commentary

Dr. Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International

Yesterday, Yahoo Finance posted an article on the worst-paying college degrees in 2010 (see below). Among them are education ($35,100 starting; $54,900 mid-career), special education, child and family studies, and social work.

For those of you that follow the trends on return on investment from advanced degrees, the stable outcome of the past decade-plus is that only advanced degrees, such as law, medicine, and other professional levels, are beating inflation. BAs are holding steady, but anything else, including the now-vaulted associate degrees, are losing ground. The College Board and other organizations have touted the million-dollar difference a college degree makes on earned income over a lifetime. I've made that argument myself, with several caveats (including investment income, etc., which others don't make). But Bloomberg Businessweek came out last month and said that the million-dollar hype is bogus. Their estimate is $400,000 over a lifetime in earnings, with great variety across schools. Only 17 institutions in the United States, for instance, has an ROI of $1.2M or more. You can check out the worth of your college or university degree at this website. READ MORE...

THE NEWS

ACADEMIC PREPARATION
Forget recess: 7-year-olds to choose their own ‘majors’
By Katherine Laidlaw and Misty Harris, The National Post
A new program at an Alberta elementary school will see children as young as seven placed in classes according to their interests, giving them a kind of childhood “major.” The pilot program might be the earliest implementation of streaming students at a public school in Canada, and indicates a continued shift toward specialized education in public school boards. Teachers at R.J. Hawkey Elementary School, just outside of Calgary, will teach the mandated provincial curriculum to Grade 2 to 4 through one of four specialized “lenses,” in connection with the University of Calgary.

August school bell has unfamiliar ring
By Sarah O’Donnell, Edmonton Journal
As Grade 9 students settled into their desks Monday morning for their first day of school, teacher Joan Woodlock started by talking about one of the biggest changes of the year: the new schedule. St. Catherine, an elementary and junior high school, is the Edmonton Catholic district's first school to move to a year-round calendar. The modified schedule means students take a five-week break in the summer and start school in early August, nearly three weeks before most others.

Butterflies in the classroom let imaginations take wing
By Joanne Wong, The Toronto Star
A bug’s life can inspire a kid-friendly movie, but as dozens of educators found out this week, it can also teach children about geography, foreign cultures and ecology. About 30 gathered Wednesday at the Black Creek Pioneer Village for a two-day Monarch Teacher Network workshop. Hosted by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and the New Jersey-based Educational Information and Resource Center, the workshop provides teachers and environmental educators with a range of monarch butterfly-themed materials to incorporate into their curricula.

POSTSECONDARY ACCESS SUCCESS
Number of female engineering students at Queen’s continues to rise
By Queen’s University News Release
After spending the past few years encouraging women to enter engineering, Queen’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science has seen the number of female incoming students jump. “I’m pleasantly surprised. I think we are seeing a real trend and not a blip,” says Lynann Clapham, the Faculty’s Associate Dean, Academic. Two years ago, the incoming engineering class was 23 percent female, then it rose to 25 percent in 2009 and its now at 28.1 percent for the 2010-11 academic year. For many years, Queen’s has had one of the highest rates of female engineers among major Canadian universities.

Bishop’s University sees impressive growth for the entering class of 2010
By Bishop’s University News Release
Although first-year students will not arrive on campus until September 4, the entering class of 2010 is expected to be 880 students - a 20% increase over the entering class of 2009. Full-time student enrolment for September 2010 is expected to approach 2000, well ahead of budgetary projections set in 2009. At that time the University’s objective was to reach 2200 full-time students – the same student population as in 2004 – by 2013-14.

Private for-profit education grows in Canada
By CUPE News Release
CUPE members at universities across Canada are questioning the decision by administration to sign deals with Navitas, allowing it to set up a private, for-profit programs on their campuses. Navitas has been in Canada since 2006 starting at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and later entering a deal with the University of Manitoba (U of M) in 2008. In April 2010, an external review of the SFU contract with Navitas was conducted. The review examined the extent to which “the qualifications and working conditions of FIC instructors are comparable to those of SFU sessional instructors.” On this point, the review noted that “there is no provision for collective representation through an association or union.”

INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Mexico will offer online-degree programs to citizens living abroad
By Marion Lloyd, The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Mexican government will begin offering online college-degree programs this month to its citizens living abroad, many of whom are suffering the effects of stricter immigration controls in the United States. The project is being run by Mexico's Public Education Secretariat, which opened its own virtual university in August 2009. Since then, 33,000 students have enrolled in 15 different undergraduate majors at the National Open and Distance University of Mexico, said Rodolfo Tuirán, the country's under secretary for higher education.

New Wave of Iranians seek U.S. studies
By Yeganah June Torbati, The New York Times
Even as a teenager in Iran, Atefeh Fathi knew she would eventually study abroad. Now 30 and studying engineering at the University of Oklahoma, Ms. Fathi said that although she had applied to universities in Sweden and Canada, her first choice was the United States. Ms. Fathi is part of a wave of Iranians studying in the United States in numbers not seen in more than a decade. Since 1979, the number of Iranian students in the United States has taken an almost uninterrupted nosedive, bottoming out at fewer than 1,700 students in 1999.

A green project in Lebanon
By Brooke Anderson, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and sitting on some of Lebanon's most expensive real estate is a green space with no plans for development—at the American University of Beirut. In 2002, when the country's most prestigious private university devised its 20-year master plan, environmental sustainability was one of the key considerations. The administration decided that the entire middle section of the 61-acre campus would remain a forest of native plants and trees, a rarity in a region where colleges favor sprawling lawns and ornamental plants. Equally significant, the university decided that all building construction would have height limitations and be environmentally friendly.

upcoming epi events

HACU/EPI Student Retention Workshop, September 21, 2010, San Diego, CA

AACRAO 20th Annual Strategic Enrollment Management Conference, in partnership with the Educational Policy Institute, November 7-10, 2010
Nashville, TN

RETENTION 101 & 201, December 6-8, 2010, Dallas, TX

featured publication

The April 2010 edition of Student Success features an interview with the President of the University of Maryland, Freeman Hrabowski. EPI President & CEO, Dr. Watson Scott Swail, comments on EPI's recent move to Washington D.C. Preview coverage of the 2010 National Capitol Summit is paired with a recap of the 2009 summit. This issue also features the 2009 Student Retention Awards.

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