Category: Higher Education/System

The hour when Ariana Kramer will begin her college career is fast approaching – and her parents are in an office supply store, disagreeing about hanging files, of all things.

Shopping for colleges? Location may be more important than you think, according to a new index of 75 “best cities” for college students. “The education and experiences you get extend beyond the walls of the campus,” says Kerry Lynch, senior fellow at the non-profit American Institute for Economic Research, whose 2010-2011 College Destination Index is out Wednesday.
Note: Madison is ranked #6 in its size category.

Regardless of whether college students are reaching new intellectual heights, their phones are certainly getting smarter. Almost half (45 percent) of UW-Madison students reported owning a smart phone, a handheld Internet device like an iPhone or Blackberry, according to the university?s 2010 Computing Survey.

Even for average parents, the letting go is difficult ? more so, they and many others say, than it was for parents of college-bound freshmen in decades past. Robin Kramer recalls how her own parents, who never attended college, dropped her off with a trunk full of belongings at Drake University, also in Iowa, in 1978. She set up her room and attended orientation without them there. “Its just what you did then,” she says. It was much the same for Paul, whose father took him to the University of Wisconsin in 1977 and then went fishing. But some say its often hardest for parents, who remember the days of college when there were fewer support systems in place for students.

A year ago, the Cap Times asked a range of people associated with higher education in the Madison area if there was “something you wish every college student would know before the start of the school year?” We then posted these “words of wisdom” as the academic year kicked off.

With the start of another school year upon us, do you have any advice you?d like to pass along to college students?

Some who left college a few credits short of graduating are getting a second chance at earning that degree. The Institute for Higher Education Policy and the Lumina Foundation for Education announced a joint initiative that works with both community colleges and four-year institutions in select states, including Wisconsin, “to find formerly enrolled college students whose academic records qualify them to be awarded an associate?s degree retroactively.”

Law schools, once viewed as a guaranteed path to a high-paying career, are coming under fire as disillusioned graduates find a tighter job market than they say they were led to expect. The American Bar Association, which accredits law schools, acknowledges such concerns.

We have some breaking news folks …UW-Madison is a hotbed of liberalism.

CampusReform.org put out a press release Monday which notes it recently “completed an in-depth profile of the political climate at the University of Wisconsin as part of an ongoing project to research the nation?s top 100 universities. The research shows liberal political bias at the University of Wisconsin based on the school?s faculty, student organizations, and administrative policies.”

Forget chess club. College students today are attracted to clubs with activities that are more innovative ? maybe even downright wacky. College experts say students who participate in extracurricular activities are more engaged in the college experience, and benefits can be seen both in and outside the classroom. Students who participate in co-curricular activities study more, have higher GPAs and are more satisfied with their social lives, says Kevin Kruger of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. David Bebeau, 20, founded the Humans vs. Zombies club at the University of Wisconsin in 2009. As many as 300 students play the week-long game that goes on 24/7. Bebeau says the club brings together a diverse group of students who wouldn?t otherwise interact.

Average scores on the ACT college entrance exam inched downward this year, yet slightly more students who took the test proved to be prepared for college, according to a report released Wednesday. The findings sound contradictory. But the exam?s authors point to a growing and more diverse group of test-takers ? many are likely scoring lower overall, but more are also meeting benchmarks used to measure college readiness.

Catching up on a couple higher education-related items …

** The Chronicle of Higher Education attended last week?s 26th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning at the Monona Terrace Convention Center, and asked a “half-dozen professors, technologists and administrators to share the struggles of teaching online.”

** Three out of four students and their parents don’t have a plan for how they’ll pay for college when they enroll, according to a new report from Sallie Mae and Gallup.

** Donna Shalala, the former chancellor of UW-Madison and the current president of the University of Miami, was detained and interrogated at Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv last month, according to several newspaper reports.

Expect the incoming freshman class at UW-Madison to have a little more international flavor. After getting a 21 percent increase in international applicants, the college is expecting about 100 more international students to enroll this year. That means 519 incoming students will be foreign. That?s a trend that is playing out at other colleges, according an article in the New York Times. UW-Madison is on track for a target class of 5,700, said Adele Brumfield, UW-Madison?s new admissions director.

The Princeton Review unveiled its annual rankings of the nation?s best colleges earlier this week. Although UW-Madison didn?t earn the No. 1 slot on the Review?s list of top party schools — the University of Georgia in Athens took home that honor — Wisconsin?s flagship institution nonetheless garnered as many kudos for its party scene as its academic rigor. On the positive side, UW-Madison was noted as “a Best Midwestern College.”

The largest class ever is graduating from UW-Madison?s pre-college program to increase diversity on campus, PEOPLE (Pre-college Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence). Today, 180 high school students will attend a ceremony to mark their completion of the program at the Madison Marriott West in Middleton. Those students are entering their senior year of high school and will work on their applications to attend UW-Madison.

College students will be able to shop around more for deals on textbooks, thanks to a new law that took effect this month. The Higher Education Opportunity Act requires colleges to release required book lists at the time of class registration. Publishers must disclose prices and revision information to schools.

U.S. colleges aren?t doing enough to limit student access to alcohol, a new study contends.College administrators do recognize that student drinking is a major problem, but they focus on individual interventions and campus-based alcohol restrictions. They need to do more work with communities to develop policies to reduce excess drinking by students, such as monitoring of illegal sales of alcohol and limiting the number of retail alcohol outlets, according to study author Toben Nelson.

Tens of thousands of college students have unpaid internships this summer. Even with the recession, students are willing to dish out hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars to cover expenses for internships far from home. In some cases, students also pay hundreds of dollars more for the college credits that employers require their interns to receive. Despite the financial burden, the pipeline is crowded with young people trying to get a foot in the door, especially in a tight economy.