Posts Tagged ‘Education’
DREAM Act Students Meet to Talk Immigration Reform, College Costs…and Dating?!
Monday, 29 April 2013 05:00
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Fernanda Lopez and Jonathan Halvorson started going out after sharing a journalism class as freshmen at San Jose State University. Things were going great—so great, in fact, that Lopez decided to let Halvorson in on her big secret: She’s an undocumented immigrant.

“I never actually said the words, ‘I’m undocumented,’” Lopez said. “I told him I couldn’t get a driver’s license, I couldn’t really get financial aid, I can’t get a job, those kinds of things—and eventually, it was out. (Read more…)“

Lopez’s immigration status didn’t faze Halvorson, a US citizen; two years later, the couple is still going strong. On Saturday, Lopez shared her “coming out” story in a talk titled “Undocumented Love” at the University of California-Berkeley’s sixth-annual Aspire to Rise conference, where some 400 undocumented students, family members, and advocates—some from as far away as Humboldt County, four hours north—gathered to learn about paying for college, negotiating the Obama administration’s deferred-action program, and, yes, dating while undocumented.

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West Virginia Lawmaker Proposes Requiring Science Fiction In High School
Wednesday, 24 April 2013 08:00
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solarisThe goal is to spur interest in math and science, and encourage kids to ponder the benefits and drawbacks of emerging technologies in their own lives. Via Blastr, a fantastic antidote to the efforts of politicians to mandate religious content in classrooms:

A Republican legislator in West Virginia is proposing a bill that would require the State Board of Education to integrate science fiction literature into middle-school and high-school reading curricula. Delegate Ray Canterbury hopes that even if the bill doesn’t pass it will pressure the Board of Education to adopt science fiction on its own.

(Read more…)

“I’m primarily interested in things where advanced technology is a key component of the storyline, both in terms of the problems that it presents and the solutions that it offers,” Canterbury said. Canterbury cites Isaac Asimov and Jules Verne as early influences in his own youth that lead him to earn a degree in mathematics.

“In Southern West Virginia, there’s a bit of a Calvinistic attitude toward life—this is how things are and they’ll never be any different,” Canterbury says. “One of the things about science fiction is that it gives you this perspective that as long as you have an imagination and it’s grounded in some sort of practical knowledge, you can do anything you wanted to. So it serves as a kind of antidote to that fatalistic kind of thinking.”

The post West Virginia Lawmaker Proposes Requiring Science Fiction In High School appeared first on disinformation.

 
6 Ways College Admissions Offices Game Their Rankings
Tuesday, 23 April 2013 14:47
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This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

As college-bound students weigh their options, they often look to the various statistics that universities trumpet—things like the high number of applications, high test scores, and low acceptance rate.

But students may want to consider yet another piece of info: the ways in which schools can pump up their stats. (Read more…)

“There’s no question about it,” said David Kalsbeek, senior vice president for enrollment management and marketing at DePaul University. “There are ways of inflating a metric to improve perceived measures of quality.”

Some of these tweaks—such as a more streamlined application—can actually benefit students. Others serve to make the admissions process more confusing. Here’s a rundown.

1) Quickie, often pre-filled out applications

Express applications—sometimes known as “fast apps,” “snap apps,” “V.I.P. applications” or “priority applications“—are often pre-filled with some student information and require little if anything in the way of essays. And especially when they’re accompanied with an application-fee waiver, what’s a student got to lose? Not much, fans of fast apps argue.

The school, meanwhile, has a lot to gain. The tactic, designed to broaden the pool of applicants, can help super-charge application numbers. Drexel University and St. John’s University—the only two private colleges among the top 10 for most applied-to colleges in 2011—both market broadly and use fast apps.

Both schools received roughly 50,000 applications in the fall of 2011, according to U.S. News data. Both schools enroll roughly 3,000 freshmen.

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