%	48.2%	1.6%	11.6%	0.1%	1.1%	62.7%
Connecticut	23.8%	27.7%	51.5%	1.4%	14.8%	0.3%	0.1%	68.1%
Delaware	22.4%	18.3%	40.7%	1.1%	23.7%	0.6%	0.2%	66.2%
District of Columbia	23.7%	21.3%	45.0%	1.9%	3.7%	0.2%	2.7%	53.4%
Florida	29.4%	8.2%	37.6%	2.9%	17.6%	0.0%	0.7%	58.8%
Georgia	40.7%	9.8%	50.5%	1.7%	16.8%	0.5%	0.4%	70.0%
Hawaii	23.2%	14.1%	37.4%	0.8%	23.5%	0.1%	0.5%	62.4%
Idaho	28.1%	9.3%	37.4%	0.6%	11.6%	0.1%	0.4%	50.2%
Illinois	23.1%	17.8%	41.0%	1.6%	14.2%	0.1%	0.6%	57.4%
Indiana	40.1%	14.1%	54.2%	1.8%	8.3%	0.2%	1.2%	65.7%
Iowa	22.5%	15.2%	37.7%	0.7%	25.6%	0.1%	0.2%	64.3%
Kansas	32.3%	9.0%	41.3%	0.6%	22.9%	0.3%	0.3%	65.4%
Kentucky	32.6%	11.1%	43.7%	1.2%	14.8%	0.0%	1.1%	60.9%
Louisiana	43.2%	6.5%	49.8%	0.6%	13.6%	0.0%	1.2%	65.3%
Maine	24.5%	22.5%	47.0%	0.6%	13.2%	0.0%	0.5%	61.3%
Maryland	24.1%	16.4%	40.5%	1.2%	20.8%	0.1%	0.4%	63.0%
Massachusetts	23.6%	33.3%	56.9%	0.8%	16.6%	0.1%	0.3%	74.7%
Michigan	30.4%	11.4%	41.7%	0.6%	17.2%	0.0%	0.3%	59.9%
Minnesota	29.7%	16.4%	46.1%	1.6%	20.9%	0.0%	0.6%	69.2%
Mississippi	21.0%	5.4%	26.5%	0.5%	49.7%	0.0%	0.8%	77.4%
Missouri	25.5%	12.2%	37.7%	1.3%	19.2%	0.9%	1.0%	60.0%
Montana	34.2%	9.2%	43.4%	0.7%	12.5%	0.6%	0.2%	57.5%
Nebraska	34.2%	12.3%	46.5%	0.9%	17.8%	0.2%	0.2%	65.5%
Nevada	40.8%	5.9%	46.8%	2.0%	5.3%	0.1%	1.4%	55.6%
New Hampshire	21.7%	25.9%	47.6%	1.7%	14.4%	0.1%	0.2%	63.9%
New Jersey	23.9%	23.9%	47.8%	1.7%	21.3%	0.1%	0.3%	71.2%
New Mexico	33.0%	4.0%	36.9%	0.6%	29.5%	0.1%	0.6%	67.7%
New York	25.3%	25.0%	50.4%	1.6%	21.2%	0.2%	0.8%	74.2%
North Carolina	32.8%	10.7%	43.4%	0.9%	21.1%	0.3%	0.4%	66.0%
North Dakota	42.0%	10.1%	52.1%	0.8%	10.4%	0.2%	0.3%	63.8%
Ohio	33.2%	15.8%	49.0%	1.0%	10.9%	0.1%	1.9%	62.8%
Oklahoma	30.6%	6.3%	36.9%	0.6%	17.8%	0.3%	0.4%	56.0%
Oregon	23.1%	10.7%	33.8%	1.0%	11.3%	0.0%	0.4%	46.5%
Pennsylvania	28.2%	19.9%	48.1%	1.1%	11.3%	0.8%	2.8%	64.1%
Rhode Island	23.6%	23.6%	47.2%	0.5%	19.7%	0.0%	0.0%	67.4%
South Carolina	27.6%	14.0%	41.7%	1.3%	25.2%	1.1%	0.3%	69.5%
South Dakota	42.3%	11.9%	54.2%	1.1%	16.2%	0.2%	0.4%	72.1%
Tennessee	30.1%	11.9%	42.0%	1.3%	17.6%	0.1%	0.7%	61.7%
Texas	27.2%	8.4%	35.6%	0.7%	19.6%	0.1%	0.8%	56.9%
Utah	34.3%	8.9%	43.2%	1.5%	13.2%	0.3%	0.2%	58.5%
Vermont	21.3%	22.6%	43.9%	0.5%	3.7%	0.1%	0.1%	48.3%
Virginia	32.6%	12.1%	44.6%	1.4%	22.0%	0.1%	0.6%	68.7%
Washington	24.9%	10.3%	35.2%	0.9%	14.4%	0.0%	0.2%	50.8%
West Virginia	37.2%	7.2%	44.3%	0.7%	12.8%	0.0%	1.2%	59.0%
Wisconsin	34.4%	11.2%	45.6%	1.1%	11.9%	0.1%	0.4%	59.1%
Wyoming	23.3%	4.3%	27.6%	0.6%	29.7%	0.1%	0.9%	58.9%

US Total	28.3%	13.2%	41.5%	1.2%	19.7%	0.2%	0.8%	63.3%

Comparing rates between sectors, it is clear that United States sent most (41.5%) of their high school graduates to the traditional 4 year colleges, defined as the joint group of public 4-year schools and the private not-for-profit 4-year schools. The public 2-year schools take the next big share of 19.7% in 2008 with the rest of the sectors made up for the remaining 2.1%. However, even though this general observation is true for most states, the true rates vary by states.

To obtain an overall picture, it is helpful to put states in categories prescribed by the fraction of college going students that went to the public 2-year institutions. In doing so, most states are having rates below 40%, while few states stand out with large fraction of their students went to the 2-year public schools. Among these states are: Mississippi(64%), California(52%), Wyoming(50%) and Arizona(46%).

Chart: % 2-year public in all that going

Comparing with 2006, there are two states that have significantly increased the fraction of their public 2-year college going students. These two states are Arizona, which send additional 5,875 students to 2-year public schools to increase the rate from 37% to 46%, and California, which send additional 51,792 students to 2-year public school and increased its rate from 42% to 52%.

For completeness, it is also worth to note that Alaska(3%), District of Columbia(7%), Vermont(8%) and Nevada(10%) sent very few of their high school graduates to 2-year-public institutions.

To finish up, we present a chart of of the overall degree-granting college going rate by state and by sector.

College Going Rates by State - 2008 Early Release

2010-08-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

CL Higher Education Center

Related blogs:
College going rates by state 2008 analysis
2006: College Going Rates by State - an Analysis
Estimated US College Going Rates by State - 2005-06

CL Higher Education Center just released the Early Release of the 'estimated US College Going Rates by State for 2007-08 High School Graduates'.

The analysis is based on the 2007-08 Common Core Data (CCD) survey, the 2006-07 Private School Survey (PSS) and the 2008-09 Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS) migration survey managed by the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) of the Department of Education (USDE).

The CCD and PSS survey is used to estimate the number of high school graduates from a state. The IPEDS migration survey provide the information of how many of those students went to colleges. Since PSS is collected every two year and the number of graduates collected by the 2007-08 PSS is that of 2006-07 academic year. By assuming that 2006-07 number is a good estimate for the 2007-08 number, we can add it to the number of public high school graduates collected by the CCD to produce the total number of high school graduates for a state.

This data release also include a file with some analysis results and charts.

State	2008 Normal HS Graduates	2008 Dgr-Grntng Total	2008 % to Dgr-Grntng Total	2008 Rank	2006 Rank

Mississippi	28,150	21,787	77.4%	1	1
Massachusetts	75,632	56,480	74.7%	2	5
New York	206,201	153,072	74.2%	3	2
South Dakota	9,138	6,587	72.1%	4	4
New Jersey	108,338	77,104	71.2%	5	9
Georgia	91,079	63,744	70.0%	6	11
South Carolina	38,851	26,995	69.5%	7	6
Minnesota	65,339	45,245	69.2%	8	10
Virginia	84,282	57,896	68.7%	9	12
Connecticut	46,412	31,596	68.1%	10	8
New Mexico	19,759	13,377	67.7%	11	7
Rhode Island	11,929	8,043	67.4%	12	44
Alabama	45,922	30,638	66.7%	13	25
Delaware	9,185	6,083	66.2%	14	21
North Carolina	88,901	58,681	66.0%	15	16
Indiana	66,689	43,815	65.7%	16	23
Nebraska	22,191	14,537	65.5%	17	20
Kansas	33,115	21,667	65.4%	18	14
California	409,439	267,835	65.4%	19	41
Louisiana	41,932	27,364	65.3%	20	15
Iowa	36,834	23,686	64.3%	21	27
Pennsylvania	147,775	94,789	64.1%	22	26
New Hampshire	17,276	11,038	63.9%	23	18
North Dakota	7,420	4,732	63.8%	24	3
Maryland	68,625	43,227	63.0%	25	13
Ohio	133,815	84,030	62.8%	26	32
Colorado	48,606	30,461	62.7%	27	24
Arkansas	30,104	18,821	62.5%	28	40
Hawaii	13,998	8,728	62.4%	29	33
Tennessee	63,375	39,073	61.7%	30	22
Maine	15,807	9,696	61.3%	31	19
Kentucky	43,367	26,426	60.9%	32	28
Missouri	69,047	41,446	60.0%	33	38
Michigan	123,705	74,134	59.9%	34	17
Wisconsin	70,609	41,741	59.1%	35	29
West Virginia	18,094	10,684	59.0%	36	37
Wyoming	5,544	3,266	58.9%	37	35
Florida	167,629	98,648	58.8%	38	31
Utah	29,518	17,259	58.5%	39	48
Montana	10,917	6,275	57.5%	40	36
Illinois	150,248	86,290	57.4%	41	30
Texas	264,044	150,206	56.9%	42	43
Oklahoma	39,663	22,215	56.0%	43	34
Nevada	17,844	9,917	55.6%	44	45
District of Columbia	5,017	2,680	53.4%	45	39
Arizona	64,260	33,025	51.4%	46	51
Washington	66,190	33,610	50.8%	47	46
Idaho	17,122	8,591	50.2%	48	50
Vermont	9,151	4,423	48.3%	49	42
Oregon	37,763	17,576	46.5%	50	47
Alaska	8,053	3,685	45.8%	51	49

Exam the ranking, the first surprise is the North Dakota, which drop from number 3 to number 24. A closer look at the data, the main drop on college enrollment occurred at 'North Dakota State College of Science'. The enrollment of recent North Dakota high school graduates dropped from 331 to 88. Also the 'Bismarck State College' seems to switch from public-2-year to the public-4-year sector with a drop in enrollment of recent North Dakota high school graduates from 554 to 297.

Rounding up the top 10, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Georgia, Minnesota and Virginia had moved up to number 2, 5, 6, 8 and 9 respectively.

For the second group of 10 states, Rhode Island and California showed the most improvements. For Rhode Island, a single entity: 'Community College of Rhode Island' reports a gain of about 1,400 enrollments from 826 to 2,251. For California, the gains are across the board: about 4,000 in the public-4-year sector, 1,000 in the private-not-for-profit-4-year sector, 800 in the private-for-profit-4-year sector, a whopping 52,000 in the public-2-year sector.

In this second tier, Rhode Island, Alabama, Delaware, North Carolina, Indiana, Nebraska, and California had moved up.

The Real Challenge for Higher Education

2010-07-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

Original Article

Summary goes here!

Basically, Mr. Walters' observation matches that of mine - the major problem of the US education ( not just the higher education) is in the culture, which I used to term it: attitude/responsibility (see my various post here and in my old archive). Being a person originated from one of the Asian countries, I was able to point this out quite a few years back. With kids growing up in the US and went through the teens, I can feel these even more personally.

I can certainly confirm that the education culture where I came from is quite different from that of American. However, it is not necessary in the way Mr. Walters described. When I grew up, teachers do hold highly authoritative and respective positions as they traditionally do. In addition to that, the opportunity to attend college is quite limited. Only about 30% of high school graduates will be admitted into colleges. College entrance exam is how fates are determined. Study is not an option but a mandate. Well, yes, there are still students that would not study. But, in general, there is that pressure. The exam culture is also extended to any government job. You have to pass exam to hold certain government jobs. Even in the business world, diploma still hold a lot of water.

After I left the country, the country went through a massive education reform led by a Nobel laureate, who naively believed in the US education system. The country is now posting a college going rate of almost hindered percent. But as you might have imaged, this does not translate to the overall education gain - graduates from the dumbed down institutions are simply not well-educated.

If you think about this a bit, it may make sense to you: If the college admission is given, what will drive a student to study hard? Once in the college, what can a professor do? Can he or she failed all the students? As you can see, this is what the entitlement built on!

I certainly admire the open enrollment system of the US community college system which provides a second chance for people failed to learn in high school. However, I believe in that a person will not learn unless he wanted to learn. A person should be required to demonstrate his will by passing a high standard remedial education.

The 'culture' do not come easy. It is built on the responsibility. The whole society have to be asked to take responsibility. This may include cruel laws - in American's standard.

I always admired American's giving spiritual. However, there are cases that the giving spiritual diminished the requisition of responsibility.

Colleges and the Common Core

2010-07-21T22:40:00.000-07:00

Original Article

Common assessments is the question!

Actually, I think the most important question raised by the article is the common assessments.

If we assuming, for a moment, that the assessments is accurate. Is there any reason to against the common assessment? For me, I don't see any reason to against it ( I will address Donald Asher's comment later). The question left is, then, how can we make these assessments reasonably accurate. Ideally, the assessments will provide useful information on various measurements. There is no reason to limited to, say, one score for math. There could have one score for algebra, one score for trigonometry ... etc. There is also no reason to limit depth except to limited the number of questions students have to answer.

With these assessments in place, the rest is history. Do we need common core? Will college using these assessments for admission? The answer to these two question are obvious. We do not need common core since these assessments will drive the curriculum and schools can pick whatever way to teach their students. If these assessments are accurate, I can't see why college would not use them.

Now to the comment of Mr. Asher: the creativity. Apparently, Mr. Asher is very proud of the American innovation machine. The thing I would like to point out is that, at this point, it may be true that American have been innovated. But I am not so sure this is directly linked to the American education system. Also, for a long time, China and India have to fight for their survival first. Mr. Asher's arguments on teaching to the test is also questionable. Personally, I went through all these test preparation culture and I can tell you that those people who standout are those really understand the material. Teaching to the test does not work - especially if the assessment is well designed. The entrepreneur argument isn't without a flaw either. In American there are plenty of foreign born entrepreneur and much of them are in the hi-tech field. Besides, Microsoft and Cisco are created by nerds who are of no typical American kids.

Ravitch to Obama: 'Change course before it is too late"

2010-06-23T05:21:00.000-07:00

Washingtonpost Article

Summary goes here!

Few of my points:

I agree that evaluate teacher with students' testing score isn't the best way to evaluate a teacher. But we should also understand the frustration of our public, Republican or Democrats, about our k12 education that drives all these agenda. I wonder maybe Diane Ravitch, just like Obama or Duncan, only see one side of the story.
I agree that test should be designed by professionals.
I have trouble with the article's idea of 'teaching to the test'. I will argue that with a good design of the test, there will be no such thing as 'teaching to the test' or that 'teaching to the test' isn't the best way to score high in the test. Personally, I grew up in that environment, I saw friends and classmates went through cram schools and did not do well unless they really understand the material.
Not all teachers are equal. I saw good teachers, but I also saw those that aren't qualified for the subject they teach.
I think, at this point in time, the loss of time in other subjects is overly exaggerated. Given my observation, our students spend much more time in sport, art activities then study. Just look at the high school, how much time students spend on sport practice and competition? Music festival? How about academic competitions?
As to Ravitch's response to the last question, I wonder if she suggested that Democrats should not endorse Republican's agenda? Teacher isn't the only voter to consider, there are other people. I would say that we need a survey to see what the general public have in mind.

Mechanism and responsibility

2010-04-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

Original Article

Summary goes here!

===== Comment posted at InsideHigherEd.com on Apr. 20, 2010
I posted the idea before and will try again.

I will limited my discussion to math and engineer programs so that we can focus on the idea other than be drawn into the fight of measuring the soft-skill (liberal art/critical thinking) - but don't forget that IQ is measured.

For math and those hard-skill, I think community colleges should use or establish some standard objective measurement or test that is not managed by instructor of the course or program. The goal of a course or program is to score high on the test - yes I know this is nothing new and it's like an AP or test preparing center.

However, I like people to ponder on this idea. If students know the goal is not set by the instructor, they may very well see instructor as their ally that can help them. It also emphasizes that they are the one that have to achieve the goal, the instructors are just there to show them practices and steps that will help them reach the goal. Students that do not follow those suggested steps or practices will have no one to blame but themselves since the instructor did not create or manage the test.

Yes. There is nothing new here. But I do think if we adopt this practice, it could very well change the way how our education works - I firmly believe that the true study begins with the student.

*Roderick Bell, than for the nice words. I am not bright but I work hard. The sad thing is that I got a lot of other things I like to do. Writing simply isn't one that I spend most of my time. Yes, it takes me a while to catch errors and there are times I simply limited by my vocabulary. If I got time, I would try thesaurus. But, well everyone only got 24 hours.

No Letup From Washington

2010-04-14T05:16:00.000-07:00

Original Article

Summary goes here!

Quote an insider's words: 'If you don't do it yourself, others will do it for you.'

I don't like him - too calculative or sophisticate if you will. But at least there are some insides.

Please read comments on the original post and you will see the view of scholars - not one but more. The sophisticate and unwillingness is just unbelievable. And you wonder why people and administrations are upset with Universities?

The argument that 'GPA is a much better predictor' is not good enough. Because this leaves out a lot of pre-conditions. First of all, it is totally subjective. I can tell you that my A is definitely much harder to get than my peer instructors. Yes, if you compare my A students with my B students, they are definitely at different caliper. But I can't tell you that with my B students and other instructors' A students. And we all heard of grade inflation. Besides, even myself, can I flunk all my students just because they are ill-prepared? No, I will adjust my grades so I can show their differences and achievements. What does this lead us? If you can establish the curriculum standard and define clearly what is to be an A. Then I will agree that WITHIN that entity, the GPA is a good measurement. So how much will it cost to establish this across all the institutions?
The argument here is that to establish the GPA as a GOOD predictor, you need the same efforts as to establish good measurement. The thing is that everyone like to define the good, themselves.

I suspect that the GPA we have today is loosely defined statistical measure of the efforts of students. Assuming talents are equally likely distributed across the gender, race, geographic boundaries. Assuming teachers are generally un-biased and rank their students on things they learn. Also assuming that ... With all these assumptions, we COULD?? say that high GPA PROBABLY mean a students with right learning attitude and willing to put in efforts. These students will success no matter where you put them. Even if they were from a low standard learning community, they will put in extra efforts - even though with time crunches they may not catch up with their peers during the school year. But with life long learning, they will doing just fine.

But we have to understand that this is only a possible explanation to why GPA could predict. But it does not address what the public is asking for.

AP: Good but Oversold?

2010-04-02T05:06:00.000-07:00

Original Article

Working on ...

To stick with the topic, I think the book is a welcome publication. Whether it is good or not, it's an independent examination of AP courses.

As to comment to the comments, here it goes:
Personally, I don't see AP as an evil. To adopt it more or not is not AP's problem. Un-prepared students? It's not AP's problem either - even though it could be schools' or College Board's problem.

One thing I see positive about the AP is that it raised the bar for today's high school courses and let people see what is possible to get out of our high school students. Personally, I don't think AP is just for wealthy kids. For motivated kids? Yes. I understand that there are real real poor people that need help. But except those, if you are fifteen and are fed and have books in your hand and the library, I don't think you can blame anyone for not studying.

For Judith, I have no idea what her problem is. 'no matter how advanced the high school course' is. Are schools the only place you can learn stuff in this modern age of free information? I don't think so.

For the HR guy, I hope you see my point of promoting the test-out for credits. To me, it is not students' problem that schools can't find a good way to evaluate students academic achievements and, therefore, require them to sit in the class to receive credits.

2006 Collge Going Rates by In-State and Out-of-State

2010-03-18T04:57:00.000-07:00

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CL Higher Education College Going Rate Data Release

CL Higher Education Center just added the 2005-06 in-state and out-state analysis to its College Going Rates by State data set.

The in-state rate is calculated for students who attended colleges in their home state while the out-state rate is for students who went to colleges that is outside of their home state. One interesting fact is that most of the North-Eastern states exhibit high out-state college going rates, which can due to the fact that all these states are close to each other and is well within the comfortable driving distances from each other.

State	Collge Going Total	Stay Total	Out Total
Alabama	72%	64%	7%
Alaska	50%	29%	21%
Arizona	49%	43%	6%
Arkansas	60%	53%	7%
California	63%	57%	6%
Colorado	69%	54%	15%
Connecticut	84%	45%	39%
Delaware	81%	53%	28%
District of Columbia	99%	34%	64%
Florida	71%	63%	8%
Georgia	77%	64%	13%
Hawaii	69%	44%	25%
Idaho	48%	35%	13%
Illinois	69%	51%	18%
Indiana	70%	61%	9%
Iowa	67%	57%	9%
Kansas	72%	61%	11%
Kentucky	68%	61%	7%
Louisiana	83%	74%	9%
Maine	77%	50%	27%
Maryland	78%	49%	29%
Massachusetts	87%	58%	29%
Michigan	72%	64%	7%
Minnesota	75%	55%	19%
Mississippi	86%	79%	7%
Missouri	66%	55%	11%
Montana	62%	46%	16%
Nebraska	73%	60%	13%
Nevada	56%	43%	13%
New Hampshire	76%	40%	37%
New Jersey	82%	47%	35%
New Mexico	77%	60%	17%
New York	89%	72%	18%
North Carolina	71%	64%	7%
North Dakota	78%	57%	21%
Ohio	68%	57%	11%
Oklahoma	67%	60%	7%
Oregon	53%	40%	12%
Pennsylvania	73%	60%	13%
Rhode Island	67%	41%	26%
South Carolina	52%	47%	5%
South Dakota	77%	59%	18%
Tennessee	74%	63%	11%
Texas	60%	53%	7%
Utah	49%	45%	4%
Vermont	66%	28%	37%
Virginia	75%	60%	15%
Washington	53%	41%	12%
West Virginia	63%	55%	8%
Wisconsin	68%	55%	13%
Wyoming	59%	43%	16%

US Total	69%	57%	13%

Again, the data is based on the 2005-06 Common Core Data (CCD) survey, the Private School Survey (PSS) and the Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS) migration survey managed by the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) of the Department of Education (USDE).

See prior blog entry for detailed info on how these data is processed.

College Going Rates by State - an Analysis

2010-03-16T19:53:00.000-07:00

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See Data Release:
College Going Rates by State - 2008 Early Release
College going rates by state 2008 analysis
Estimated US College Going Rates by State - 2005-06

The college going rate ( aka the college continuation rate) data for normal 2005-06 high school graduates went to degree-granting higher education institutions has been tabulated by both Tom Mortenson and Duncan Hsu. The later also includes information on un-normal high school graduates and the non-degree granting higher education institutions. All these tabulations are based on National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES') Common Core Data (CCD), Private School Survey (PSS) and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).

Available reports so far were more interested in the overall degree-granting college going rates by state without looking into other details. Our analysis is aimed to provide a more complete picture.

Let's started with the US averages for college going rate. The average showed that, for normal high school graduates, 61.3% of them went to degree-granting colleges while 1.5% went to non-degree granting colleges. The list of rates are given below.

State	% Dgree-Granting	% Not-Dgree-Granting	% All College Going
Alabama	62.7%	0.3%	63.0%
Alaska	45.7%	2.1%	47.8%
Arizona	44.8%	1.9%	46.7%
Arkansas	56.6%	0.9%	57.5%
California	55.8%	1.2%	57.1%
Colorado	63.0%	1.6%	64.6%
Connecticut	70.4%	2.7%	73.1%
Delaware	64.2%	1.4%	65.6%
District of Columbia	56.9%	8.6%	65.5%
Florida	60.2%	2.8%	63.0%
Georgia	68.2%	1.7%	69.9%
Hawaii	59.7%	0.5%	60.2%
Idaho	45.7%	0.9%	46.6%
Illinois	60.8%	1.2%	61.9%
Indiana	63.5%	0.9%	64.4%
Iowa	61.6%	1.1%	62.7%
Kansas	65.7%	1.7%	67.4%
Kentucky	61.4%	0.8%	62.3%
Louisiana	65.7%	1.4%	67.0%
Maine	64.7%	0.8%	65.5%
Maryland	65.7%	2.1%	67.8%
Massachusetts	71.8%	2.1%	73.8%
Michigan	65.3%	1.3%	66.5%
Minnesota	68.4%	1.4%	69.7%
Mississippi	75.7%	0.7%	76.3%
Missouri	57.1%	0.8%	57.9%
Montana	58.1%	0.9%	59.0%
Nebraska	64.5%	1.0%	65.5%
Nevada	52.1%	1.7%	53.8%
New Hampshire	65.0%	1.1%	66.2%
New Jersey	69.7%	2.1%	71.8%
New Mexico	70.5%	1.0%	71.5%
New York	74.4%	1.6%	76.1%
North Carolina	65.6%	0.6%	66.2%
North Dakota	72.3%	1.0%	73.3%
Ohio	60.1%	1.0%	61.1%
Oklahoma	59.2%	4.4%	63.5%
Oregon	47.3%	1.0%	48.4%
Pennsylvania	62.1%	1.5%	63.7%
Rhode Island	54.7%	2.2%	56.9%
South Carolina	71.1%	0.7%	71.7%
South Dakota	71.9%	0.8%	72.7%
Tennessee	63.5%	2.7%	66.3%
Texas	55.2%	2.2%	57.4%
Utah	46.2%	1.1%	47.3%
Vermont	55.4%	0.8%	56.2%
Virginia	67.3%	1.0%	68.2%
Washington	48.0%	0.9%	49.0%
West Virginia	57.8%	2.8%	60.6%
Wisconsin	61.2%	0.7%	62.0%
Wyoming	58.1%	0.6%	58.6%

US Total	61.7%	1.5%	63.2%

Analyzing the non-degree granting college going rates reveals that most of the states have a rate of lower than 3% while the Oklahoma posted a rate of 4.4% and District of Columbia boasted a rate of 8.6%.

The frequency distribution of the degree-granting college going rates shows that while most of the states have a rate of greater than 54%, there are seven states that are away from the pack. These states are: Nevada(52.1%), South Carolina(49.0%), Washington(48.0%), Oregon(47.3%), Utah(46.2%), Alaska(45.7%), Idaho(45.7%) and Arizona(44.8%).

Diving into the degree-granting college going rate, we found that, in general, the four year college going rate is higher that of the two year college going rate. For the nation, the traditional four year colleges enrolled about 68% of all the degree-granting colleges going students, where the traditional four year colleges are defined as the public four year colleges plus the private non-for profit four year colleges. The overall degree-granting college going rate, separated into type of colleges and ranked by state is presented here.

As we can see from the chart the fractions taken by the traditional four year colleges varies from state to state. Analyzing the fraction, it reveals that the range varies from 35% (Mississippi) to about 95% (Alaska) and, except for on state (Mississippi, 35%), all states have fractions higher than 52%. While Alaska sending almost all of its students to traditional four year colleges, Mississippi sending only 35%. Looking for the Mississippi in the above chart, we notice that Mississippi achieving the highest degree-granting college going rate by sending most of its college going students to colleges other than the traditional four year colleges - noticeably, the two year public schools. District of Columbia(91%) and Vermont (90%) also send high percentage of their college going students to traditional four year schools.

The following chart ranked states by the traditional four year college going rate.

Rounding up the four year schools, we considered the private for-profit four year schools. On average, the college going rate for this sector is about 1%. Checking out the frequency distribution for this sector, it shows that for most of the states, this rate is lower than 1.6% while there are four states that with higher rates: Florida (2.7%), New Mexico (2.5%), New Hampshire (2.2%) and Arizona(1.9%).

For two years-or-less schools, the biggest sector is the public two year schools with an average of 17.7% college going rate. Analyzing the sector, it shows all states except three are confined within 2 to 24%. At the higher ends are Mississippi (48%), Wyoming (27.1%) and New Mexico (27%).

For private two years-or-less schools, the for-profit schools averaged at 0.8% while the not-for-profit schools averaged at 0.2%. The for-profit sector reveals that all states except three are falling within the range of 0.2 to 1.4%. The three at the higher end are Pennsylvania (2.8%), Colorado (2.5%) and Ohio (1.7%). In the not-for-profit sector, majority (25) of the states have a rate of 0.1% with all of them below 1%. The highest two states are Hawaii and South Carolina at a rate of 0.8%.

Rounding up the article, we like to note that there are much more to the college going rates than the overall degree-granting college going rate. Examining together with other factors like in-state, out-state college going rate, the college graduation rates and the industry hiring pattens can reveal even more information.

College Going Rate - Definition, Glossary and clarification

2010-03-07T03:58:00.000-08:00

The lowering of US competitiveness in the education have promote thoughts about the 'Education Pipeline'. One of the measures that constitutes the idea of the Education Pipeline is the College Going Rates.

In general, the College Going Rate measures the percentage of high school graduates that went to colleges. However, in practice, the type of high school graduates and the type of colleges took into account could end up meaning different kind of rates.

For the high school graduates, possible variations are: On-Time Graduates, Public High School Graduates, GED graduates, High School equivalent Certificates ... etc. For type of colleges enrollment, the possible variations are: Fall First-Time freshmen enrollment. First-time enrollment within a year of high school graduation, the first-time freshmen that is younger than 19 years old or first-time freshmen enrolled in degree granting institution only.

Here are some of the examples:

1. Normal high school graduates with IPEDS degree-granting Fall first-time freshmen
Reported by CL Higher Education Center, Tom Mortenson, Nebraska CCPE

2. Normal high school graduates with all IPEDS Fall first-time freshmen
Reported by CL Higher Education Center.

3. Other (GED, Equivalent high school certificates) high school with all IPEDS Fall first-time freshmen
Reported by CL Higher Education Center.

4. Normal high school graduates with yearly college enrollment
Reported by Nebraska CCPE. This is done by using the National Students Clearing House data and filtering out students with the enrollment date.

5. With 19 years old limitation
Reported by California CPEC.

The 'Prior Learning' Edge

2010-03-01T11:04:00.000-08:00

Original Article

Summary goes here!

For years, I have been advocated on the idea of test-out and evaluation-based transfer. It looks like this is a good supporting research for those ideas.

Personally, I am not surprised by the finding at all. There are plenty of experience of me that support my believes. Through my life, I changed jobs and learned things all by myself - even my school days is of no differences. I also met medical Doctors that are very good at electronics.

I have no intention of emphasizing the standardized test. But I do believe that there are objective measures that can be used to gauge students' ability.

I believe the use of objective measure should be extended for testing-out of classes and also for allowing transfer of credit - remember the fight between the National accredited and the regional accredited over the transfer?

The benefit I see for extending these object measure offering are:
1. Promote the real learning - to learn things to heart, you simply need put the efforts in and study. The instructor is there to help you but not to learn for you. 'Getting credit on you own' will echo the real idea of learning.
2. Lower the college cost: There are plenty of people out there that can learn by themselves, allowing them to test-out will save their college cost - I know this is what the institution don't like. But, to be truthful to the education, I can't see why should an institution deprive students’ right in doing so. This incentive will also promote students to study by themselves and made them more confident and independent.

Estimated US College Going Rates by State - 2005-06

2010-02-28T18:01:00.000-08:00

CL Higher Education Center

New: College Going Rates by State - 2008 Early Release

CL Higher Education Center just released the estimated US College Going Rates by State for 2005-06 High School Graduates.

The analysis is based on the 2005-06 Common Core Data (CCD) survey, the Private School Survey (PSS) and the Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS) migration survey managed by the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) of the Department of Education (USDE).

The CCD and PSS survey is used to estimate the number of high school graduates from a state. The IPEDS migration survey provide the information of how many of those students went to colleges. Since PSS is collected every two year and the number of graduates collected by the 2005-06 PSS is that of 2004-05 academic year. By assuming that 2004-05 number is a good estimate for the 2005-06 number, we can add it to the number of public high school graduates collected by the CCD to produce the total number of high school graduates for a state.

Estimated Number of High School Graduates by State 2005-06

2010-02-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

CL Higher Education Center

CL Higher Education Center just released the total Number of High School Graduates by State for the 2005-06 academic year.

The analysis is based on the 2005-06 Common Core Data (CCD) survey and the Private School Survey (PSS) managed by the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) of the Department of Education (USDE). Since PSS is collected every two year and the number of graduates collected by the 2005-06 PSS is that of 2004-05 academic year. By assuming that 2004-05 number is a good estimate for the 2005-06 number, we can add it to the number of public high school graduates collected by the CCD to produce the total number of high school graduates for a state.

The data in these table can later be used to estimate the college going rate for a state when combined with the migration data from the Integrate Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).

Release of Graduation Rate for Private High School By US states

2010-02-26T18:21:00.000-08:00

CL Higher Education Center

CL Higher Education Center just released the graduation rate for private high school by state.

The analysis is based on the 2005 and 2007 Private School Survey (PSS) that is managed by the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) of the Department of Education (USDE). The overall graduation rate for private high school is 98.3 for 2004-05 graduates and 98.0 for 2006-07 graduates. The data presented will also be used for estimating the total high school graduates of a state, which can then be used to estimate the college going rate for each state when combined with data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).

Obama Tries New Tack to Collect Student Data

2010-02-22T08:03:00.000-08:00

Original Article
Student Data Systems, Unite!

But when it comes education, we need to think about education first, not the research.

Personally, I like this one:

"For it to succeed, it can't be loaded with those who think unlimited data collection is the holy grail of educational reform." by Ms. Flanagan.

Here are couple of my thoughts - comments welcome:
On the onset, people supporting the tracking like to quote the accountability as the reason. But, there is a problem. If you really want accountability, you should know how to delegate responsibility. If state is responsible for educating the K12 students, I see no reason for other people to snoop around on those individual records. All you need to do is knowing how many students come from that state is not performing and leave the task to the state. This concept applies to other smaller entities too. Research is a different issue. Researcher can contract with entities and help them with the task of improving their performance.

The other popular idea/practice behind the tracking is to define students' success on their performance at the next level in their life. Federal Government can then trace back to students' prior encounters (i.e. schools, teachers ... etc) and hold them accountable. This approach is, in a way, very handy for the Federal Government or any big brothers, since they do not need to set the curriculum defined success before hand but can always accuse schools for not setting the curriculum high enough.

For accountability to work, each entities should be targeted/given a clearly determined or agreed-to goals and evaluated against it. If such an objective goal have been set, a high school will already know if they met their responsibility or not. There is no use of the tracking system.

The task of the Federal Government or Colleges is to work with high schools to work out what is the reasonable goal for the high school graduates and to develop suitable objective evaluation methods.

I am a researcher and I love data. But when it comes education, we need to think about education first, which happen to be teaching responsibility, not the research.

Release of 2008 Educational Attainment by State and Age

2010-02-21T00:21:00.000-08:00

CL Higher Education Center

CL Higher Education Center just released the state report on Education Attainment.

The analysis is based on US census' 2008 American Community Survey (ACS). The analysis reported the % of population for each education attainment level and age range. In general, the high percentage of graduate degree workforce correlated well with a state's New Economy Index published by The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

Slipping (Further) Off the Pedestal

2010-02-17T11:12:00.000-08:00

Original Article - The article is about a survey of public's perception about the HIGH higher education price.

Quality check is the most important factor in affecting the cost of higher education.

A lot of comments are well received.

I like to point out couple of my points:

Should we really believe the HE is necessary for all/most of our citizen?
Personally, I wouldn't say that just yet until I see our K12 crank out quality students - I am pretty sure a lot of things I do today, I will be able to do it with my high school degree adding some self-improvement.

To me, the quality check is the most important factor in affecting the cost of higher education. Personally, I have no problem with the idea that the lower cost will bring down the quality - as long as the quality is reflect on the price. There are institutions with great faculties and highly qualified students that are well deserved the high price. But there are also institutions with great faculties but not so qualified students. In this case, the high quality faculties is under used and institutions might as well lower the price and hire suitable faculties. The problem is, of cause, at this point, parents and students do not have good information on the quality of college graduates. They can only go for the brand names and, of cause, no one is going to risk their future by betting on cheaper colleges - you can't blame people to believe that, in some way, the price could reflect quality especially when there is no good indicator.

For-Profit Colleges Change Higher Education's Landscape

2010-02-08T13:24:00.000-08:00

Original Article
Chronicle of Higher Education falls down on the job

Objective measurement is in no way try to intimidating the 'traditional higher education' but a fair mechanism that protect the public and it happen to be in favor of GOOD old 'traditional higher education institution'.

It's hard to believe that the traditional university and colleges still don't think that an objective measurement of their graduates is not only the right thing to do but also an indicator of their quality. Why are they against it? I can't understand their logic. But I hope it have nothing to do with their fears of comparison. If that is the case, I am afraid that even I will begin to question the quality of the education our kids are receiving.

===== Added on Feb. 20, 2010
It seems that the second article pointed to the problem of quality. That article is written by former Chronicle staff. To my opinion, the Chronicle is more of a 'Higher Education Insider', which, most of the time, defend the value of 'traditional higher education'. I actually wondering if the Chronicle have being actively support the idea of objective measurement of college graduates. At this point, I can only hope some of these people will finally realize that the support of objective measurement is in no way try to intimidating the 'traditional higher education' but a fair mechanism that protect the public and it happen to be in favor of GOOD old 'traditional higher education institution'.

Education Directions - US Education Department

2010-02-01T10:53:00.000-08:00

Clash Over Student Privacy
Resistance on Debt Proposal

To be finished ...

Given these two instances, I am beginning to question the direction US Education Department is taking.

My major concerns are 1. The dis-regard of law in the privacy case and 2. The dis-regard of the free-market mechanism in the Debt Proposal case.

In the case of privacy, I understand that data is very useful in UNDERSTANDING possible problems in our education system. But trying to ignore the law and forcing forward with rules? Do they really understand the value of having a democratic government?

I am a supporter of accountability. But I simply can't agree with US ED's way of forcing an organization to accept responsibilities that they do not have adequate control. Besides, how does this take into account the responsibility of the students and parents?

IPEDS college freshmen retention rate - 2008 state level released

2010-01-24T18:58:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-01-19T10:27:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-12T04:16:00.000-08:00

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’

2010-01-05T11:01:00.000-08:00

Original Article

Summary goes here!

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

2010-01-01T05:34:00.000-08:00

Original Article

Summary goes here!

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.

Article Links - Nebraska Community College Study (LB340)

2009-12-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

New college council would be overkill - LJS 12/16/2009
Report urges more oversight of Nebraska community colleges - LJS 12/10/2009
Foley weighs in on colleges' spat - OWH 12/10/2009
State auditor: Nebraska Legislature should settle community college controversy - LJS 12/10/2009
Metro College files suit - OWH 11/21/2009
Omaha community college sues over state aid - NTV 11/20/2009
Senators need to end college feud - LJS 11/02/2009
Metro will sue other com. colleges - OWH 10/28/2009
Schools turn tables on Metro - OWH 09/22/2009
Metro tax hike blamed on new law - OWH 09/16/2009
Metro board to OK president - OWH 08/25/2009
Community colleges at odds over funding - G.I.Ind. 06/13/2009
Hearings set for community college study - McCook Daily 05/26/2009
Community College May Lose Millions Over Dispute - KETV 02/24/2009
Metro Comm. College Refuses To Pay Dues, Gets Expelled - KETV 02/23/2009

2009-08-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

Original Article

Summary goes here!

It is my believe that we need strengthen the K12 first for both moral and economic reason.

I have seen too many kids wasted their talent and time just to glide through the K12. Our system, then, expand the postsecondary education downward to give them a second chance. The message sent is that: play as you want, we will always try to save you!

I am sorry. The second chance should be for those unfortunates who are victims of uncontrollable events. It's not for everyone.

There was a saying in Chinese that God helps those who helped themselves. I think that is what is lacking in our K12 education. The first things in education is to teach the responsibility.

A word about t-test (statistics)

2009-08-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

A real scholar is a one with solid understanding of the topic and can address the concept in various terms. Just like a good teacher can address concepts in students' terms.

The t-test by virtue of its definition is a measurement of the separation of means. By adding the statistical flavor, we then asked the question of under what situation should we consider the means are well separated or, in other word, that the means are really not equal. Or in the statistical sense that the separation are statistically significant.

Like a lot of tests in statistics, the probability of the separation is too complicate to provide intuitive understanding of the problem. As in most of these kind of cases, a tabulated approach is used. In this case, a t-value is used to map to the probability. The t-probability table, however, usually only listed for positive t values which correspond to cases when the mean is greater than the referenced mean. Depend on the hypothesis of interest, researcher may need to included the probability for the corresponding negative t-value.

A good understanding of the underlying question that the t-test trying to address enables people to communicate with various terminology. A real scholar is a one with solid understanding of the topic and can address the concept in various terms. People with shaky ground are those that hanging to the jargon. Accusing people of alien-tongue is just a sign of it.

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

2009-08-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

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 out the early release of the state level summaries for the 2008 NCES IPEDS¹ residence and migration survey. Institutions reported the state of residence of their fall-term first time degree seeking students to the Residence and Migration section of the IPEDS fall enrollment survey. The CL Higher Education Center release aggregates the institutional level data into the state level summaries. Sector information is maintained through the aggregation process. What this mean is that, for a given state, user can tell how many of their students went to public(or private non-for profit) 4 year institutions outside of their state. Separate files are also published for people interested only in degree-granting institutions.

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 managed by the National Center for Education Statistics of US Education Department.

2009-06-16T15:34:00.000-07:00

Summary goes here!

At the state level, state policies should be focused on the benefits of the state as a whole. At local level, local policies should be focused on the benefits of local entities.

A community college is located at a community. But it can benefits both the state and the local community.

At the local level, community college can be viewed as a service provider to local residents and local employers.

For local employers, community colleges can provide economical education services for employers that is otherwise more expensive to achieve. For example, for basic academic training, it is more efficient for community college to provide a class that serves a group of students than for employer to train a couple of employees. Besides, employers may not have the adequate personnel to teach these courses.

For tech. or career trainings, community college can also provide efficient trainings. For example, employer may not want to stop or slow down the production line just for the training purposes. Besides, dedicated teachers at the community college can better follow up with new development in the industries.

For local residents, community college can provide courses for personal improvements. Even for non-students, the community colleges can serve as a consumer bargaining entity. For example, through the community college, residents can access subscription based online libraries or databases.

With these benefits, it is only reasonable, that the funding for community colleges to be derived from local residents and employers.

Of cause, not all residents is going to stay in the resident community. One of the reason of leaving the resident community is to pursue trainings that is not available to the local community. For the state as a whole, it is beneficial to promote students pursuing higher degree in the hope of upgrading the state's workforce profile and attracting high paying jobs to the state. With state's interest in the stake, it is of interest for state to invested in the community colleges, especially in academic transferring programs.

With all these being said, we need policies to provide incentives to facilitate these ideas.

2009 Nebraska Community College Study

2009-06-14T05:56:00.000-07:00

Working on

Introduction
Prompted by the dispute over the state funding formula for Community Colleges, Nebraska State Legislature is asking Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education to conduct a study (Law LB340) with the following 5 major objective:

The need for changes to the statutory role and mission of Nebraska community colleges;
Changes in the weighting of courses that may be necessary for reimbursable educational units to properly reflect the role and mission of Nebraska community colleges and the cost of providing such courses;
Powers, duties, and mission of the Nebraska Community College Association or its successor and whether membership in such an association should be required;
Consequences for failing to satisfy current community college association membership requirements contained in section 85-1502; and
State coordination of community colleges in the absence of a community college association or membership therein.

Basic information and tentative schedules are available on the CCPE Project Site. The first public event is the public hearing on June 18, 2009.

We understand that in order for public to provide sensible input, information about Nebraska Community Colleges are very important and we are here to provide assistant on this.

Background information
CCPE reports

Factual Look - Enrollment, Completions and Faculty Salaries
Progress Report - Retention Rates, Graduation Rates
Budget Report - College Fundings

Nebraska Department of Labor

Graduate Outcomes in Nebraska - Employment of College Graduates

Nebraska Community College Association Site

Weighting of courses (REU - Reimbursable educational units) for state reimbursement

State Funding for Community Colleges - from Community College Policy web site
Kansas Study - From Metro's web site

Mission of Community Colleges

Hudson County (CA) Community College Mission Survey

Survey Form

National Center for Education Statistics - Higher Education

Data Center

List of Higher Education Sites

CCPE Research Links (Login as guest)

Need check the real report and see if I can find the Puffer report (1970).

Achievement Test

2008-07-03T19:58:00.000-07:00

BACK TO THE BASICS: In Defense of Achievement (and Achievement Tests) in College Admissions
Analysis Favors Subject Tests Over SAT - InsideHigherEd.com
Related article : Local view: It’s time to end affirmative action

The emphasize on Achievement is the emphasize on responsibility... The sense of responsibility to the society is what will make the talented the servant to the society.

What a wonderful article about Achievement Test! A lot of the findings agree with my ideas expressed over the years.

In addition to the article, here's some of my ideas :

What entered into the high school GPA includes measurements like efforts, consistency and knowledge of topics. This give a good reason why high school GPA is a good indicator of success.
Part of the reason that the achievement test is also a good indicator is that, for most of the students, the achievement can be gained if students put their efforts in studying the topic and finishing homework assignment. The measurement of achievement is, in part, the measure of efforts and hardworking.
As noted in the article, the GPA is not free from subjective influences. At this point in time in the United State, this may not be as serious. But as the competition for higher education admission rise, this will become an issue.
The switching from talent (read I.Q.) based message to Achievement based message is very important. This is not just for the education but for the society. The message is that you can do it if you put your mind to it and there is no excuse about talent. The emphasize on Achievement is the emphasize on responsibility.
It is students' responsibility to learn and to study and it is teachers' responsibility to provide needed help and it is parents' responsibility to see assignments get done.
With responsibilities in the atmosphere and the abuse of social resource out of the way, we can now provide help to those with truly in need and level the play ground.
We don't really know how genetic of race made to the talent. But that is really not the issue. The sense of responsibility to the society is what will make the talented the servant to the society. Talent is to be blessed to serve the society but for personal gain.
The goal of norm-reference is to make test scores compatible between various question sets. I am not sure it really mean to be used to compare students.
It is true that small differences in test scores may in fact have little or no effect on students' performance once in college. On the other hand, students will small differences in test scores will be accepted to schools that have virtually no difference in quality. Affirmed to test scores, however, established an objective measurement that students and society can count out the subjective influences such as race, gender, socioeconomic ranks, personal affiliations, grade inflation ... etc.

Staff Salary By Race - University of Nebraksa

2008-01-21T22:00:00.000-08:00

Original Article

Disparities are very likely to appear at low-skill jobs where abilities can easily be overridden by personal preferences. In the study, we see that for low-end jobs, where the salary scale begins at bellow 20 thousands a year, there are higher percentages of Whites in the high salary scale. Disparities exist in all minorities. In the Service/Maintenance category, Asian receives the worst salary offering with 85% of them receive the lowest salaries comparing to 53% for Black, 44% for Native American, 46% for Hispanics and 36% for Whites.

Literature Overview

For years, salary differences in the higher education had been a much-studied topic. Most of the studies focused on faculty and gender disparities. These studies provided useful information in recognizing possible gender discrimination inside higher education communities. However, almost all of these studies are focused on faculties and did not examine the possible disparities among staffs. In addition to that, most of the studies are interested in gender disparity rather than race disparities.

Fresh ideas in this analysis

Instead of studying disparities in faculty and gender, this analysis focused on staff and race. Implications of this study are many. For one, we hope this report will encourage a broader discussion on staff disparity since the working staff is a better representation of the working class of American than faculty. Second to that, we hope this study will illustrate that disparities do not appear only in the high paying jobs.

One of the suspicions we had in conducting this analysis was that disparities are very likely to appear at low-skill jobs where abilities can easily be overridden by personal preferences.

Limitation of data and this report

The source data used in this report is the 2005 Staff survey collected via the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System by US Department of Education. The data is available for download from their Peer Analysis Site.

This report is a preliminary analysis. Our focus is on the University of Nebraska campuses. Since there weren't many minorities working in the University of Nebraska when broken down by job categories, some of the analysis in this report may not be statistically sound. We, however, view this as a pilot study that could inspire researchers to work on this kind of data.

Among job categories, the administrator and skilled crafts contain too few minorities to be considered statistically sound.

We also like to point out that we have no intention in singling out the University of Nebraska. We believe the problem could well exist in all parts of our society.

Notes in handling of data

Since Hispanic is considered an ethnicity and can, therefore, have the appearance of any race, this report aggregates minorities in two ways in hope to identify if discrimination is an act based on the perceived appearance of minorities. One aggregation is labeled Minority_1 and does not include Hispanics. The other one, labeled Minority_2, does include Hispanics.

High lights in the analysis

In general, we see that for low-end jobs, where the salary scale begins at bellow 20 thousands a year, there are higher percentages of Whites in the high salary scale. For high paying jobs, except at the very top salary scale, there are usually higher percentages of Whites at higher salary scales. In the Service/Maintenance category, Asian receives the worst salary offering with 85% of them receive the lowest salaries comparing to 53% for Black, 44% for Native American, 46% for Hispanics and 36% for Whites.

Charts

Tennessee Reconsiders Tilt to Merit Aid

2007-12-14T05:56:00.000-08:00

Original Article

Summary goes here!

My thoughts on this is that, in general, educators and policy makers did not carefully went through the brain storm session of what kind of citizen they need and what kind of resources they have.

The goal of a society is to bring the prosper to the society with best efficiency. With this in mind, policy makers need decided that, with limited resources and the economic goal they try to achieve, do they need higher education for every possible citizen? Or maybe it is more efficient to educate a group of experts that will establish new businesses to bring prosper to all citizen.

Beside the analysis on physical entities, policy maker also need to factor in if the policy encourage the general idea of promoting responsibility - i.e. asking yourself first instead of asking what the society should do for you.