Nebraska Brain Drain Migration and Ed. Attainment, 2015 United States ACS

Provides detailed information on Nebraska brain drain issues with explanation.

This article is all about what the 2015 ACS data has to say about Brain Drain in Nebraska. If you are more interested in what the 2015 ACS can tell you about the Brain Drain problem in other states, please refer to Brain Drain for United States by States DYI 2010, 2015 ACS  on how to do your own analysis.

Data reported in this analysis is based on the American Community Survey's Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) released by US Census Bureau. The analysis focuses on the working age population ranging from 22 years old to 64 years old.

The analysis will look into few aspects of the brain drain/migration issues in order to provide a comprehensive view of the issue.

When the term brain drain was coined, it concerned about the migration of highly skilled or knowledgeable people out of a region and could cause the economic slowdown or break down of a region. The basic assumption behind this thought is the talent pool or the education attainment of a region is greatly related to the economic advancement of a region. If this assumption is right, the education attainment would be an indicator of the economic situation of a region. 

From Census' ACS data, we can compare current education attainment data for Nebraska to that of the past. Based on the data, we have the following: 
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Ed. Attainment Level	2011-2015	2006-2010	Diff
1. Less Than High School	86,197	81,310	4,887
2. High School Equivalent	243,985	259,028	-15,043
3. Some College	256,915	254,466	2,449
4. Associate Degree	116,554	105,463	11,091
5. Bachelor Degree	229,744	211,125	18,619
6. Graduate Degree	96,172	86,018	10,154
Total	1,029,567	997,410	32,157

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Ed. Attainment Level	2011-2015	2006-2010	Diff
1. Less Than High School	8.4%	8.2%	0.2%
2. High School Equivalent	23.7%	26.0%	-2.3%
3. Some College	25.0%	25.5%	-0.6%
4. Associate Degree	11.3%	10.6%	0.7%
5. Bachelor Degree	22.3%	21.2%	1.1%
6. Graduate Degree	9.3%	8.6%	0.7%

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* For data concerning other states, please visit the article Brain Drain - Ranking and Analysis with 2015 ACS data and follow the 'Brain Drain Rank and Analysis' link to a Tableau Public Site. Once you are there, you can use the second tab: 'Ed. attainment for selected states' to see the data.

As can be seen from the above table, in general, Nebraska has progressed to a better educated state based on the 2011-2015 and the 2006-2010 5-year PUMS. The change accounts for a 32,157 headcount increase for the working age population and a 39,864 headcount increase for the Associate Degree and above population while a -7,707 headcount decrease for the lower degree levels. Percentage wise, the Associate-Degree- and-Above level now accounted for an additional 2.6% (without rounding) of the working age population. Comparing nationally, this put Nebraska at number 6 for the percent increase of the Associate-Degree-and-above level. At the same time, the 43.0% Associate-Degree-and-Above attainment level of 2011-2015 puts Nebraska at number 14 in the nation including the District of Columbia - see table below.
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State	2011-2015	2006-2010	Diff
District of Columbia	60.5%	55.5%	5.0%
Minnesota	47.4%	44.4%	3.0%
Iowa	41.9%	39.0%	2.9%
Wisconsin	40.7%	37.9%	2.8%
Tennessee	33.3%	30.6%	2.6%
Nebraska	43.0%	40.4%	2.6%
Maine	40.1%	37.5%	2.5%
Virginia	45.1%	42.7%	2.5%
Missouri	36.9%	34.5%	2.4%
Pennsylvania	40.1%	37.7%	2.4%
Kentucky	31.7%	29.4%	2.3%
West Virginia	28.1%	25.8%	2.3%
Ohio	36.6%	34.4%	2.2%
North Carolina	38.6%	36.5%	2.2%
Wyoming	37.1%	34.9%	2.2%
Arkansas	28.9%	26.8%	2.1%
Colorado	46.7%	44.6%	2.1%
Louisiana	28.9%	26.8%	2.0%
Alabama	32.6%	30.5%	2.0%
Indiana	34.4%	32.4%	1.9%
Michigan	37.7%	35.8%	1.9%
Illinois	42.6%	40.8%	1.9%
New York	45.5%	43.7%	1.8%
New Hampshire	46.3%	44.6%	1.8%
South Dakota	40.0%	38.2%	1.7%
Oklahoma	32.6%	30.9%	1.7%
Delaware	38.8%	37.1%	1.7%
New Jersey	45.9%	44.2%	1.7%
Connecticut	47.1%	45.4%	1.7%
South Carolina	35.4%	33.7%	1.7%
Texas	34.5%	32.8%	1.7%
Washington	43.2%	41.5%	1.7%
Georgia	36.7%	35.2%	1.6%
Mississippi	30.4%	28.9%	1.5%
Maryland	45.7%	44.2%	1.5%
Florida	38.0%	36.5%	1.5%
Oregon	39.4%	38.1%	1.4%
Kansas	40.9%	39.5%	1.4%
Massachusetts	51.0%	49.7%	1.3%
Rhode Island	42.2%	41.0%	1.2%
Utah	40.0%	38.8%	1.2%
Idaho	35.2%	34.1%	1.2%
Hawaii	42.1%	41.1%	1.0%
North Dakota	45.3%	44.3%	1.0%
Vermont	45.2%	44.2%	1.0%
Arizona	35.7%	34.7%	1.0%
Nevada	30.1%	29.3%	0.9%
California	38.9%	38.1%	0.8%
New Mexico	33.3%	32.7%	0.5%
Montana	38.1%	37.7%	0.4%
Alaska	35.1%	35.0%	0.1%

After looking at the current and past education attainment level of Nebraska, it worth to spend time on the migration factors that can affect the education attainment level of Nebraska in the future. The detailed migration numbers for all states in the United States can be accessed through the article 'Population migration derived from ACS 2015 5-year PUMS dataset' and follow the link in the last paragraph.

At the higher level for migration between US states, the net-migration for Nebraska can be summarized in the following table:
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Ed. Attainment Level	Net Migration	Upper	Lower
1. Less Than High School	-437	368	-1,242
2. High School Equivalent	516	1,826	-794
3. Some College	-157	1,246	-1,560
4. Associate Degree	-119	740	-978
5. Bachelor Degree	-1,131	180	-2,442
6. Graduate Degree	-1,173	-178	-2,168

where the 'Net Migration' is the estimated number of people move-in (positive) or move-out (negative) of Nebraska. However, because of the sample size of the 2011-2015 PUMS data, the Net Migration number does not tell the full story. Taking into account the 90% MOE (Margin of Error), we obtain the upper and lower bond for the estimated 'net migration' numbers. In the case of 'Some College' above, even though the net migration number show there were 157 people moved out of Nebraska, taking into account of the upper and lower bond, we can see that there are fair amount of chances, the real net migration can be positive. On the other hand, the number shown for the Graduate Degree level indicated that with 90% confidence/chances, there is definitely people moving out of Nebraska and it is simply a matter of how much. The number can ranging from 178 to 2,168. For the bachelor degree level, the number indicates that, even though we can't say 90% sure that there are people moved out of Nebraska, the number does show that moved out is much more likely that moved in. It simply that we can said it with 90% confidence, but with 84% confidence.

Examine these numbers even more closely with the education attainment in mind, we can see that at Graduate Degree level, for every 100 Graduate Degree residents in Nebraska, about 1.2 ( 1,173 / 96,172 * 100) of them are likely to move out of Nebraska per year. Comparing with other states, for the Graduate Degree level, Nebraska ranked number 4 from the bottom with this measure. You can find other measures and also the net migration numbers for other states in the article: 'Brain Drain - Ranking and Analysis with 2015 ACS data'. To get some idea of where Nebraskans were moving to, you can check out the second tab at the 'Brain Drain Migration between states' presentation. The first tab in the presentation can provide information on from where Nebraska attracted in-migration people. These number can also be obtained in tabular form from the 'here' link in the last paragraph of this article: 'Population migration derived from ACS 2015 5-year PUMS dataset'.

The discussion above, did not mention the possible infusion of foreigner into the Nebraska. The ACS PUMS does provide these numbers. However, if a foreigner moved to other countries, the ACS won't be able to provide any estimates. If, however, these foreigners should move to other states in the United States, they are accounted for in the state to state migration numbers. A quick summary table:
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Ed. Attainment Level	In - US	In - Foreign	Foreign/US
1. Less Than High School	2,009	691	34.4%
2. High School Equivalent	5,601	978	17.5%
3. Some College	6,601	787	11.9%
4. Associate Degree	2,336	345	14.8%
5. Bachelor Degree	7,893	1,550	19.6%
6. Master Degree	2,513	436	17.3%
7. Professional Degree	525	100	19.0%
8. Doctor's Degree	501	289	57.7%

As the table shown, for every Doctor moved to Nebraska from other state, there are about half a Doctor that moved to Nebraska from foreign countries. In the case of Doctor's Degree, there were 234 people moved to Nebraska from China/Hong Kong/Macau area. In the case of Bachelor Degree, Canada with 255 people moved to Nebraska accounted for the largest fraction followed by Turkey with 149. For the Less Than High School Level, Nepal lead the migration with 171. Again, these number are available in tabular form through 'Population migration derived from ACS 2015 5-year PUMS dataset'.

Related ACS Migration Data for other years:
Education Attainment of Nebraska's Working Age Population via 2011-07 ACS PUMS
Migration of Nebraska Working Age Population via 2011-07 ACS PUMS

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

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

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?

workforce supply/demand higher education - Nebraska

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

Related blogs:
college workforce supply/demand - methodology
Job outlook for college graduates - the supply and demand in Nebraska (Data Release)
Updated on June 8, 2015: An improved methodology applied to 2013 IPEDS college graduates using Nebraska's 2012-2022 long term occupation projection.

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:

1. 520201 Business Administration and Management (Bachelor training) - at least 539 graduates would not find a degree appropriate job.
2. 520101 Business/Commerce, General (Bachelor training) - at least 526 graduates ...
3. 130301 Curriculum and Instruction (Master training) - at least 486 graduates ...
4. 260101 Biology/Biological Sciences, General (Bachelor training) - at least 470 ...
5. 511613 Licensed Practical/Vocational Nurse(LPN, LVN, Cert, Dipl, AAS) (less than 2 year certificates) - at least 228 ...
6. 131202 Elementary Education and Teaching (Bachelor training) - at least 217 ...
7. 220101 Law (LL.B., J.D.) (First Professional) - at least 195 ...
8. 521401 Marketing/Marketing Management, General (Bachelor training) - at least 177 ...
9. 511201 Medicine (MD) (First Professional) - at least 150 ...
10. 512001 Pharmacy (PharmD, BS/BPharm [Canada]) (First Professional) - at least 148 ...

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

1. 490205 Truck/Bus/Commercial Vehicle Operation (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 578 academic-training-appropriate job openings remain to be filled.
2. 511601 Nursing - Registered Nurse Training (RN, ASN, BSN, MSN) (Associate training) - at least 330 ...
3. 139999 Education, Other (Bachelor training) - at least 172 ...
4. 460302 Electrician (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 133 ...
5. 521001 Human Resources Management/Personnel Administration, General (Bachelor training) - at least 109 ...
6. 110301 Data Processing and Data Processing Technology/Technician (Associate training) - at least 105 ...
7. 310501 Health and Physical Education, General (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 96 ...
8. 011102 Agronomy and Crop Science (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
9. 011106 Range Science and Management (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
10. 011105 Plant Protection and Integrated Pest Management (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
11. 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.

Funding Nebraska Community Colleges (LB340) - An idea

The best part of this model, however, is that the state's responsibility is also made clear.

The State of Nebraska need to provide its citizen a financial vision of the future and layout steps needed to get there including the projected needs for workforces and how these workforces can be developed by the state's educational systems.

As we think about legislation in general, a lot of laws are formed as reactions to issues that occurred. And a lot of them are, therefore, created in a form of responding to the events rather than a form that will address broader and more profound question.

Funding for community colleges in Nebraska is of no exceptions. As the community college evolved from vocational training school to adding academic training, the funding issue is to keep community colleges operational by allowing state aid and local property tax support. But the accountability part of the funding is never tied directly to each funding sources. And because of this, it is becoming difficult in deciding on how much fund should be coming from which funding source and what level of state fund is adequate and, in the center of the issue, who entitled how much of the state fund?

One idea I have is to have state provides the basic infrastructure and oversight, but let institutions run their own business. The principle behind this idea is that state of Nebraska does have interest in providing reasonable resources in educating its residents. However, this investment must be a calculated move - how the state plan to recover these investments? (This should quite the argument of providing education entitlement to citizens who insisted to live in a remote area.)

Based on the population by age data, state can allocate supports for a reasonable amount of classroom and office space and a reasonable number of staff and instructors. The fund can be adjusted based on the local price index. These funds will provide the basic supports for institutions to provide courses to their local communities. Institutions are then required to make sure these facilities are used in an efficient manners.

Institutions are then allowed to use local tax and private funds to extend their operation and should be held responsible to each fund source. For example, courses supported by the local tax need to address the general education needs of the local community. For a manufacture-heavy community, the community may decided to support general machinery courses with the tax fund while the specialized mechanic training may have to be supported by private funds from local companies in a co-operational manner.

In addition to these funding, state can provides strategic funding to encourage institutions to provide special courses that will benefit the state. For example, if a state is planed to attract motor companies and to become a heavy industry state, it makes sense for the state to provide extra fund for automobile related courses.

By tying a institution's operation to individual funding sources, the responsibility of an institution become clear and, therefore, the accountability. The best part of this model, however, is that the state's responsibility is also made clear.

The State of Nebraska need to provide its citizen a financial vision of the future and layout steps needed to get there including the projected needs for workforces and how these workforces can be developed by the state's educational systems.

My response to 10 questions posted by Nebraska's Voters Information Packet

Voters Information Packet

Summary goes here!

1. What has motivated you to seek this office? What do you hope to accomplish?

Response:
Having grown up with my kid and taught at community colleges, I am in the opinion that we can do much better with our education if we emphasize responsibility and, therefore, the accountability. Personally, I have nothing against Southeast community college. But I do believe I can provide different voice and ideas that foster the responsibility and, hopefully, those ideas will spread.


2. What do you see as your most valuable credential for this position? Please include biographical information you consider important for voters to know.

Response:
In general, I considered higher education an integrated part of the society. It connects the K12 system, the 4-year institutions and the workforce. I went through my graduate study at UNL and I taught electronics at community colleges. I wrote programs with hundreds of programmers and I then worked with civic engineers at Nebraska DOR. I later worked for the Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education.
In summary, I understand the differences between a 4-year college and a 2-year college and I understand what it means to be a life long learner. I also understand the structure of the Nebraska Higher Education.


3. What would be your budget priorities? How would spend the money for the college more efficiently?

Response:
My highest priority will always be students’ learning. My goal is to see the institution to spend only on necessities but not luxuries. A fast Internet for learning is acceptable while an unlimited bandwidth to watch video is excessive. If we can’t manage services at a lower cost than commercial entities, we will use the services provided by commercial entities.

As long as the learning of students is not affected, I am open to any idea that can lower the operation cost. The idea can be the sharing of resources with other institutions. It can be the adoption of technologies. It can also be the structure changes of the institution. Personally, I believe there are doubts about structure changes, but I believe we can change it for the better.


4. What plans can you suggest to develop monetary support from sources other than taxes?

Response:
In addition to seek grant money, personally, I believe that you make money by providing services.

In an accountable system, appropriate resources should be allocated for each task assigned. Today, a lot of community colleges take up tasks that may or may not be covered by the state funding formula. It is therefore, only reasonable for community colleges to seek separate funding for these tasks. Communities can have says on what tasks is to be funded through taxes; for any other tasks, community colleges should have the freedom to pursue other funding initiatives or to charge for its services.


5. Describe your vision for the college, what is its niche? And therefore, what do you think are the biggest priorities for the college at this time?

Response:
In the state of Nebraska, the funding formula favors vocational education for community colleges. However, we do see more Nebraska students choosing community colleges as their step-stone for 4 year-colleges. The major reason is likely to be the low price of attending community colleges.
The increase of these students suggests what a responsible institution should do – lower the price by spending public’s money responsibly. By holding to the frugal spending standard, the community college will set a high standard for other institutions.

To continue attracting these students, we also need to improve the quality of our graduates. At this economic down turn, this is of particular importance since only the best-qualified graduates can compete in the tough market.

As I pointed out earlier, my goal is more than an institution. I would like to see Southeast Community College stand out as a model institution to inspire Nebraska’s higher education society. An institution along is not going to move the Nebraska forward and we need the whole Nebraska to secure our good life.


6. Each year, how would you assess your effectiveness as a governing board?

Response:
I do the best I can and let voter be the judge. As a board member, I will disclose everything I do concerning my board duty within the restriction of the law. I will defend my action. But voter will be the final judge. I will establish web access to keep contact with the society.


7. What policies would you support concerning keeping faculty (especially adjunct faculty) accountable?

Response:
This is a very good question and as I mentioned earlier that I am all about responsibility. On the surface level, I will support any policy that will hold faculty accountable. I, however, do like to give faculty chances to defend himself and, if necessary, bring the case to the board.

While at the topic, I do like to remind readers that it is very difficult to link students’ performance to faculty’s performance. In addition, I would like to point out that the most important factor that affects a student’s performance is the student.

That said, I do value a balanced student feedback and I will support an improved internal version of the RateMyProfessor.com.

With the acceptance that students play the major role in their performance, I would also like to encourage faculty to embrace the openness with confidence believing that no one will do better given a specific student.


8. Do you oppose or support requiring sensitivity training for faculty and/or staff?

Response:
I support the requiring of sensitivity training for faculty and staff.

I believe that, in general, people grow up in their own particular environment and that shapes their way of conduct. There will be people that grow up in fortunate environment and end up viewing the world in an ideological way. The person may be just fine if given chances to see other side of the world. We are all adults and we learn.


9. Do you oppose or support, for employee benefit purposes, the recognition of domestic partnerships for college employees (whether heterosexual or homosexual couples)?

Response:
One principle I believe is that if you treat your employee right, they will treat you right.

In the case of marriage, since couple are legally one and they share ups and downs not just personally but also legally. It is reasonable for institutions to treat them accordingly.

The principle of responsibility can be applied here too. If partnerships share the same deep bond of a marriage, personally and legally, I will support to treat them just like marriage. If the bond is anything less, institutions should simply take the fair share of it.


10. Do you or your employer have any business relationships serving the college? Please describe.

Response:
Personally, I don’t. My employer does but my employer is a public entity. We had sought opinion from the Accountability and Disclosure Commission and the opinion is positive. Personally, I understand the need of the law. On the other hand, my position does help me to gain knowledge that I feel is necessary for my candidacy.

My response to 5 questions posted by Beatrice Daily Sun

Beatrice Daily Sun

I see higher education as an integrated part of the society. ...The only way to sustain a society is for everyone to pay for his or her due as long as he or she is capable. ...I will make sure the institution lives to the frugal standard.. spend for the necessary but not for the luxury ...It is particularly important to nurture students’ sense of responsibility – study hard and go and seek answers to questions …I will promote diversities so that all views and ideas are exam objectively and will look into discrimination cases of all kinds.

1) What experience do you have that makes you a great candidate for the SCC Board of Governors?

Response:
In general, I considered higher education an integrated part of the society. It connects the K12 system, the 4-year institutions and the work force. I went through the graduate school at UNL, taught electronics at a community college and worked with hundreds of programmer in a US Air Force weather project. I then worked with civic engineer at the department of road. I later worked for Nebraska higher education agency. I am experienced but I am not an insider and I considered public’s interest my top priority. In summary, I understand the differences between a 4-year college and a 2-year college. I understand what it means to be a life long learner. I also understand the structure of the Nebraska Higher Education. But all of these do not motivate me to come forward. My believe is that even though Southeast Community College is doing a fine job in a lot of fields, I believe we can build a even better model for other Nebraska institutions. I understand that some of my ideas may not be popular at first, but I believe they are heading to the right direction, which is to be open and responsible to the society’s needs.

2) As a board member, how will you deal with financial issues that students will face; such as rising tuition costs and the lack of private loans for college?

Response:
The way I look at this issue is that someone had to pay the bill. So, who should? And to what extend should the society, the State or the Federal Government step in? As we are speaking, increasingly, States are dropping their supports for higher education institutions. Most higher education insiders will simply demand State to provide more money without demonstrating the sustainability. As a board member, I would like to be able to demonstrate our contribution and asked for public’s endorsement. I believe that the only way to sustain a society is for everyone to pay for his or her due as long as he or she is capable. For example, when I attended the graduate school, we call pop and ice cream, the luxuries. We saved pennies for our food and our future. That said, as a board member, I will promote financial aid ideas that consists of family and student efforts. For example, the 529 education-account, the loan and the work study. To make sure we make good use of our resources I will favor aids to students who taking their responsibility (a.k.a. study) seriously. I will also support the idea of establishing an emergency fund that provides short-term loan for students’ financial emergency. And in certain cases, I will support the forgiveness of those loans. But as an old saying said, you can land hands for emergency but you can’t land hands for life. To lower the cost, I, as a board member, will see and make sure the institution lives to the frugal standard. I will spend for the necessary but not for the luxury - A decent Internet access is fine while an unlimited access for video is excessive. Some of my saving ideas may call for institution’s structure changes. But my top priority will always be students’ learning, as long as an idea does not lowering students’ learning, I will take steps that are necessary to lower the cost.

3) One of the current board's guiding principles is to value and support diversity? How have you in the past and how will you in the future, uphold this principle?

Response:
First of all, I think we need make distinctions between diversity and equality. We should realize that the goal of affirmative action is about equality, not diversity. Diversity does have its value of broadening people’s view. But, to what extend, should we allow the diversity to over shadow the equality? Let’s say this, in the name of the diversity, we would like to set a rule that all American football teams have to mimic the population profile of the United State. Understand that, in this case, there will be qualified Whites and Blacks that can’t make the team because quota were created for the Natives and Asian. Would you echo this diversity view? The equality, on the other hand, will make sure that qualified Blacks will not be barred from the game. The distant goal of diversity is actually the equality. The question, however, is if diversity a route to the equality? That said, I affirmed that I will promote diversities so that all views and ideas are exam objectively and I will address all issues with solutions that apply to all race, gender and socioeconomic status. In addition, I certainly will look into discrimination cases of all kinds.

4) To promote student learning through the provision of quality instruction and curriculum is another of the board's guiding principles. How will you ensure that student is not only receiving quality instruction, but also ensure that students are getting the most possible out of the curriculum provided?

Response:
Before I start, I like to, again, emphasis the importance of being responsible. Community resource is limited; we can’t ask institutions to provide unlimited helps. Yes, providing personal tutoring/body-guard will improve students’ learning. But how efficient is that and is this kind of operation sustainable? Besides, you can herd them to pastures, but you can’t make them pasturing. To improve students’ learning, everyone has to do their parts. It is particularly important to nurture students’ sense of responsibility – study hard and go and seek answers to questions … etc. In addition to that, instructors are responsible for providing quality instructions while administrators have the role of overseeing the operation and making sure institutions fulfill its society role.

Through my 2 and half years of teaching at community colleges, I notice that a large portion of the community college students lacking the ability of independent learning. I considered this a very important issue since without this ability, community college graduates will face difficulties when transferred to 4-year colleges and will have difficulties in adopting the on-the-job training or the likely mid-life career changes. In my view, the reading comprehension is a vital part of this. Over the years, I have encounter students that were lacking this ability and, as a consequence, could not unlock their potential. On the other hand, students with this ability are totally capable of studying by themselves. And not only can they zip through courses, there are times they were bored by lectures that were designed for the majority of the students and this leads me to the idea of testing-out mentioned in a later paragraph.

Even though I believe it’s possible to improve the situation within our current higher education practices, I wouldn’t rule out other ways to improve the situation. A possible setup is to test the graduates of certain fields with third party managed certificate tests. For example, in the IT field, there are quite few certificate tests available and some employer do ask for the certificate. In this scenario, students are pressured to take up their responsibility and will see instructors as their ally. With students and instructor on the same boat, there is no stop to it.

**I post several similar comments to articles at www.InsideHigherEd.com and, only recently, the ‘State Higher Education Executive Officers’ published a paper ‘accountability for better results’ call for the use of ‘rigorous EXTERNAL accreditation’.

The idea of allowing students to take tests to acquire credits also rings bell to me. The idea will reduce students’ financial burden and, therefore, provide incentives for them to study hard and take up their responsibility. At the same time, this will build up their ability to learn and study independently. The idea of adopting technology and using pre-recorded lectures to share course material is also a good one. Institutions and instructors should not afraid of all these, they just need to adapt. These ideas will give instructors more time to do other things. It does not eliminate instructors job, it simply change their roles. Some instructors may take up the role of consulting and some of them may take up the role of learning and developing new courses. Institutions can extend their reach to other kinds of students and reducing the cost per services.

As a board member, I will see the institution respond to society’s needs and I will support the call for accountability of our institution. I see this as the only way to advance our higher education system.


5) Another principle is to develop and maintain partnerships, which the board works to do. If elected to the board, what partnerships will you strive to either develop or maintain?

Response:
As I continue to emphasize, I strongly believe that the higher education is part of the society and is responsible to the need of the society. As a member of the society, we are connected to the society in terms of needs and feedback.

Instructors in our institution will continue to advance in their fields and will need to connect to the source of the knowledge. Our students will be hired by industries and will need to continue to advance their knowledge while working. Our institution is connected to the K12 too since our students come from that system. While we are advancing our institution, we would like to help the K12 producing better qualified students since that allows our institution to move our offering to a higher level and help the whole society move to a higher level.

Our relations with University and State colleges are of vital importance. Not only that they are part of our knowledge source; they also set the bar for our transfer students. In addition to that, I considered higher education an essential part of our state’s economy and all institutions are linked. The state of Nebraska do not have unlimited resources and how we use them determines our future. At this moment, Nebraska produces highly trained graduates only to see them leave the state to work for other states. This is particularly true for Ph.D. and Master students. The only way to keep these students is to develop our own industry – a vertical industry where University and State colleges provide the research and developing expertise while community colleges provides the knowledgeable work force. Only with this kind of alignment, we can build an industry that is not only competitive but also sustainable since the whole resource is behind it.

As a board member, I will also see our institution to connect to the public and the legislature. I will seek to demonstrate our contribution and, in return, I will seek appropriate funding for our institution to help advancing the whole state of Nebraska.

5 questions posted by Beatrice Daily Sun

Beatrice Daily Sun

Coming soon - my response to 5 questions post by Beatrice Daily Sun

As some of you might know, this year I am running for the Southeast Community College's board of governance. Because of this, I received request from Beatrice Daily Sun to provide their reader my political view on 5 questions. Today, I finished my response and emailed to the newspaper. Hopefully, it will be printed in the next couple of days. I will post my response here right after it appears on the paper or on Nov. 1, 2008 which ever is earlier.

The five questions asked by the Beatrice Daily Sun are:

1) What experience do you have that makes you a great candidate for the SCC Board of Governors?

2) As a board member, how will you deal with financial issues that students will face; such as rising tuition costs and the lack of private loans for college?

3) One of the current board's guiding principles is to value and support diversity? How have you in the past and how will you in the future, uphold this principle?

4) To promote student learning through the provision of quality instruction and curriculum is another of the board's guiding principles. How will you ensure that students as not only receiving quality instruction, but also ensure that students are getting the most possible out of the curriculum provided?

5) Another principle is to develop and maintain partnerships, which the board works to do. If elected to the board, what partnerships will you strive to either develop or maintain?

Staff Salary By Race - University of Nebraksa

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

Postsecondary Education and Nebraska's Future forum

Original Article
Related material on the internet:
Nebraska Innovation Forum
University of Nebraska 2000 - 2004(strategy plan?)

This is a news report not my comments on the event.

On Dec. 5, 2007, Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education (CCPE) and Senator Ron Raikes, Chair, Nebraska Legislature's Education Committee, co-host the forum: Postsecondary Education and Nebraska's Future.

The forum features presentations by Dennis Jones, president, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems and Q&A sessions with Nebraska leaders - Dennis Baack, Stan Carpenter, Doug Christensen, Tip O'Neil, Linda Ray Pratt (above, represent education sector), Wendy Boyer and Jim Linderholm (business sector). Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman is also invited. Dennis Jones' presentation can be found here.

Dennis Jones, a native Nebraskan who had been invited to give similar talks to Nebraska's policy makers in the past(e.g. 2003), made his points even clear this time that the most important thing for Nebraska is to strive on economic development. In general, his talk concluded that Nebraska is doing a fair job in educating our kids but is short on building a sustainable economics and, as a result, Nebraska was not able to retain these well educated kids and was not able to achieve economic gain.

At the Q&A session, several good points are raised. Stan Carpenter, with daughter in school, talk about customizing system to fit students learning style. Doug Christensen talked about what K12 system have done in recruiting minority students. Dennis Baack talked about community colleges' efforts in working with Universities, State colleges and private institutions in making the system more economic. Tip O'Neill talk about the culture changes in savings and about legislature's efforts in encouraging saving for education. Linda Ray Pratt talked about University's willingness in engaging the society in economic development and University's efforts in creating the innovation park. She also talked about UNO's efforts in attracting Iowa students. Wendy Boyer, when asked about businesses' view about the training need from higher education institutions, talked about the mixed need from business world and talked about the short term specific training needs of businesses.

Governor Dave Heineman use his opportunity to talk about the difficult budget decision he have to make between other issues and education. Even though he has passions on education and economic development, the tight state budget is limiting the funding state can appropriate to education. The lower tax and budget discipline is his signature.

Lincoln Public School Grading Policy Change?

Original Article - Sorry, can't find relative material at LPS.org

Summary goes here!

I heard this from my daughter and confirmed by school principle.

LPS is discussing the possible change in the way middle school students are graded. The basic idea is that grades will be based on tests only, the homework and assignment are considered a separate item that evaluates a student's behavior.

An argument I learned from the principle is that people are wondered why should we keep ponding on these students for assignments if they can performed well in tests.

In general, this is a sound argument. But, I have to be causals. At this point in time, in general, grade is all people care and I can see the 'behavior' item been ignored totally. The question: Will this produce a right mind set for our youth?

As we all understand that no all kids are born equal and we also understand that not all people with highest grade accomplished the most. If there come a time that society and these young kids understand these, I will say the approach is OK. But! Are our society understand all these implications? Will colleges look into the value of assignments?

Once thing troubles me is that bright kids will begin to ignore assignments and could be ignorant to the fact that smart isn't every thing. The worst is that they will ignore the importance of working hard and better use of their gifts.

The implementation of this policy could also undermined the importance of work ethic especially for those young mind.