…Last fall, Ms. Berg and two classmates started a group to raise awareness of class and to advocate for more support for low-income students. So far, the group has put on several events, including a well-attended panel: “How Public Is Our Public University?” Next academic year, organizers want to reach out to new students especially, … Continue reading »
Filed under Sociology …
Child Care and STEM Fields Are Called Barriers to Women at 2-Year Colleges
The shortage of affordable child care and the gender stereotypes that discourage women from pursuing careers in mathematics and science are two of the biggest barriers holding women back in community colleges, according to a report released on Thursday by the American Association of University Women. The report, “Women in Community Colleges: Access to Success,” … Continue reading »
Social-Emotional Learning Gets Race to Top Boost By Nirvi Shah
Parents in the Seattle area are being trained and paid to reach out to other families and encourage them to get involved in their children’s schooling. Along the Texas-Mexico border, a nonprofit group is working with children touched by violence and creating peer groups for students with other sorts of struggles. And in Indiana, community … Continue reading »
MOOC Teaches How to Cheat in Online Courses, With Eye to Prevention
In a few weeks, Bernard Bull, assistant vice president for academics at Concordia University Wisconsin, will ask participants in his new course to cheat. There’s a caveat, though. They’ll have to disclose to the rest of the class exactly how they cheated. “Of course, if the assignment is to cheat, then you’re not really cheating,” … Continue reading »
No Rich Child Left Behind
Today’s commentary comes from Sean F. Reardon, a professor of education and sociology at Stanford. Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, … Continue reading »
Weaving Adjunct Faculty into the 21st Century Community College
While attending the League for Innovations 2013 conference in Dallas, I was chatting with a colleague about collaborative and active learning and the new language of flipped classrooms (i.e., technology-delivered content outside of class time to maximize student engagement with the material, faculty and other students during face-to-face sessions). We were reminiscing about conversations in … Continue reading »
‘Real World’ Social Media Helps Students Bond
As technology becomes ever more ubiquitous in children’s social lives, new research suggests fundamental skills still apply, particularly in environments that mirror real life. Children’s online social lives were a big topic at the annual Society for Research in Child Development conference in Seattle on Thursday. Several new studies presented there suggest that while socializing … Continue reading »
College and Class: 2 Researchers Study Inequality, Starting With One Freshman Floor
The college experience can be quite different for students depending on their class backgrounds. That’s what Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton found in a five-year, in-depth, longitudinal study of women who started out living on the same floor in a “party dorm” at a public flagship they call “Midwest University.” Ms. Armstrong, an … Continue reading »
Transgender Students in Our Schools
“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law. For if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal, as well.” President Barack Obama It was considered a historic speech. Not because of the crowd or … Continue reading »
Why Men Are More Likely to Drop Out
As student debt levels continue to rise, more college students are facing a critical decision: Borrow more or drop out? Men and women appear to be reaching different conclusions. Moderate levels of debt can actually help students graduate by allowing them to work less and study more. But beyond a certain point, the relationship breaks … Continue reading »
