First Generation College Students

I just read a fantastic blog post about First Generation college students.

This is one of my near-and-dear subjects with college students. I absolutely loved working with First Generation students- one of the easiest ways to get me to tear up would be watching them graduate and the proud/astonished looks on their parents faces as they crossed the stage with their diploma. Usually because these folks do not have an easy road into college.

This was a HUGE wake up call for me. I grew up in a mostly college educated family where it was simply assumed from Day One that I would attend college. There simply was no other alternative, period. But when I started working with students where this was not the expectation it was a rather large slap in the face.

Many of the parents I met who did not attend college were more fearful than their child about attending college. Many did not think their child would succeed, or that their child needed a college education- after all, they did not have one and seemed to be OK. Again- I could not imagine my parents thinking I would not be successful or that I did not need higher education... but that was the reality for some of these students.

The first step for many of these students was simply to get onto the college campus. I don't care if you are on the Harvard campus or your local community college's campus- there is an atmosphere of excitement, hope and overall activity when you step onto a college campus. When you're physically visiting some place it is far easier to see yourself (or your child) fitting in as a member of that community rather than simply hearing about it. There is the feeling of "Yes, I want to be here!"

It also takes away any pre-conceived notions about college when you are physically on the campus. The image of the sweater-vest wearing elitist goes away pretty quickly when you see the student walk by toting a backpack that is more than 50% of his body weight wearing a tattered hoodie and jeans that look like they were dug out from under the bed. So while in general you should always visit a college campus, I think it's especially important for a first generation student to visit the college campus and spend a little time there.

Pre-conceived notions or stereotypes are going to be somewhat of a theme in this blog, since it seemed like the first-gen students I worked with along with their parents had much stronger (and more inaccurate) ones than many students who came from college educated families.

Another was that not only was college far too expensive for that student but financial aid was far too difficult to untangle that you pretty much need a PhD to get through it. Maybe I was blessed with getting to work with a great set of financial aid people , but they were all super nice, very patient and willing to explain all of the mysteries of collegiate financial aid. But the key here again is to take a little time to sit down with the FA crew(and yep, these folks work evenings and weekends for this reason) and talk it through with them. Their job is to make financial aid easy to understand- not sell it to you!

Finally the last important part of starting a good college experience for first generation students is to meet classmates. These folks are your support network in school, when at 2 AM you realize there is a paper due tomorrow, you have lost the syllabus for the class, your significant other is being a $%@# and you realize there is no food in the fridge. (It happened to me more than once.) You can call them up for the assignment details and they'll talk you off the ledge and into coming to class in the morning. (Note: you will be expected to do the same for them.) This is where having a non-collegiate support group is hard; not having ever been in the situation they don't always understand and often the encouragement to quit school is given. I truly, truly wish I could say I was hypothesizing here and that I have never seen this happen. Unfortunately it happened with first generation students more than most.

Disclaimer: I am not trying to paint parents as the "bad guy" here. They just often seemed to be so afraid for their student that they would present a major roadblock in the student's success! My advice to them: It's OK! Your student will be just fine- maybe a few bumps along the way but everyone in college gets those! It's part of the growing/learning curve.

So, to sum it up: visit campus, talk to financial aid and make friends. Recipe for anyone's success, but especially important for the first-generation crowd. This may be why there are so many first generation college student organizations and programs.

Oh did I mention organizations? If your campus is big/lucky enough to have a First Generation College student group/club... JOIN IT!

Any experiences from students on being the first one in the family to go to college?

The Ivory Academic Tower?

There is some outrage going on right now in the academic community about a Florida professor who is making a little less than 100k/year and who has a contract which limits her teaching load to one class and is fighting the University about raising her teaching load due to budget cuts. Read the story here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/24/babb

Did you read the comments?

There seems to be a lot of outrage at the general academic community as being sheltered, under worked (or under-cooked as my spell check just tried to change that to) and overpaid. Many folks asked how many other academics have this admittedly cushy agreement with their colleges/universities... and many others from the academic world responded with outrage at the former comments saying this one example is not indicative of the entire academic community.

I would have to agree with the latter. None of the administrators who are friends or colleagues of mine are what I would even remotely call under worked. Most admissions directors I know put in at least 60 hours a week, often 7 days a week. Professors and instructors are at the college at all times of the day/night (especially those night classes... getting out at 9PM!) on top of doing some of their own work/research depending on their post at the college. And while many of these people do well (though not as well as the professor in the story), I would certainly say every single one of them works very hard for their paychecks. By mid quarter or semester many of these professors are so burned out from going full out for so many weeks they hardly know what day it is. (And no, it's not due to being an absent minded professor!)

Sometimes I wish I couldn't see both sides of the issues. While it certainly is nice to get on the high horse and demand that this professor pick up more since everyone else undoubtedly is as well it does not bode well for the University to break it's contract with her. That could set up some of the other academics who are less "bloated and lazy" (as one commenter described all academics) to have already heavy loads increased which would in turn reduce the service that is being provided to the students.

When I was working at the college I always considered myself lucky not to be one of the ones laid off, but yet every time there were lay offs I knew that another dollop of work would be headed my way since the person who previously did it was let go. (As with many other colleges, I imagine, this increase in work load was not accompanied by an increase in pay.) Eventually I knew I was not doing as good of a job with many of my demands as I would have liked to, but there simply were not enough hours in the day to cover all the various things I had picked up and do well at all of them. It became a matter of doing 6 things well or 15 things halfway. But that was just how it went.

So again, this situation I think requires a lot more thought... while certainly this professor may have a very comfortable situation, it may be hard for the University to only break contract with her and not lay the groundwork to do with with others which could turn into a scary situation. It also doesn't help the overall view of many people who are not in higher ed or involved with it in any way (i.e. no kids in college) that all of us higher ed academics/admin are "bloated and lazy".

All in all, not a good story to be breaking at this point in time. What do you think about this?

FERPA- Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act

As you are going off to college this is something that you and your parents should be aware of.

FERPA is a law that is put in place to protect student information. However, when the student reaches the age of 18 or attends a school beyond the high school level these rights transfer completely to the student. Students must sign a waiver to allow anyone other than themselves access to their administrative, academic or financial aid records after the rights have been transferred to them.

This means that if a parent calls the college and requests information about financial aid, grades or attendance this information cannot be disclosed to the parent unless the student has signed the waiver agreement specifically allowing that parent to access the requested information. I spoke with quite a few very irate parents who were not happy that I could not disclose this information to them despite the fact that the parent was paying for the student's education.

If you have any type of agreement with your child/parent when starting college it is best to have a plan for this in place. If there is an agreement about grades that are to be maintained to remain eligible for private scholarships, familial contributions, etc. where a parent needs to independently view the academic information the student must sign a waiver allowing the parent to do so.

So, before heading off to college I encourage you (and your parents or child) to be aware of the FERPA laws that will be in place at the college: http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html

Re-thinking Traditional Admissions Process

Today has been a pensive day.

I read something that made me think quite a bit about how the web is *really* changing how students look at colleges. Back in the day (ha...) you emailed or (gasp!) picked up the phone and called the college or filled out a direct mail piece and returned it to the college in order to request more information.

About a week later you would receive some lovely glossy pamphlets of the college and information about classes, dorms, activities, etc. From this you would compile a shortlist, then visit the college then make your decision.

Which is great and still works in many cases, but the web has thrown a big old wrench into this whole idea. Now, the center of many college's marketing is the college website. (And I agree- it should be. After all, the percentage of kids 16-18 who are not on the web must be minute. If I could find the stats on this I would quote them here, however there seems to be a conspiracy to hide them from me.) Everything you receive or see direct you to the website- now you will see a web address on a billboard for a college more frequently than you'll see a phone number. This makes sense as well, when you're driving I hope you don't try to write down the 1-800 number listed on the sign but rather it's pretty easy to remember "Oh hey, I should look up XYZCollege.edu and see what their school is all about!"

So again, we're back at the website. Many schools have on the front page a link to "Request More Info" or "Apply Online" which is fantastic. For some, that is as far as they want to go and getting the info delivered physically right into their hands is as easy as clicking the button, filling out the form then checking the mailbox in a few days.

However... I'm not sure how many kids go straight for those options when all of the information that they would be sent- and then some- is already on the website. Chances are, they will dig around on the website a little bit to see what they can find about their interests before requesting more info. And what happens when the student receives the information and it's something that was either already on the web, or refers the student back to the website for more in depth information! Wasn't that just a waste of all of that printing and postage?

That being said, we've just cut the traditional two steps out of the college process because the student does not need to contact the college at this point to express his/her interest in the college and does not need information sent out because there are colorful and often interactive (yay interactive!) pieces of information on the website. Truly, if a website is doing its job fully it should provide any information a student wants, so what could be sent out that the website didn't already cover? So now what?

Side note to above paragraph: Some schools intentionally put truncated information on the website to force students to request more information. There is nothing wrong with this, it's just a way for the school to get the student's contact information. In this case the information sent out will be more in-depth than what was found on the website.

The next step would have been the tour. I still believe 100% that you should always always always always always always always (point across yet?) always visit in person the campus that you are interested in attending. I don't care if it's halfway across the country the online tours and view books won't do it justice. So I really hope that the virtual tours will never fully replace the in person tour.

Then there's the application. I will post my "Why Applying Online Is the Way To Go" in another blog... but that title sums it up. Paper is out, online is in! But what if... let's just say for a minute that you've gotten everything that you can possibly need to know about the college online. You know about the programs, who the advisers are, where the dorms are and read the student blog of what it's like to live in them and how you shouldn't eat the French Toast on Thursdays, you know that the jazz choir auditions are the second Wednesday of the semester and you're 100% sold that this is where you want to go. You click that magic "Apply Online" button and send in your application.

Whoa! This could be the first time the college has heard of you! You know all about them but all they know about you is that you are obviously web savvy, you have a 27 ACT score and want to major in organic chemistry! (Now, when I was in admissions and one of these came in I always thought "Sweet! Freebie! I don't have to convince this student that this is the place to go because he/she has already done it!")

After this you will probably be invited to create your online profile- get your University email set up and log into the registration system... again, everything is done online. (I will blog about students using or not using the college student portal systems later... that's an entire separate blog!) You can follow your financial aid (www.fafsa.ed.gov... another website), you can electronically sign whatever it is you need to sign, and get your schedule figured out with never having to set foot on campus!

Most of the back-end elements are already in place in the admissions process, but in talking with some admissions folks around the country the change in the front end of how students find and initially communicate with the college is undergoing a huge change right now! It's somewhat daunting trying to figure out what works best for these students- providing more information at the tips of their fingers (literally!) or to withhold it and force the student to contact the school to show interest?

Students? Counselors? What do you think? What works best for you personally?

My best advice to anyone in college.

Keep things from classes. Especially the syllabus and any major papers you write for the class.

Why?

Let me back up and talk about what prompted this. Standing in line waiting to get my sandwich at lunch today I was behind two local college students. There are about three major colleges and a community college in the town we're located in so I'm not sure which schools this guy was talking about. He was quite upset that he was trying to transfer between two of the schools here and the school that he wanted to go to was not going to take 35 of his credits. Understandably he was fairly upset about it and in the end decided not to do the transfer. (Or at least that is what I got out of my eavesdropping.)

What I really, really wanted to tell this guy was that the initial credit evaluation when transferring usually works out that way. Upon first glance you lose a bunch of credits. However, when this happened to me at my third school I was able to get about half of those lost credits put back onto my transcript because I was able to bring in syllabi and papers from the classes that they were not going to allow to transfer.

Typically the reason that a school disallows transfer credits is that they cannot see from the first glance what the course is about. You may know that English Language in America was a writing intensive class that counted for the writing requirement at School A, but School B can't tell that when looking at your transcript so it doesn't count. However, when you bring your syllabus from the class in that shows the ten papers you wrote for the class as well as a copy of your fifteen page term paper and give them either to your advisor or to the transfer office your chances are much better. (HINT: give them a copy because you may not get the original back!)

This process is expedited if you have the syllabi from the various classes you have taken, but in the case where you don't have it still you can try to email the professor and get a copy. This will be much for feasible if the class was in the past year; beyond that gets iffy. I realized that when I was missing the syllabus for one class (arg!) that I had taken five years previously and the professor had a new computer by then that didn't have any of the old syllabi, etc from his old computer and old classes. With no proof that the class was more than the transcript said it was I ended up having to re-take it at College #3. (This should also be another reason not to take eight years and 180 undergraduate credits across three colleges.)

Moral of the story: Make a folder for all your old syllabi. Keep it until you graduate from college... maybe longer. You may thank yourself someday.

The "Four Year Degree" in Three Years

With the economy down this educational idea is starting to catch some interest again. Basically the premise is this: In a four year degree you complete either 12 quarters or 8 semesters worth of classroom time. This becomes four years when you do either two semesters or three quarters in a year, taking the summers off. However, if you complete another quarter or semester during the summer session you can cut your time at the school down from 4 years to 3, still getting the same amount of academic credit. The college I used to work at had this system in place, so I'm quite familar with it.

The biggest argument to this idea can be summed up as experience vs. economy. While you do not save money on credits by doing all of your coursework in three years you do save money on a year's worth of living expenses while in college, and also you get into the workforce sooner. (Which, in brighter times than we're in now would have meant potentially another year's salary to add to your lifetime earnings.)

However, many opponents of this have argued that because much of college is a "finding yourself" process that this gets lost in the highly focused three year degree programs. The other issue this runs into is how to make the three year student's schedules work with the four year student schedules in terms of course sequence. If All the students who started class together in the Fall of '09 need to take a particular class their junior year which is only offered every other year, that forces the 3 year students to either wait until their senior set of semesters/quarters etc to take the course (which could potentially mess up the subsequent courses which use the course as a prerequisite) or take the class earlier in the course sequences as a sophomore which again could potentially be detrimental to the student due to lack of prior knowledge gained the full sophomore year.

Where I stand on this is somewhere in the middle. I don't think the three year program is for everyone as it does force more focus upon which classes the student is going to take each quarter/semester in order to complete the program in that amount of time. On the other hand, I experienced a huge lack of focus when I was doing my undergraduate course work (is that why it took me three schools and eight years?) because no one ever looked at my schedule and said "WHY are you taking that class? You could be taking a required course instead and spend your money on that course rather than exploring your side interest in political philosophy, which you could do on your own." I didn't really understand until I have started paying back my student loans that each of those meandering side classes I took, while interesting, cost money and delayed my finishing my degree. I truly believe that had I been offered a three year program I would have done it and completed it happily.

However, I don't think any college or university can straddle the fence without shortchanging some students. Either offer the degree in three years or four. I think if you get a student who wants to do the four year degree in three years he/she will figure out how to get the summer classes needed to make that happen. There may also be programs that lend themselves to a three year program better than a four year program, which can also be looked at by the institution.

Where I believe this discussion needs to start happening is with the students themselves. In looking into this more I heard a lot of academics talking about the pros and cons- basically deciding what is best for the students- without hearing student voices from what I could tell.

So, students... what do you think? The traditional four years for a "four year degree" or three years?

Finding the Balance

I keep reading and reading and reading about students prepping to get into the perfect college, and who are throwing themselves into as many activities as possible to beef up the resume. I may have mentioned it before, but besides blogging I also coach a high school athletic team (you can probably guess the sport) which allows me to see some of this first hand.

First off let me say that I adore the kids on the team. They are, to a one, a really great bunch. But what worries me sometimes is a tendency to not be able to balance their schedule with practice and meets versus homework and school obligations. We frequently have students who miss practice and meets because they claim to have too much homework.

If this is true, then fine. I certainly do not want to see their schoolwork being sacrificed at the cost of participating in a sport. But that is just my point: if you are going to participate in extracurricular activities, shouldn't you have a handle on your curricular activities so that you can achieve a balance between them? We do make the statement at the beginning of the season that homework really isn't an excuse to miss practice/meets and that if you think you cannot handle both of these then perhaps you should reconsider being involved in this sport at this time.

I have questioned a few students too (they don't like this) on the legitimacy of this. For example, school gets out at 3:35 pm in our city. If that is the case, let's say the student is home by 4 PM, and does homework for 2 hours until 6 PM, takes off 30 minutes for dinner and resumes homework until a conservative bedtime of 10 PM. That gives 5.5 hours of homework- and when this is occurring on a Tuesday night I have to wonder 2 things. A) Has the student procrastinated on something that could have been done over the course of several nights? or B) Are schools giving out that much homework that is literally due the next day that the student is needing to spend almost 6 hours each night doing homework or C) Did the student simply not want to come to practice and use the (often parent supported) excuse of too much homework? I hate wondering this because it takes away some of the credibility of the student with me.

The other issue we run into is students who are missing practice/meets due to piano lessons, working at their part-time job, etc.

What ever happened to time management skills? Of saying "I have practice tonight from 4:00-5:30 so I can only do my piano lessons after 6:00 and from 7:00 on I will do my homework"? Is this part of the frenzy to do as much as possible in as little time as possible?

I truly, truly do not think it is good for a student (or anyone for that matter) to get involved in as much as possible but only devote 75% of his/her best effort to each activity. Believe me, you're not fooling anyone. It's frustrating to the teachers/coaches/coworkers and even more frustrating to your teammates who are giving 100%.

Plus, as a former college admissions advisor I will say I want to see someone who maybe did one activity but did it really really well and had some achievements rather than someone who was involved in ten activities but did not make an impact in any of them. I would wonder about that person's commitment levels.

In any case, part of being involved in these extra curricular activities, be it a sport, musical lessons/performance, part time jobs, etc. is to learn some time management skills for down the road, and sometimes that involves making choices like "I can't watch my favorite TV show tonight because I have to do homework... since I can't do my homework earlier because I have practice." Fun? Not so much. But necessary? Yes.

You'll be a much better off college student someday for it. Trust me.

Contact Info... Please?

You've heard it a million times before... "Put your name on your paper!"

Well, I would like to add one to that... put your name in your email!

This was prompted actually not by student email, but emails from admissions counselors who were getting error messages while trying to update their college profiles on our website. Granted it was a very small minority who didn't include any contact info in their emails it still made me laugh a little bit. I had to figure out where the email was coming from by the @college.edu address to help fix their problems.

So, I guess it doesn't get any better as you get older... we still forget to put our names on things!

Am I Blind?

I always thought I could find about anything online... but this one is still eluding me!

I can't find a up to date measure of what percentage of American teens are online and how much time per week they spend online on average!

Anyone know?!

2 Year Schools Vs. The Economy

My favorite blog today had a post that made me re-think the advice that I've been giving students for several years now: Pick a school and stay there. Make sure it's the right one because you don't want to transfer if you don't have to.

The reasoning behind this is fairly simple: You don't know what will and won't transfer until you start working with the school you are transferring to. You may have taken English Comp 101 in School #1, but if School #2's writing requirement is English Comp 201 you may very well be out of luck on the transfer. Then, in addition to paying for the class the first time at School #1 you've also got to pay it again at School #2.

Now, the other school of thought is go to a 2 year community college and get some of these generals out of the way at a cheaper price. I know of one CC that charges around $76/credit. That's like giving away education! :) So, at that rate you figure your entire 3 credit writing class costs you $228 plus whatever books you needed. That may very well be less than one credit at a four year school (the private school I am attending now is $333/credit- fairly reasonable) so the savings are obvious. Pay $228 for the writing class or $999? (Or, as I would say, risk ending up taking both at $1,227?)

But now our economy is in the crapper and parents are often re-looking at that four year college tuition bill as something that is out of their reach for the time being. For the time being, yes, but maybe not in two years. So this is causing an influx of students who would, in normal times, go to a four year college (public or private) but are choosing the least expensive route for the immediate moment and planning on transferring either with a 2 year associates degree or at least the general education credits taken care of.

What is causing me to re-think my position is that is this going to end up being more expensive in the long run? If you can transfer in... let's say 5 of 8 classes in the required general education classes and one of those three leftover requirements at 4 Year College was going to be retaken because the 2 Year credits weren't transferred what are you looking at? Let's use the $76/credit example vs. the $333/credit for the four year and average a three credit class.
-You would have saved $3,885 on those five transferred classes.
-The remaining three classes cost you $2,997 plus the $228 of the class you had to retake at College2.
- Total cost of "Gen Eds" with transferring: $4,365
-Total Cost had you done it all at School #2: $7,992

Now, this model is assuming that a college is a college is a college is a college and that any student would like College #1 every bit as much as College #2 up the road. That is where I have the hardest time swallowing this.

What if the student hates College #1 and gets such a poor impression of college (I've seen more than one student assume every college is as bad as their first bad experience at any school, no matter what type) that they decide not to transfer into College #2. Then we're possibly left with student loan debt and no degree to show for it.

There are students that thrive on the culture of college who may not get it if they stick to the cheapest, closest to home option. So it makes me wonder if we're not setting ourselves up for long term failure to save a few dollars right now.

Of course, there are also the students that will thrive anywhere and these are the students that are pointed to when it's said "But this system works!" Of course it does... for some. But for some students I worry that the risk of not going to the "right" college (not just financially) the first time will have bigger risks of the student not persisting through either to the AA degree or transferring on to get a bachelor's degree.

That's where this economy puts us in such a hard place with education. Do we go for what is the most feasible at the moment but possibly sacrifice some long term outcomes or do we put ourselves in over our heads to do it right the first time?

Couldn't Be More True

Well, the first time I tried to post this I managed to only post the blog title. Anyway, technological mishaps aside...

I read a little bit about your "web footprints" today. This article had some good points that nothing ever really "goes away" on the web. Between Google and Twitter and the dozens and dozens of sites that have a cache of everything that has ever been posted on them you've got to be cautious about what you post about yourself.

This is especially true of high school/college students with college admissions folk, RA's and employers becoming more web savvy. Someone left the comment on the article that "You shouldn't put anything on a social networking site that you wouldn't want on the front page of the paper, because you never know when it will end up there". There was also a little blurb about an executive who was travelling to meet a client and posted a derogatory comment about the city the client lived in on Twitter. the client saw it, didn't find it funny at all and promptly discontinued the business relationship.

Yikes.

The most appealing part of the whole article, though was this simple statement at the end: "Whether you believe in monitoring yourself online or not, don't forget the point of the social Web: to get to know other like minded people, share resources, have fun, and leave the place a little nicer than you found it." Gee, is that so hard to do?

Even online, we can leave the world a little bit better than we found it. Give it a shot! Hold back that nasty remark on your "status update" and put something fun or funny on it. Make someones day. Find a constructive way to leave a comment on a blog rather than saying something nasty that eventually someone will read and think "what a jerk" about. Sure it takes a little effort, but just like picking up litter on the street we can prevent some "litter" on the web.

Plus when you look back at your web footprints there is nothing to be ashamed of!

January Thaw!

I know it's February now. However, that still doesn't stop me from being excited that it got into the double digit range above zero for two days in a row!

Did you go outside? I skied all weekend and it was great! (Minus a few face plants because some of the tracks were icy...)

That reminded me of some of the websites I've been exploring lately for college sports recruiting. Most of them charge a nominal fee (under $100) for high school athletes to upload videos of themselves playing their sport and then allow college athletic recruiters to access the sites to view the videos of potential students. Definitely an interesting concept, I thought, even if some of the videos I watched were so shaky they made me borderline ill to watch. :)

I wonder what percentage of top tier athletes are using these, and also what percentage of coaches and other recruiters are watching them. I also noticed that it only covered sports that are considered "major"; hockey was sparsely represented, any snow sports were completely left out and running only had a minor showing- usually of the track and field variety. (Then again, I can't imagine a coach sitting through a video of a 5-10k cross country race!)

Are you using any of these websites? If so, which ones? Have you been contacted by anyone from a college? Or, on the collegiate side... are you a coach using these? Do you know of a coach who uses these sites?

I'm eager to learn more about this... (partially as a coach myself, though there wasn't a place for XC skiing...)