The Crush

http://www.crushpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Stanley-Nelson.mp3

Stanley Nelson has been making movies for a long time, and his latest film – airing Monday, February 19th on PBS – called “Tell Them We Are Rising” is the first of its kind fo explore the topic of Historically Black Colleges and Universities or HBCUs.

NYC native Stanley talked to me about his personal connection to these schools, their place in our history and in our national culture, and how they’re uniquely stuck “between a rock and a hard place” in Trump’s America.

RESOURCES

“Tell Them We Are Rising” trailer

“Black Colleges in the Age of Trump” NY Times Op-Doc 

“Fast Facts on HBCUs” (National Center for Education Statistics)

“The Changeing Face of HBCUS” (U Penn/MaryBeth Gasman)

“Blacks and Hispanics are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago” (NY Times)

Brown-Tougaloo College Partnership 

“Harvard’s Next President: Another ‘White Male Economist Named Larry'” (Chronicle of Higher Ed)

“Eluding the Endowment Tax” (Inside Higher Ed)

“It’s Time to Bust the Myth: Most Trump Voters Were Not Working Class” (WaPo)

“My Little Hundred Million” (Revisionist History Podcast)

The post Episode 24: Stanley Nelson on HBCUs and His New Film “Tell Them We Are Rising” appeared first on The Crush.

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Professor Nathan Grawe of Carleton College developed a demographic model which says that ’round about 2030 this country is going to lose a giant share of its population of college-going age. How will this impact colleges and universities and how will it impact each kind of higher education environment? I talked to him about his book “Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education” to learn more.

During the great recession, the fertility rate in America fell 13% in 5 years. This plus several other demographic factors have conspired to guarantee that the nation’s enrollment managers have a big job on their hands: How do we continue to sustainably operate if there are fewer students to serve? Professor Grawe digs into a really dynamic and complex national picture of demand for higher education to deliver a prognostication that gives the people in enrollment management world a lot to consider both in terms of problems and solutions.

Buy Professor Grawe’s book here!

The post Episode 23: Prof. Nathan Grawe on the Changing Demographics of America’s College Bound appeared first on The Crush.

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Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez visited the island of Puerto Rico to see how people were recovering at its most important institution of higher education, the University of Puerto Rico.

Her story – available in both English and Spanish – tells a tale of, as she puts it, “higher education at its most improvised.” The well-being of Puerto Rico is in many ways linked to its cherished university system, and over 120 days after Hurricane María struck the island, neither has recovered substantially. Fernanda humanizes an experience that has been overshadowed in part by high-minded economic debates and low-minded tweets from President Paper Towel. Meanwhile, the people of Puerto Rico attempt to carry on, to get an education, to build a future for themselves against obstacles that feel painfully familiar.

0:00-11:11 – Brief History of Puerto Rico

READ MORE:

Please read this piece “How to Help the University of Puerto Rico – And How Not To” by Godreau, Bonilla, and Walicek

How Universities Are Trying To Do Right by Puerto Rico (CUNY/Chronicle)

This is the plane my in-laws took to get to the mainland, thanks to JJ Barea and Mark Cuban, and the Dallas Mavericks organization (seriously).

How Dependence on Corporate Tax Breaks Eroded the Puerto Rican Economy (Reuters)

Tax Bill Could be a Big Hit to Puerto Rico’s Economy (NPR)

https://www.npr.org/2017/12/21/572699193/tax-bill-could-be-a-big-hit-to-puerto-ricos-economy

Puerto Rico’s Mass-Migration is Re-Shaping Florida (Bloomberg)

Residente (and my cousin Lilliana) performs “Hijos de Cañaveral” at the Latin Grammys (YouTube)

Animation of the “Political Topography” of the Caribbean, by Rutgers professor Yarimar Bonilla (Vimeo)

Puerto Rico’s University is Paralyzed by Protests and Facing Huge Cuts (NY Times, 5/17)

Forced Sterilization in Puerto Rico (Our Bodies Ourselves)

The post Episode 22: Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez on the University of Puerto Rico appeared first on The Crush.

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The Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC) is a group of over 150 private schools that have coalesced around an idea that our current model of grading students is not only outdated, but harmful to their development. Scott Looney is the Head of School at the Hawken School in Cleveland, Ohio, and is the driving force behind the Mastery Transcript, a brand-new way to consider how we assess student achievements in high school. 

We live in an age of disruption, and ripe for consideration in our collective educational consciousness is the notion of grades as we know them. Scott Looney and the member schools of this consortium are interested in assessing students based on mastery within different areas of learning that include the development of character, not just subject area knowledge.

While it won’t be in operation for between 6 to 8 years, you can click here to see a few examples of what the MTC is hoping will become reality. A student’s achievements are presented in an online format with clickable elements, allowing the viewer to drill down all the way to individual assignments that contributed to the result you see on the transcript, should you so desire.

Mr. Looney is committed to make sure that admissions counselors with few precious moments to spare in the review of hundreds and hundreds of files won’t have to spend any more than 2 minutes reading Mastery Transcripts. And while those in admissions may have functional concerns about how this fits into the logistics of reading applications, there have been others raised about the impact this is liable to have on college admission outcomes for students at environments with fewer student support resources than Mastery Consortium schools.

I spoke with Mr. Looney during the annual NACAC conference in Boston in September, 2017.

More news about the Mastery Transcript

A Plan to Kill High School Transcripts…and Transform College Admissions (Inside Higher Ed)

Why Getting Rid of Grades Would Help Rich Kids and Hurt Poor Ones (Washington Post)

Independent Schools Come together to Build a New High School Transcript (National Association of Independent Schools)

Mastery Transcript Consortium: Big Idea to Upend College Admissions Process (Medium)

What if Your High School Transcript Didn’t Include Grades? (Boston Globe)

6:13 – Interview begins

7:00 – MTC origin story

11:05 – What’s the big deal with these transcripts?

14:00 – How should admissions counselors read this?

15:10 – What problems does this seek to solve?

21:40 – What feedback have you gotten from colleges?

26:45 – Why the MTC is only independent schools

29:36 – Is this related to the Coalition Application?

33:58 – Role of teachers in the MT’s development

36:27 – How could the adoption of the MT work in public schools?

38:53 – What has the criticism been?

45:10 – How might the MT impact the role of standardized tests in admissions?

49:22 – Is the MT meritocratic?

51:32 – What do kids think about this?

54:25 – Final thoughts

The post Episode 21: Scott Looney on the Mastery Transcript appeared first on The Crush.

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Akil Bello is a friend of mine who is also one of these odd sorts who concerns himself in life with all things Standardized Test. Following up from Episode 4 where I pledge to take the SAT, I finally sit down to register to do it, which in itself can take up to an hour. Naturally, I thought this would make for gripping radio. We document this epic experience of simply registering for the exam and attempt to read the minds – and fine print rivaling the iTunes terms of service – of the College Boarders who’ve put this experience together.

The post Episode 20: Akil Bello Helps me Register for the SAT appeared first on The Crush.

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So we have literally all of humanity’s knowledge at our fingertips thanks to the Internet, and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are making it easier to get more education to more people for free. Dr. Andrew Ho has done research on MOOCs and their impact and assessing the knowledge obtained in a MOOC such that any credential you receive after passing a class matters in the marketplace. 

What are these and where did MOOC’s come from? Will they replace college as a physical destination? Are they making the world smarter and knocking down socioeconomic boundaries to accessing education?

Read more here:

HarvardX and MITx Report on 4 Years of Open Online Courses (January 2017): https://harvardx.harvard.edu/blog/harvardx-and-mitx-report-4-years-open-online-courses

“The Power of MOOCs” (April 2015) https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/15/04/power-moocs

“The Great Education Equalizer?” (December 2015) https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/15/12/great-education-equalizer

“Students who are the least well prepared for traditional college also fare the worst in online courses” https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/12/study-questions-effectiveness-online-education-risk-students  

The Gartner Hype Cycle: http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-cycle.jsp

Impact of a college education on the 2016 presidential election: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-predicted-who-would-vote-for-trump/

The post Episode 19: Dr. Andrew Ho on the Reach of MOOCs appeared first on The Crush.

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New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo recently championed and passed the nation’s first plan to offer free college tuition to state residents attending state public colleges called “The Excelsior Scholarship.” Free always sounds good, but does it make for good policy? Professor Doug Webber, a labor economist at Temple University who has contributed to fivethirtyeight.com, Fortune, and has testified before congress on matters of higher education, helps us understand what about this plan is good, and what about this plan might actually be really bad policy. We use NY Times columnist David Brooks’ scathing 8-point critique (“The Cuomo College Fiasco” NYT 4/14/17) as a frame for this discussion. Here are some links for further reading on the subject:

By my guest, Prof. Doug Webber:

“This U.S. State’s Free College Plan Isn’t All it’s Cracked Up to Be.” (Fortune)

“To Ease the Student Debt Crisis, Hold Colleges Accountable” (fivethirtyeight.com)

“Fancy Dorms Aren’t the Main Reason Tuition is Skyrocketing” fivethirtyeight.com)

More coverage on the Excelsior Scholarship:

“Mr. Cuomo’s Free* College Plan” (NY Times)

“Cuomo Adopts Middle Class Mantra” (NY Times)

“Free College, but With Caveats” (NY Times)

“Why Governor Cuomo’s Free Tuition Plan Won’t Help NY’s State of Mind.” (Heschinger Report)

“6 Reasons You May Not Graduate on Time (and What to Do About It)” (NY Times)

BONUS: Check out Governor Cuomo changing one lucky voter’s tire!

Gov Cuomo helping a stranded driver along the Sprain Parkway pic.twitter.com/XgKy3aMscq

— Melissa DeRosa (@melissadderosa) February 9, 2017

The post Episode 18: Prof. Doug Webber on NY’s “Excelsior” Scholarship appeared first on The Crush.

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Right now, college applicants are anxiously waiting to hear back from the colleges they applied to, while legions of admissions counselors read their applications and those of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of their fellow applicants. That’s a lot of decisions to make. How are they made? What influences that process? What can research tell us about how to do it better so that we can be fair to students and their circumstances, while also being fair to the admissions counselors and their (physical, mental, emotional, marital) health? University of Michigan School of Education Professor Dr. Michael Bastedo has done research on exactly these questions, and I caught him at the NACAC conference in Columbus OH this fall to ask him about his research.

The post Episode 17: Dr. Michael Bastedo on the Bias of Admissions Counselors appeared first on The Crush.

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I needed to go back to something that I think Oregon State Representative Lew Frederick is uniquely qualified to talk about and something that’s been on my mind almost every day since about the 2nd presidential debate: and that is, is Donald Trump racist? And if he is, how should we feel about that? More specifically what does it mean if you vote for him? What does it mean if I know people who are voting for him, does that make them racist? I veered from the path of this podcast’s mission of discussing higher education in this one instance because the opportunity presented itself and in my mind and placed it into it’s own “part 2” and I called Lew back to ask him some of these questions.

The post Episode 16.2: Lew Frederick on the Question “Is Donald Trump Racist?” appeared first on The Crush.

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As a candidate running unopposed for the State Senate of Oregon from a Portland district, Lew Frederick stands to be one of the most if not the most influential black politicians in the state of Oregon, which makes him one of the most influential black politicians in this country. I wouldn’t normally use the qualifier “black” but Lew is one of two elected officials in the state legislature who are black and that characteristic is particularly meaningful especially in this day and age as we consider the direction of society and the politicians who want to direct it. He’s been active in politics his whole life, and active in the politics of Oregon – and apropos of this podcast, Oregon’s systems of education – for decades.

Learn more about Lew and his work here: http://www.lewfrederick.org/

Here is an article referenced in the episode: “This is why finland has the best schools.” http://www.smh.com.au/national/this-is-why-finland-has-the-best-schools-20160324-gnqv9l.html

The post Episode 16: Rep. Lew Frederick on Race, Politics, and Education appeared first on The Crush.