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History > 2008 > USA > Education (IV)
College
May Become
Unaffordable for Most in U.S.
December 3,
2008
The New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN
The rising
cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education
out of reach for most Americans, according to the biennial report from the
National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439
percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent. Student
borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from
lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they
attend than students from more affluent families.
“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system
of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a
nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education.
“When we come out of the recession,” Mr. Callan added, “we’re really going to be
in jeopardy, because the educational gap between our work force and the rest of
the world will make it very hard to be competitive. Already, we’re one of the
few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers.”
Although college enrollment has continued to rise in recent years, Mr. Callan
said, it is not clear how long that can continue.
“The middle class has been financing it through debt,” he said. “The scenario
has been that families that have a history of sending kids to college will do
whatever if takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt.”
But low-income students, he said, will be less able to afford college. Already,
he said, the strains are clear.
The report, “Measuring Up 2008,” is one of the few to compare net college costs
— that is, a year’s tuition, fees, room and board, minus financial aid — against
median family income. Those findings are stark. Last year, the net cost at a
four-year public university amounted to 28 percent of the median family income,
while a four-year private university cost 76 percent of the median family
income.
The share of income required to pay for college, even with financial aid, has
been growing especially fast for lower-income families, the report found.
Among the poorest families — those with incomes in the lowest 20 percent — the
net cost of a year at a public university was 55 percent of median income, up
from 39 percent in 1999-2000. At community colleges, long seen as a safety net,
that cost was 49 percent of the poorest families’ median income last year, up
from 40 percent in 1999-2000.
The likelihood of large tuition increases next year is especially worrying, Mr.
Callan said. “Most governors’ budgets don’t come out until January, but what
we’re seeing so far is Florida talking about a 15 percent increase, Washington
State talking about a 20 percent increase, and California with a mixture of
budget cuts and enrollment cuts,” he said.
In a separate report released this week by the National Association of State
Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, the public universities acknowledged the
looming crisis, but painted a different picture.
That report emphasized that families have many higher-education choices, from
community colleges, where tuition and fees averaged about $3,200, to private
research universities, where they cost more than $33,000.
“We think public higher education is affordable right now, but we’re concerned
that it won’t be, if the changes we’re seeing continue, and family income
doesn’t go up,” said David Shulenburger, the group’s vice president for academic
affairs and co-author of the report. “The public conversation is very often in
terms of a $35,000 price tag, but what you get at major public research
university is, for the most part, still affordable at 6,000 bucks a year.”
While tuition has risen at public universities, his report said, that has
largely been to make up for declining state appropriations. The report offered
its own cost projections, not including room and board.
“Projecting out to 2036, tuition would go from 11 percent of the family budget
to 24 percent of the family budget, and that’s pretty huge,” Mr. Shulenburger
said. “We only looked at tuition and fees because those are the only things we
can control.”
Looking at total costs, as families must, he said, his group shared Mr. Callan’s
concerns.
Mr. Shulenburger’s report suggested that public universities explore a variety
of approaches to lower costs — distance learning, better use of senior year in
high school, perhaps even shortening college from four years.
“There’s an awful lot of experimentation going on right now, and that needs to
go on,” he said. “If you teach a course by distance with 1,000 students, does
that affect learning? Till we know the answer, it’s difficult to control costs
in ways that don’t affect quality.”
Mr. Callan, for his part, urged a reversal in states’ approach to
higher-education financing.
“When the economy is good, and state universities are somewhat better funded, we
raise tuition as little as possible,” he said. “When the economy is bad, we
raise tuition and sock it to families, when people can least afford it. That’s
exactly the opposite of what we need.”
This
article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction:
December 4, 2008
Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about the increasing cost
of higher education gave an incorrect context for two figures: the 439 percent
increase in college tuition and fees and the 147 percent increase in median
family income since 1982. Those figures were not adjusted for inflation. The
error was repeated for the data in an accompanying chart. A corrected chart
appears at nytimes.com/national.
The article also described incorrectly the report for the National Center for
Public Policy and Higher Education that cited the figures. It is produced every
other year, not annually.
College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S., NYT,
3.12.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/education/03college.html
Private Schools Say
They’re Thriving in Downturn
November 29, 2008
The New York Times
By WINNIE HU and ALISON LEIGH COWAN
Wall Street is down, but the paddles were up, up, up at an auction at
Cipriani this month that raised more than $500,000 for the Trevor Day School
from parents and friends, off about 15 percent from last year’s record haul.
The day after the auction, Pam Clarke, Trevor’s head of school, sent out a
letter reassuring parents that Trevor, a Manhattan private school with a
relatively small endowment of $10.6 million, remained in “sound shape
financially” because of careful spending and committed fund-raising. “We wanted
to let people know that we’re concerned, we’re paying attention, and we’re
careful with our resources and theirs,” Ms. Clarke said in an interview.
Dalton, Ethical Culture Fieldston, Packer Collegiate Institute and the Calhoun
School have also sent out letters attesting to their financial health in recent
weeks. At least three other private schools — Trinity and Columbia Grammar and
Preparatory, in Manhattan, and St. Ann’s in Brooklyn — have issued similar
letters, while other schools have relied on parent association meetings and word
of mouth to get out the message that it is business as usual despite uncertain
economic times.
“We’re not experiencing any signs of impact from the economic downturn,” said
Steve Nelson, head of school at Calhoun, though he added, “That’s not to say
that we won’t.”
Private schools across New York City say they are thriving this fall, with
record numbers of applicants and no significant decline in donations. Yet almost
daily, even brand-name schools are finding that they have to reassure jittery
parents about shrinking endowments and dispel rumors that requests for financial
aid are pouring in, and that economically squeezed families are pulling their
children out and enrolling them in public schools.
Trinity’s interim head of school, Suellyn P. Scull, issued a letter taking issue
with recent news reports that 45 families had given notice that they were
leaving. Trinity, among the most competitive schools in the city, received 698
applications for the 60 kindergarten spots in this year’s class.
The school is not yet releasing admission numbers for next year’s class, but Ms.
Scull wrote, “This year’s admissions season has been perhaps busier than usual,
and to date we have had no reports of families planning to leave us.”
But the shrinking economy is taking a toll on investment returns at Trinity,
whose endowment has fallen to $40 million from $50 million in July, and at other
private schools, affecting what they can spend on programs and activities.
“There’s no way of escaping it,” said Lawrence Buttenwieser, a former trustee at
Dalton. “If it happens at Harvard, it will happen to everybody.”
Many private schools say they are budgeting conservatively for next year and
taking steps to offset any lost revenue from investments and the possibility of
donor fatigue. In a letter released on Nov. 17, Dalton’s head of school, Ellen
C. Stein, and Robert Kasdin, president of the board, wrote that while the school
remained in “a position of strength,” mostly because it has no mortgages or
other debt and fund-raising remains strong, it is “targeting efficiencies where
possible” and “reviewing all capital expenditures.”
Dalton’s Web site refers to a $58 million endowment, but attaches no date to
that figure. School officials will say only that its investment funds are down
less than the market this year. Public records show that Dalton was heavily
invested in hedge funds as of June 30, 2007, the most recent date available,
with about half of its financial assets in six funds. That roster includes
several funds that have gotten stung in recent months, like TPG-Axon and
Greenlight Capital Offshore.
School officials say the school shed its stake in a seventh fund, Amaranth,
before the fund collapsed in September 2006.
Just south of Union Square, the Grace Church School, which has a $17 million
endowment, expects to draw about $400,000 from those funds next year — a drop of
about $100,000 — to support school activities. George P. Davison, the head of
school, said he hopes to make up the shortfall in part by postponing the
purchase of computers and desks, by patching a school roof instead of replacing
it, and by lowering energy bills.
His school has also had to cope with fluctuating interest rates on $20 million
it borrowed two years ago to improve its campus. Every Wednesday, the rate — and
what his school must pay — resets depending on the vagaries of the London
Interbank Offered Rate. “We went up and then we went down,” he said. “It got to
8.2 percent, but in the summer it was 1.6 percent. Now it’s 3.3 percent.”
Even with less money coming in and costs uncertain, several leading schools say
they want to increase financial aid to students. Mark Stanek, head of the
Ethical Culture Fieldston School, which gave out $8.1 million in financial aid
this year, wrote to parents on Nov. 14 that the school was “hoping to maintain,
and if possible, expand this budget over the next few years.”
Since then, a handful of families have come forward to request aid from the
school, which has campuses on Central Park West and in the Bronx.
Columbia Grammar and Preparatory, whose $25 million endowment is invested in
United States Treasury securities, also plans to expand its financial aid by
about $500,000 next year, to nearly $5 million.
Richard J. Soghoian, headmaster of the Upper West Side school, sent out a letter
last month reaffirming that the school was moving ahead with a $2 million
renovation of a brownstone to create art and music classes. But to avoid placing
added financial stress on families, he said, the school canceled its annual
phone-athon, in which parents solicit donations from one another.
Trevor Day, with campuses on the East and West Sides, also started a $25 million
campaign this fall to build a new middle and high school. Dr. Pamela Wilson, a
dentist whose daughter attends second grade at Trevor, said she was glad to see
her school’s letter because she had grown a bit concerned about its finances,
given the uncertain economy. “Trevor’s letter arrived before concern became
worry and the momentum of the worry took hold,” she said. “The letter was very
well timed.”
As much as schools consider extending aid to keeping hard-hit families in the
fold good business, they say the policy might have to be revisited if markets
continue to falter and take jobs with them.
Mr. Davison, who also heads the Guild of Independent Schools in New York,
warned: “It’s Wall Street that worries us in New York City. If all these
financial jobs move to London, we’re in trouble.”
Private Schools Say
They’re Thriving in Downturn, NYT, 29.11.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/nyregion/29private.html
Yale to
Expand
Academic Programs About India
November
17, 2008
Filed at 11:28 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW HAVEN,
Conn. (AP) -- Yale University will expand its academic programs on the culture
and society of India, saying its $75 million plan will make the school a leader
in the study of the country and surrounding region.
The plan will foster India-related study in liberal arts and sciences, as well
as Yale's professional schools of architecture, environmental studies, law,
management, medicine, public health and nursing.
Yale President Richard C. Levin announced the plan in a ceremony in New Delhi on
Monday. In a statement, he cited ''the rise of India since the 1990s into a
nation of global economic and geopolitical consequence.''
Yale said its effort would include intensified student recruitment, faculty and
student exchanges, research partnerships and leadership education.
Among those who have contributed to the effort, officials said, is Nandan
Nilekani, co-chairman of India's Infosys Technologies Ltd. He has been active on
Yale's President's Council on International Activities, the school said.
Yale to Expand Academic Programs About India, NYT,
17.11.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Yale-India.html
Parents’
Night With the President
November
16, 2008
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
WASHINGTON
IN a town abuzz about all things Barack Obama, the policy wonks and government
insiders have been whispering and wondering about who will be who in his
incoming cabinet. But among power parents in the nation’s capital, there is yet
another burning question.
Where will the Obama girls go to school?
Michelle Obama toured at least two of Washington’s most prestigious private
schools last week — Sidwell Friends School and Georgetown Day School — and
touched off a frenzy of dreaming, gossiping and well-mannered jockeying among
the Washington elite. Maret School, another exclusive academy, is also believed
to be on the shortlist for the future first children, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.
With annual tuitions that can exceed $28,000, these liberal-leaning schools have
long brimmed with the scions of senators, representatives, financiers,
diplomats, scholars, lawyers, journalists and even a few American presidents.
Notable parents currently include several Obama advisers. Eric H. Holder Jr., a
top contender for attorney general, has children at Georgetown Day. Susan E.
Rice, a foreign policy adviser, has a child at Maret. And Senator Joseph R.
Biden Jr., the vice president-elect, has grandchildren at Sidwell.
The school competition has transfixed a city where high-profile personalities
and institutions often place a premium on access to political power. But the
Obamas’ decision is also being closely watched for what it might reveal about
the parental sensibilities of the president-elect and his wife.
Will the Obamas choose the Quaker-run Sidwell, established in 1883 and described
by some as the Harvard of the three schools? (Sidwell has already educated
children of two sitting presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Bill Clinton.)
Will they pick Georgetown Day, which became Washington’s first integrated school
in 1945 and is known for its informality (students call teachers by their first
names) and its emphasis on diversity and social justice? Or will they select
Maret, a smaller, more intimate academy founded in 1911 that would allow the
first family to keep both children on one enclosed campus?
The Obamas and their aides declined to discuss the family’s inclinations, and no
one knows how their choice may ultimately affect Washington’s social landscape.
City officials say the Obamas have not visited any public schools here, and
their daughters, who attend private school in Chicago, are not expected to
switch course.
But those are only details. All across town, parents are already dreamily
envisioning casual chats with the president and first lady at soccer practices
and PTA meetings, while little girls are swooning over the prospect of White
House sleepovers with the daughters of the nation’s first black president.
“With this particular president, there’s so much excitement,” said Natalie
Wexler, a novelist whose daughter caught a glimpse of Mrs. Obama at Sidwell last
Monday. “Anything or anyone connected to him is going to be exciting.”
History, of course, is not the only consideration.
Michael Kazin, a historian of American politics at Georgetown University, said
some parents and administrators are focused on the prestige the Obamas would
bring to any school and the students and families affiliated with it.
“No matter what the ideology of the president who is elected or what his party
is, the privileged people in Washington always want to get a little more
privileged,” said Mr. Kazin, who has a daughter at Maret.
“It’s clear that many parents who send their kids to these schools would want
the Obamas to go there,” he said. “They want their particular niche of the
community to be enhanced.”
School administrators, trustees and politically-connected parents bristle at the
notion that they have done any hard-core lobbying for the Obama children, though
some say they have offered the family some friendly counsel. Indeed, Mrs. Obama
has already reached out to several prominent people with first-hand experience
with the schools.
She called Senator Hillary Clinton the day after the election to discuss the
joys and challenges of raising children in the White House, Clinton aides said.
And Beth Dozoretz, a prominent Democratic donor, said that Mrs. Obama asked her
about Sidwell a couple of months ago. She said she encouraged Mrs. Obama to
consider the school, but emphasized that the city has several excellent private
institutions, including Georgetown Day.
Mrs. Dozoretz also passed along a note from her 10-year-old daughter, Melanne,
who was thrilled about the prospect of an Obama presidency and the possibility
that the girls might end up at her school. (“I love Sidwell because I learn so
much there,” Melanne wrote in the note addressed to Mrs. Obama.)
“Of course, anybody would be happy to have that family in their school,” Mrs.
Dozoretz said. “This is the first family. But I really feel they will do what’s
right for their family. It’s a very personal decision.”
Aides to Mr. Obama and his wife declined to comment on whether Mr. Biden or any
other Obama advisers linked to the three schools were quietly (or loudly)
rooting for their favorites.
Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a historian who has written about first families, said
that public fascination with the school decision-making process bloomed in the
1970s when President Jimmy Carter made a point of sending his daughter, Amy, to
a public school in Washington. The Clintons drew enormous attention — and some
criticism — when they enrolled Chelsea at Sidwell. (She was in public school
before Mr. Clinton became president.)
“Those decisions are now often weighed with the thought of what kind of message
they will send or what they will symbolize,” Mr. Anthony said. “But the truth of
the matter is that most of the presidents’ families were from the elite ruling
class. So their kids tended to go to private schools.”
The Obama girls attend the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, a
progressive private institution that has about 1,700 students and is larger than
any of the schools under consideration here. Annual tuition runs as high as
$21,480.
That has not deterred Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and his education chancellor,
Michelle Rhee, from lobbying for Washington’s public schools. The officials have
presented several options to the Obama family, a city spokeswoman said.
“Our goal is to have D.C. public schools be as serious an option as any charter
or private schools, not just for the Obamas but for any family making the
decision," Mr. Fenty said last week on MSNBC.
Mr. Fenty, however, sends his children to private school, though not to Sidwell,
Georgetown Day or Maret. (Chancellor Rhee’s children attend public school.)
And while the decision between public and private can sometimes be an agonizing
one for some black professionals, who worry about isolating their children, it
is not known to have been an issue for the Obamas.
Washington is typically a socially segregated city, but the schools the Obamas
are considering appeal to the elite across color lines. (Mr. Holder and Ms.
Rice, the two Obama advisers, are African-American.)
Sidwell administrators say its student body is 13 percent black. Georgetown Day
and Maret officials say their schools are 20 percent African-American.
(Officials at the Laboratory Schools in Chicago say the population there is
about 10 percent black.)
And for many black parents and students, the buzz has been thrilling. Dylan
McAfee, an African-American girl in second grade at Georgetown Day, met Mrs.
Obama last Monday and has been star-struck ever since. “I touched her hand and
she smelled like cherries,” she said.
Malia and Sasha Obama are the talk of the school and the town, said Dylan’s
mother, Anita LaRue-McAfee, who is a lawyer.
It’s the first time, she said, that she has seen Washington’s power people
utterly agog over two black schoolgirls.
“Here are two little girls that everyone is fawning over, and they look like my
kid,” Ms. LaRue-McAfee said. “That’s why I’m excited.”
Caption research was provided by Ashley Parker.
Parents’ Night With the President, NYT, 16.11.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/fashion/16school.html
Tough Times
Strain Colleges Rich and Poor
November 8, 2008
The New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN
Arizona State University, anticipating at least $25 million in
budget cuts this fiscal year — on top of the $30 million already cut — is ending
its contracts with as many as 200 adjunct instructors.
Boston University, Cornell and Brown have announced selective hiring freezes.
And Tufts University, which for the last two years has, proudly, been one of the
few colleges in the nation that could afford to be need-blind — that is, to
admit the best-qualified applicants and meet their full financial need — may not
be able to maintain that generosity for next year’s incoming class. This fall,
Tufts suspended new capital projects and budgeted more for financial aid. But
with the market downturn, and the likelihood that more applicants will need
bigger aid packages, need-blind admissions may go by the wayside.
“The target of being need-blind is our highest priority,” said Lawrence S.
Bacow, president of Tufts. “But with what’s happening in the larger economy, we
expect that the incoming class is going to be needier. That’s the real
uncertainty.”
Tough economic times have come to public and private universities alike, and
rich or poor, they are figuring out how to respond. Many are announcing hiring
freezes, postponing construction projects or putting off planned capital
campaigns.
With endowment values and charitable gifts likely to decline, the process of
setting next year’s tuition low enough to keep students coming, but high enough
to support operations, is trickier than ever.
Dozens of college presidents, especially at wealthy institutions, have sent
letters and e-mail to students and their families describing their financial
situation and belt-tightening plans.
At Williams College, for example, President Morton Owen Schapiro wrote that with
last year’s negative return on the endowment and the worsening situation since
June, some renovation and facilities spending would be reduced and nonessential
openings left unfilled.
Many students, increasingly conscious of costs, are flocking to their state
universities; at Binghamton University, part of the New York State university
system, applications were up 50 percent this fall. But with this year’s state
budget problems, tuition increases at public universities may be especially
steep. Some public universities have already announced midyear tuition
increases.
With endowment values shrinking, variable-rate debt costs rising and states
cutting their financing, colleges face challenges on multiple fronts, said Molly
Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education.
“There’s no evidence of a complete meltdown,” Ms. Broad said, “but the problems
are serious enough that higher education is going to need help from the
government.”
And as in other sectors, she said, some financially shaky institutions will most
likely be seeking mergers.
Nationwide, retrenchment announcements are coming fast and furious, as state
after state reduces education financing.
The University of Florida, which eliminated 430 faculty and staff positions this
year, was told recently to cut next year’s budget by 10 percent, probably
requiring more layoffs. Financing for the University of Massachusetts system was
cut $24.6 million for the current fiscal year.
On Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California proposed a midyear budget
cut of $65.5 million for the University of California system — on top of the $48
million reduction already in the budget.
“Budget cuts mean that campuses won’t be able to fill faculty vacancies, that
the student-faculty ratio rises, that students have lecturers instead of tenured
professors,” said Mark G. Yudof, president of the California system. “Higher
education is very labor intensive. We may be getting to the point where there
will have to be some basic change in the model.”
Private colleges, too, are tightening their belts — turning down thermostats,
scrapping plans for new gardens or quads, reducing faculty raises.
But many are also increasing their pool of financial aid.
Vassar College will give out $1 million more in financial aid this year than
originally budgeted, even though the endowment, which provides a third of its
operating budget, dropped to $765 million at the end of September, down $80
million from late June. President Catharine Bond Hill of Vassar said the college
would reduce its operating costs, but remain need-blind.
Many institutions with small endowments, however, will probably become more
need-sensitive than usual this year, quietly offering places to fewer students
who need large aid packages.
At Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, Robert J. Massa, the vice president for
enrollment and student life, said that about 200 applicants last year might have
been accepted if they had not needed so much financial help, but that that
number might rise to 250 this year.
Dickinson’s endowment was $280 million in mid-October, Mr. Massa said, down from
$350 million in June. And while more than three quarters of the college’s
operating budget comes from student fees, some endowment revenue will have to be
replaced.
“Here’s the rub,” Mr. Massa said. “I really don’t think that colleges can afford
to increase their tuition price at higher than inflation this year. I don’t
think the public will stand for it. What we’ve done in higher education is let
our dreams and aspirations dictate our cost structure.”
Most colleges will have a better sense next month of how many students are
struggling, when second-semester tuition bills come due.
Paola Aguilar, a sophomore at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Va., is
worrying about whether she can afford to return next year.
“My mom became a Realtor last year to try to earn more money, but that didn’t
help,” Ms. Aguilar said. “I’ve talked to the people here, and they’ve helped me
out a little more for next semester, but as of right now, if I don’t get more
help, I’ll have to leave next year and go somewhere cheaper, near home.”
Tracy Fitzsimmons, Shenandoah’s president, said she began hearing about
students’ financial anxieties in mid-September.
“They’d tell me they were thinking they might have to move off campus next
semester and stay three to a bedroom, or give up the meal plan and just eat one
meal a day,” Ms. Fitzsimmons said.
Shenandoah has started an emergency grant fund for students, increased its loan
program and prepared to stretch out spring tuition payments for hard-pressed
families.
Economic uncertainty touches every facet of higher education.
“We are planning to begin a capital campaign of $150-185 million,” said Karen R.
Lawrence, president of Sarah Lawrence College. “We will still do that. We’re not
compromising our ambitions, but the timing will be a little bit deferred.”
At the wealthiest institutions, endowment revenue usually covers about a third
of operating costs, and most colleges and universities spend a percentage of
their endowment, based on its average value over the previous three years,
helping to smooth out economic ups and downs.
In recent years, with tuition rising faster than inflation, college
affordability has become a significant issue. And with the sharp growth of
endowments in recent years — Harvard’s hit $36.9 billion this summer — some
politicians, notably Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, have
pushed for a requirement that colleges spend 5 percent of their endowments. Many
of the wealthiest institutions responded by expanding financial aid last year,
with dozens of them replacing loans with grants.
This fall, more universities are taking steps to increase affordability.
Benedictine University, a Roman Catholic institution in Illinois, is freezing
tuition; Vanderbilt University will replace loans with grants; Boston University
has expanded scholarships for students who graduated from Boston public schools;
and the University of Toledo announced free tuition for needy, high-performing
graduates of Ohio’s six largest public school systems.
Presidents of many expensive private colleges are wondering how much more
tuition pressure families can bear.
“I wouldn’t deny that a tuition freeze has occurred to me, but we can’t afford
heroic gestures,” said Sandy Ungar, president of Goucher College in Baltimore.
Given the current climate, some say, colleges need to re-examine all of their
economic assumptions.
“Several years ago, we started thinking about sustainability in environmental
terms,” said Dick Celeste, the president of Colorado College. “Now we need to be
thinking about sustainability in economic terms.”
Tough Times Strain
Colleges Rich and Poor, NYT, 8.11.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/education/08college.html
U.S. colleges
punished by financial crisis
Thu Oct 30, 2008
9:20am EDT
Reuters
By Andrew Stern
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Higher education has been a growth
industry in the United States, evidenced by swelling enrollments, expanding
campuses and growing endowments. But the global economic crisis has caught
colleges and universities in a vice.
With their endowments shrinking along with stock markets, some schools may raise
tuition more than usual, even as students complain it is already too expensive
and struggle to get loans.
"This will definitely test many schools," said Ronald Watts, the finance chief
of Oberlin College, an elite private school in Ohio whose endowment of nearly
$750 million has shrunk by about 15 percent in the past four months.
To be sure, schools have proven resilient in past recessions, helped by rising
student enrollment as people seek a leg-up in a bleak job market.
"It's not going to be as drastic as what corporations are doing," Watts said.
"You don't just eliminate people and lay off faculty and expect not to destroy
your academic program."
Nevertheless, a few schools have already announced fresh tuition hikes, and
school officials said they were keeping a close eye on their finances. And, with
schools under financial pressure, local economies all over the country are
likely to suffer.
Tuition increases have outpaced inflation for years. Tuition and fees at public
universities have risen 175 percent since 1992, while the consumer price index
rose 48 percent.
At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the school's $1.8 billion endowment
has shrunk by 18 percent since the start of the year, Sandy Wilcox of the
University of Wisconsin Foundation said. Dipping into the endowment to make a
promised contribution to the school's budget only shrinks it further.
Wisconsin, like many schools with substantial endowments -- 400 have endowments
over $100 million and 76 above $1 billion -- use a three-year averaging system
to smooth out how much they pay out from earnings.
RAINY DAY FUND
The wealthiest schools have come to rely on endowments and there has been
growing pressure from Congress to boost payouts, threatening to take away their
nonprofit, tax-free status if they don't comply.
For most other schools, small endowments serve as a "rainy day fund" that can
disappear quickly in tough times, said John Griswold of Commonfund, which
manages money for nonprofits.
"Schools we're most concerned about are smaller, less well-endowed private
colleges," said Roger Goodman, vice president at Moody's Investors Service,
which assigns credit ratings to 500 schools. He said endowment balances have
likely plummeted by 30 percent or more.
"You still need a college degree to be a full participant in the work force," he
said. "What we may see is a shifting (of applicants) from the higher-priced,
small, private colleges, to a lower-priced four-year university, and from the
four-year universities to community colleges for a couple of years."
A survey of 2,500 prospective students by MeritAid.com found 57 percent were now
considering less-expensive colleges due to the economic downturn.
Many prospective students encounter sticker shock when confronted by the $50,000
price tag at schools like Oberlin, Boston University and Bennington College in
Vermont.
But financial aid and federal loans remain available, and families whose assets
have declined qualify for more aid.
Boosting access to college is one plank of Democratic presidential hopeful
Barack Obama's platform. This may add pressure on publicly-funded universities
to boost enrollment, which has already climbed 10 percent since 2002.
Sticker prices at private colleges are usually much higher than pubic schools,
but students rarely pay full price.
"Sometimes a small, liberal arts college will actually be better for a student
and more affordable than in-state (public schools)," said Ken Himmelman,
Bennington's dean of admissions.
Public universities, which educate roughly 75 percent of the 17.5 million U.S.
students, are anticipating cuts in state appropriations, which cover a
substantial chunk of their costs.
State tax receipts have declined due to the economic slowdown and the bursting
of the housing bubble.
"They'll look to the university to cut. They don't want to cut prisons, or
roads," Wisconsin's Wilcox said.
MAKING CUTS
Massachusetts' public universities have cut budgets by 5 percent as their part
in covering a state-wide shortfall.
Some public and private schools have declared hiring freezes and made efforts to
reduce expenses because of shrunken endowments, and actual or expected declines
in gifts and government support.
The state of Arizona cut its contribution to the state university system by 4
percent this year and 5 percent next year -- with another mid-year cut possible,
Its more than 118,000 university students may have to absorb a tuition hike next
year of 10 percent or more.
Hawaii lowered its contribution 2 percent, though enrollment rose 6 percent.
Pennsylvania's public universities will raise tuition 4 percent next year ahead
of state cuts.
California sliced 1 percent off its $3 billion contribution to universities but
more cuts are expected as tax revenues lag projections. This spring, New York
reduced its contribution and warned another 30 percent cut may be in the offing.
The bursting of the housing bubble has dried up home equity loans many families
have used to pay tuition. And the stock market drop has shrunk some families'
savings for education.
Often, much of the media's focus is on wealthy private schools with
multibillion-dollar endowments like Harvard and Yale, which have promised to
cover costs for many of those fortunate enough to gain admission.
But at less well-heeled private schools, which make up most of the United
States' unrivaled roster of 4,300 nonprofit institutions of higher learning,
significant tuition increases may be unavoidable.
"If history repeats itself, you're going to have falling state support on a
per-student basis, rising enrollments, and probably rises in tuition," said Paul
Lingenfelter, president of State Higher Education Executive Officers.
Some schools may try to wring more out of their campuses. Professors may have to
teach more courses, schools may rent out underutilized campus buildings, or even
sell dormitories to hoteliers and lease them back, suggested Richard Vedder, who
heads the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.
"Schools normally rely on tuition increases" to offset falls in government and
donor support, Vedder said. "But as economic conditions worsen, students are
going to be resistant, plus there is political pressure not to raise tuition. In
dollar terms, budgets may be equal to last year, and some may be forced into
some sort of austerity mode."
U.S. colleges
punished by financial crisis, R, 30.10.2008,
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE49T02E20081030
FACTBOX:
How is U.S. higher education faring?
Thu Oct 30, 2008
9:20am EDT
Reuters
(Reuters) - Higher education in the United States has been
viewed as recession-proof, but the global financial crisis is already having an
impact.
Here are some facts about enrollment, endowments, and finances at the nation's
colleges universities.
- An October 16 report from Moody's Investors Service estimated endowment losses
at 5 percent to 7 percent in the year to June 30. Since then, spending and
endowment losses sliced another 30 percent off schools' cash and investments.
- For the nation's public universities, which educate three out of four
students, state subsidies covered a little over half of their budget costs last
year, down from two-thirds in 1998. Tuition has grown to cover more than a third
of their budgets, up from one-fifth 15 years ago.
- Endowments supported around 10 percent of the average school's budget. At
Harvard (endowment $34.6 billion as of June 30), Yale ($22.5 billion), and other
wealthy institutions, earnings from the endowment covered roughly 40 percent of
costs. The average expenditure out of wealthy schools' endowments was 4.4
percent of assets.
- A total of 76 colleges and universities had more than $1 billion in their
endowments as of June 30. The wealthiest 400 schools had more than $400 billion
in assets in 2007. But fewer than 400 schools had at least $100 million in their
endowments, with most having less than $10 million.
- Tuition, room and board at private four-year schools in 2007-2008 averaged
$31,019, up 7 percent from two years ago after adjusting for inflation. The cost
of public schools was $16,758 for in-state students, $24,955 for out-of-state
students, up 5 percent in the last two years after inflation.
- Federal loan aid for higher education increased 60 percent between 1996 and
2005. Students borrowed $77 billion last year to pay expenses to attend colleges
and universities. Two out of three students received grants -- discounts on
tuition -- averaging $9,300 at private schools and $3,600 at public schools.
- College seniors who graduated in 2007 carried 6 percent more student loan debt
that the class of 2006. Starting salaries for graduates rose 3 percent in the
same period.
- An online survey found 16 percent of prospective students put college searches
on hold because they couldn't afford it.
Sources: State Higher Education Executive Officers; The Project on Student Debt;
Center for College Affordability and Productivity; Commonfund; Moody's Investors
Service; MeritAid.com
(Reporting by Andrew Stern in Chicago; editing by Michael Conlon and Eddie
Evans)
FACTBOX: How is U.S.
higher education faring?, R, 30.10.2008,
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUKTRE49T02G20081030
Tight
times boost public colleges
26 October
2008
USA Today
By Rick Hampson
NEW YORK —
The faltering economy is forcing many high school seniors who were set on
attending private colleges or universities to consider less expensive public
ones.
"It's great
for the public colleges," says Paul Kanarek, a vice president at the Princeton
Review, the test preparation service. For years, he says, private schools
usually got the top students, "based on the prominence of their brands and the
size of their wallets. Now, the deck has been shuffled."
Because of the financial crisis, many students say they're dropping some
big-ticket schools from their list of potential colleges and adding affordable
ones.
Binghamton University, the most selective campus in the State University of New
York system, says applications are running 50% ahead of last year. The 23-campus
California State University system reports a 15% increase.
"The financial situation is leading more families to look at affordability,"
says Cheryl Brown, Binghamton's admissions director. Tuition, room, board and
other fees will cost about $16,000 there next year, about half what the College
Board says average private colleges charge.
The increased interest in public colleges comes as some states are being forced
to cut higher-education funding amid budget squeezes. Florida, for example,
plans a $130 million, 6% cut in funds for its university system. The University
of Florida and Florida State University plan to cut enrollment by 1,000 and
1,500 students respectively.
An online survey of more than 2,500 prospective college students released this
month by MeritAid .com, an Internet service providing information on colleges
and scholarships, found that 57% of its users are considering less-expensive
colleges.
"Private colleges are very nervous," says Bill McClintick, a guidance counselor
at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania and a former college admissions officer.
Rachel Resnik of Manhattan, who plans to study theater in college, has added the
State University of New York's campus at Purchase (around $16,000 a year) to a
list that includes Carnegie Mellon and the University of Southern California
(both more than $46,000).
She says that while she and her parents have yet to hash out the issue, "it's
definitely in the air. … The money is definitely a factor."
Students won't have to decide where they'll go until spring.
Ann McDermott, director of admissions at Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., says
that students aren't writing off relatively expensive colleges such as the
Jesuit school. "We're monitoring every contact to see which way this is going —
college fairs, school visits, campus tours, interviews," she says. "So far it
feels like a typical fall." We're as busy as ever. We're not hearing, 'I can't
afford you.' "
Kanarek says the richest, most selective schools, such as Harvard, Yale and
Princeton, will be largely unaffected — their endowments are so large that, even
with lower investment returns, they can add or maintain financial aid and
attract top students.
Tight times boost public colleges, UT, 26.10.2008,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-26-college-enrollment_N.htm
College
Board
Will Offer a New Test Next Fall
October 23,
2008
The New York Times
By SARA RIMER
Amid
growing challenges to its role as the pre-eminent force in college admissions,
the College Board on Wednesday unveiled a new test that it said would help
prepare eighth graders for rigorous high school courses and college.
The test, which will be available to schools next fall, is intended only for
assessment and instructional purposes and has nothing to do with college
admissions, College Board officials said.
“This is not at all a pre-pre-pre SAT,” Lee Jones, a College Board vice
president, said at a news conference. “It’s a diagnostic tool to provide
information about students’ strengths and weaknesses.”
The College Board, which owns the SAT and PSAT, made its announcement when an
increasing percentage of high school students are taking the rival ACT and amid
mounting concern over what critics call the misuses of the SAT and ACT and other
standardized tests in college admissions.
Those critics dismissed the new test for eighth graders as just what Dr. Jones
said it was not: “a pre-pre-pre SAT.”
“Who needs yet another pre-college standardized exam when there is already a
pre-SAT and the SAT test itself?” said Robert Schaeffer, the public education
director of FairTest, a nonpartisan group that has called for colleges and
universities to make standardized tests optional for admissions. “The new test
will only accelerate the college admissions arms race and push it down onto ever
younger children.”
The new test, called ReadiStep, can be completed within two hours and is divided
into three multiple-choice sections of critical reading, writing skills and
mathematics.
It will cost less than $10 per student, College Board officials said, and
schools and districts will pay for it. College Board officials described the
test as voluntary and “low-stakes,” and said the results would be shared only
with teachers, parents, students and schools.
Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, said the new test had been
developed in response to the demand from schools and districts, which he said
had requested a “tool that would help them determine before high school what
measures should be taken to ensure that students are on the path to being
college ready.”
Mr. Caperton and other officials refused to identify any of the schools and
districts that had requested the test. They said that they had done market
research in “well over 1,000 schools and districts,” and that “well over 50
percent” of them had expressed strong interest in the new test.
Officials offered to provide the names of educators from interested schools and
districts, and subsequently made available two people: Susan Rusk, the
coordinator of counseling for the Washoe County School District in Reno, Nev.,
and James R. Choike, a professor of mathematics at Oklahoma State University.
Mrs. Rusk is on the College Board’s board of trustees, and Dr. Choike helped
develop ReadiStep.
The Washoe County School District made the PSAT mandatory for all 10th graders a
couple of years ago, Mrs. Rusk said, and pays for students to take the test.
She said she thought the new test could inform parents and teachers about
whether “kids are on track with the particular skills they would need as they go
forward into taking the PSAT and SAT and being ready for college.”
John D’Auria, a former principal of Wellesley Middle School, in suburban Boston,
and now the superintendent of schools in Canton, Mass., said that with all the
testing currently in place, he was skeptical about the need for the College
Board’s new offering.
“It’s all about sorting and finding out who the talented are,” Mr. D’Auria said,
“rather than trying to build into young kids the lifelong journey of learning.”
College Board Will Offer a New Test Next Fall, NYT,
23.10.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/education/23sat.html?hp
In
Downturn,
Families Strain to Pay Tuition
October 17,
2008
The New York Times
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
In
difficult dinner-table conversations, college students and their parents are
revisiting how to pay tuition as personal finances weaken and lenders get tough.
Diana and Ronnie Jacobs, of Salem, Ind., thought their family had a workable
plan for college for her twin sons, using a combination of savings, income,
scholarship aid and a relatively modest amount of borrowing. Then her husband
lost his job at Colgate-Palmolive.
“It just seems like it’s really hard, because it is,” Ms. Jacobs, an information
technology specialist, said of her financial situation. “I have two kids in
college and I want to say ‘come home,’ but at the same time I want to provide
them with a good education.”
The Jacobs family may be a harbinger of what is to come. Ms. Jacobs pressed the
schools’ financial offices for several thousand dollars more for each son’s
final year of college, and each son increased his borrowing to the maximum
amount through the federal loan program. So they at least will be able to finish
at their respective colleges.
With the unemployment rate rising and a recession mentality gripping the
country, financial aid administrators say they expect many more calls like the
one from Ms. Jacobs. More families are applying for federal aid, and a recent
survey found that an increasing portion of families expected to need student
loans. College administrators worry that as fresh cracks appear in family
finances, they will not have enough aid money to go around, given that their own
endowment returns are disappointing, states are making cutbacks and fund-raising
will become more difficult.
“We are looking ahead and trying to be prepared for what might be coming,” said
Jon Riester, associate dean of financial assistance at Hanover College, a
private institution with about 1,000 undergraduates, including Justin Keeton,
one of Ms. Jacobs’s sons. “We’re looking internally at our own budgets to see
what we may be able to do in terms of providing additional assistance to
students under various situations.”
The concern is widespread, even though college officials say it’s too soon to
quantify how many students will face a shortfall. Even at wealthy institutions,
financial aid administrators have begun weighing contingency plans. “Part of the
conversation that’s going on now in many institutions is, do we want to put a
dollar figure on how much we are willing to extend ourselves,” said L. Katharine
Harrington, dean of admission and financial aid at the University of Southern
California.
Ms. Harrington said she opposed setting a limit on aid, but added that the
university’s pockets were not bottomless. “If we start seeing massive layoffs,”
she added, “we may be in for a real bumpy ride.”
The credit crisis has made it harder for students and their parents to borrow,
even as their needs grow and their savings accounts dwindle. In plenty of cases,
students who had been borrowing on their own have had to ask parents — and in
some cases, other relatives and friends — to help cover tuition or to cosign
loans, both aid officials and lenders say.
Officials at most four-year colleges say that they have not seen rampant
problems so far, because students have found alternatives. The financing for the
fall semester was mostly in place many months ago, before the severity of the
credit crisis and the economic downturn became apparent.
Others wonder privately whether there will a rebellion by parents about paying
so much for education if the country’s economic distress is prolonged. A survey
of nearly 3,000 parents by Fidelity Investments released earlier this month
found that 62 percent of parents planned to use student loans to help finance
expenses, up from 53 percent last year.
Ms. Jacobs said that with a family income of more than $100,000 a year, they had
been counting on some loans to help pay for college for her 21-year-old sons,
Justin and Jacob Keeton. Tuition, room and board add up to just over $32,000 at
Hanover College in Hanover, Ind., which Justin attends, and nearly $29,500 at
Franklin College, in Franklin, Ind., which Jacob attends.
Then, in December, Colgate-Palmolive closed its Jeffersonville plant, where her
husband worked.
“I said, ‘This year the loans are going to have to be in your name, I’m not
going to be able to pick up as much as I have before,’ ” Ms. Jacobs recalled.
“They said they would be willing to put the student loans in their names and
continue on. We all came to that consensus, but I hate it because I hate for
them to come out of school with $20,000 in student loans,” Ms. Jacobs added. “To
me that is so much money.”
She also called the two colleges, and each contributed about $3,000 more in aid,
she said.
Financial aid administrators have been scrambling in a rapidly changing market,
as many companies have decided that student loans are just not profitable
enough. Many student loan providers, citing reduced profit margins and greater
difficulty selling loans, have stopped making federally guaranteed loans,
private loans or both.
Federal loans account for about three-quarters of student borrowing, and the
government has assured that money will flow uninterrupted by agreeing to buy
those loans, even if fewer companies are in the business. Federal loan volume is
likely to grow this year; the number of applications for federal aid so far this
year has risen to 13.5 million, up nearly 10 percent from 12.3 million a year
earlier.
Private lending, which helps families plug the gap between federal aid and the
total cost of attendance, has been the fastest-growing segment over the last
decade but has been undergoing rapid changes. Some of the biggest lenders, like
Sallie Mae, have tightened their credit standards and raised their interest
rates yet again in recent weeks. “The current financial markets provide no other
choice,” Sallie Mae wrote to colleges last week. “When conditions improve, we
hope to relax our underwriting criteria and serve more students.”
Tim Ranzetta, the founder of Student Lending Analytics, posted the lender’s
letter on his blog, where he called it “extremely bad news for students.”
Michaela Rice, now a sophomore at Plymouth State University, is one of the
students who had to redesign her borrowing after she learned in the spring that
a student loan she had taken out with her father as cosigner would evaporate
because the lender was getting out of that business. A financial aid specialist
at Plymouth State, which has about 4,300 undergraduates in Plymouth, N.H.,
suggested the family switch to federal parent loans.
That led Ms. Rice to ask her mother, who is divorced from her father, to take on
$17,000 in debt. The new loan, called a Parent Plus loan, has a more flexible
repayment options and a fixed 8.5 percent interest rate. But it also puts her
mother at risk if Ms. Rice does not earn enough as a teacher to cover
repayments.
“We haven’t really sat down and talked about how am I going to pay for it,” said
Ms. Rice, 19. “My senior year we’ll probably sit down.”The subject touched on
other sensitive issues — in this case, the question of how Ms. Rice’s biological
father might continue to help pay for her college education and what her
stepfather’s role should be.
Ms. Rice’s mother, Judy Krahulec, remarried to an American Airlines pilot who
already had children of his own, and she did not want to saddle him with debt
for children who were not his. She and Ms. Rice hesitated over the parent
loan.“If I sign papers, who am I really indebting? My husband,” Ms. Krahulec
said. “That’s who I’m indebting. It’s not my loan, it’s his.”
“It would be in my mom’s name,” said Ms. Rice, who said she would repay her
mother, “but it’s my stepdad’s money if anything went wrong.”
Still, she was lucky, because not all students’ parents qualify for Plus loans.
To satisfy companies that make private loans, more students have had to find
cosigners.
Kiara S. Holiday, a sophomore this year at High Point University in High Point,
N.C., learned just weeks before classes were to start that her mother had not
qualified for a Plus loan.
“It threw me for a loop,” said Ms. Holiday, who is 19. “Person after person,
they just denied, like my mother, my aunts.”
Ms. Holiday said she investigated the options. But even taking advantage of
larger maximum federal Stafford loan amounts available to students whose parents
are denied Plus loans, she did not have enough to cover about $31,000 in
tuition, room and board at High Point.
So she called her great-grandmother, an octogenarian in Boston. Ms. Holiday, who
wants to go to medical school and become an immunologist in a laboratory, said
that despite the poor economy, she was not worried about being able to pay her
debts after graduation.
“I’m pretty sure something will work out for me,” Ms. Holiday said.
In Downturn, Families Strain to Pay Tuition, NYT,
17.10.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/business/17student.html
Under
‘No Child’ Law,
Even Solid Schools Falter
October 13,
2008
The New York Times
By SAM DILLON
SACRAMENTO
— Prairie Elementary School had not missed a testing target since the federal No
Child Left Behind law took effect in 2002. Until now.
The school, perched on a tidy, oak-shaded campus in a working-class neighborhood
here, has moved each of its student groups — Hispanics, blacks, Asians, whites,
American Indians, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, English learners, the disabled —
toward higher proficiency in recent years.
Over all, the number of its students passing tough statewide tests had increased
by more than three percentage points annually, a solid record.
But this year, California schools were required to make what experts call a
gigantic leap, increasing the students proficient in every group by 11
percentage points. For the first time, Prairie, and hundreds of other California
schools, fell short, a failure that results in probation and, unless reversed,
federal sanctions within a year.
“And they’re asking for another 11 percent increase next year and the next, and
that’s where I’m saying I just don’t know how,” Fawzia Keval, the school’s
principal, said. “I’m spending sleepless nights.”
Across the nation, far more schools failed to meet the federal law’s testing
targets than in any previous year, according to new state-by-state data. And in
California and some other states, the problem traces in part to the fact that
officials chose to require only minimal gains in the first years after the law
passed and then very rapid annual gains later. One researcher likens it to the
balloon payments that can sink homebuyers.
Part of the reason for the troubles was that the states gambled the law would
have been softened when it came up for reauthorization in 2007, but efforts to
change it stalled. This year Congress made no organized attempt to reconsider
the law. With the nation facing urgent challenges, including two wars and
economic turmoil, it could be a year or more before the new president can work
with Congress to rewrite the law.
The law requires every American school to bring all students to proficiency in
reading and math by 2014. When it was first implemented six years ago, it
required states to outline the statistical path they would follow on their way
to 100 percent proficiency, and about half set low rates of achievement growth
for the first few years and steeper rates thereafter.
Here in California, which in 2002 had only 13.6 percent of students proficient
in reading, officials promised to raise that percentage on average by 2.2 points
annually from 2002 to 2007, but starting this year greatly accelerate the
progress, raising the percentage of proficient students by 11 points per year
through 2014.
Now that the time has come for that accelerated improvement, California schools
are not keeping up. This year, about half the state’s 9,800 schools fell short.
“We’re hitting a balloon payment scenario, to use a housing analogy, where the
expectations set forth in the federal law are far higher than recent performance
levels,” said Richard Cardullo, a professor at the University of California,
Riverside, who led an analysis of the performance of state elementary schools.
His study, published Sept. 26 in the journal Science, found that the proportion
of students scoring at or above proficiency increased, on average, less than
four percentage points annually from 2003 to 2007, far short of the 11
percentage points of annual growth required starting this year.
“Lots of schools are no longer going to be able to meet the law’s requirements,”
Dr. Cardullo said. His study predicted that virtually every elementary school in
California would fall short of the federal law’s expectations before 2014.
Why did California decide on six years of relatively slow achievement growth,
followed by six years of extraordinary gains? Officials from many states told
the Bush administration in 2002 that they needed time to write new tests and
accustom teachers to them.
But the California state school superintendent, Jack O’Connell, said he also bet
that Congress might change the law in 2007, perhaps by removing its 100 percent
proficiency goal. “It’s true that was in the back of my mind when we negotiated
our plan with the feds,” Mr. O’Connell said. “And I’d do the same thing again.
I’m still hoping a new administration will change the law.”
Meanwhile, the law has had other unintended consequences — including its
tendency to punish states, like California, that have high academic standards
and rigorous tests, which have contributed to an increasing pileup of failed
schools.
A state-by-state analysis by The New York Times found that in the 40 states
reporting on their compliance so far this year, on average, 4 in 10 schools fell
short of the law’s testing targets, up from about 3 in 10 last year. Few schools
missed targets in states with easy exams, like Wisconsin and Mississippi, but
states with tough tests had a harder time. In Hawaii, Massachusetts and New
Mexico, which have stringent exams, 60 to 70 percent of schools missed testing
goals. And in South Carolina, which has what may be the nation’s most rigorous
tests, 83 percent of schools missed targets.
“The law is diagnosing schools that just have the sniffles with having
pneumonia,” said Jim Rex, the South Carolina schools superintendent.
Under the law, all public schools must test students every year and if those in
any group fall short, the school misses its targets and is put on probation. All
states adopt their own curriculums and testing standards, and the rigor of the
tests varies greatly.
Schools that miss targets for two consecutive years are labeled “needing
improvement” and face escalating sanctions that can include staff changes or
closings. Partly because the law is identifying thousands of schools, however,
few states have tried to radically restructure more than a few.
Margaret Spellings, the federal education secretary, acknowledged in an
interview that the law’s mechanism for holding schools accountable needed
refinement because it works as a pass-fail system in which schools with only
minor problems are in the same category as chaotic institutions with students
running the halls.
“We passed the best law we could seven years ago,” Ms. Spellings said. “There’s
wide recognition that this is something we need to address.”
Under a pilot program known as differentiated accountability, Ms. Spellings has
given six states — Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio —
permission to treat schools labeled for improvement that have missed targets for
only one group differently than those needing sweeping intervention.
But the rate at which schools have been identified as needing improvement has
not yet become worrisome, she said. “Pretty much every organization needs
improvement,” she said.
Ms. Spellings has fiercely defended the law’s requirement that all students
achieve proficiency by 2014.
Among that provision’s most tenacious critics has been Robert Linn, a University
of Colorado professor emeritus who is one of the nation’s foremost testing
experts. He argued, almost from the law’s passage, that no society anywhere has
brought 100 percent of students to proficiency, and that the annual gains
required to meet the goal of universal proficiency were unrealistically rapid,
since even great school systems rarely sustain annual increases in the
proportion of students demonstrating proficiency topping three to four
percentage points.
“If, no matter how hard teachers work, the school is labeled as a failure,
that’s just demoralizing,” Dr. Linn said.
Ms. Keval, the principal at Prairie Elementary, has been fighting demoralization
herself since learning of this year’s test results, she said.
Educated in British schools in Kenya, she speaks Urdu, Swahili and five other
languages, and several teachers said she was an inspirational leader. Ms. Keval
described her staff as qualified, hard-working and dedicated to student
progress.
Eight out of 10 children at the school are poor — the children of gardeners and
maids, retail clerks and short-order cooks, the unemployed — yet all groups have
made progress.
When the law took effect in 2002, 22 percent of all students and 19 percent of
blacks were proficient in reading. Ms. Keval has for several years used federal
money to hire extra reading teachers and to organize additional instructional
time for low-scoring students after school and during vacation periods.
As a result, reading proficiency has increased on average by nearly four
percentage points each recent year, although black students have improved more
slowly. On California’s state tests this year, 42 percent of Prairie’s students
schoolwide and 40 percent of Hispanics demonstrated reading proficiency. But
only 29 percent of blacks demonstrated proficiency, and since California schools
were required to raise the proportion of proficient students in every group from
24 percent to 35 percent this year, that was not good enough. The school has
been put on probation.
“I know we’ll continue to make gains with our students, but whether we can meet
the next No Child target remains to be seen,” she said. “In one year, its hard
to make an 11 percent impact.”
Dr. Linn said Ms. Keval had good reason to worry.
“An 11 percent increase from one year to the next, that is pretty gigantic,” Dr.
Linn said, “compared to how most schools improve from one year to the next.”
Under ‘No Child’ Law, Even Solid Schools Falter, NYT, 13.10.2008,http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/education/13child.html?hp
A Dead
Language
That’s Very Much Alive
October 7,
2008
The New York Times
By WINNIE HU
NEW
ROCHELLE, N.Y. — The Latin class at Isaac E. Young Middle School here was
reading a story the other day with a familiar ring: Boy annoys girl, girl scolds
boy. Only in this version, the characters were named Sextus and Cornelia, and
they argued in Latin.
“I can relate, but what the heck are they saying?” said Xavier Peña, a sixth
grader who started studying Latin in September.
Enrollment in Latin classes here in this Westchester County suburb has increased
by nearly one-third since 2006, to 187 of the district’s 10,500 students, and
the two middle schools in town are starting an ancient-cultures club in which
students will explore the lives of Romans, Greeks and others.
The resurgence of a language once rejected as outdated and irrelevant is
reflected across the country as Latin is embraced by a new generation of
students like Xavier who seek to increase SAT scores or stand out from their
friends, or simply harbor a fascination for the ancient language after reading
Harry Potter’s Latin-based chanting spells.
The number of students in the United States taking the National Latin Exam has
risen steadily to more than 134,000 students in each of the past two years, from
124,000 in 2003 and 101,000 in 1998, with large increases in remote parts of the
country like New Mexico, Alaska and Vermont. The number of students taking the
Advanced Placement test in Latin, meanwhile, has nearly doubled over the past 10
years, to 8,654 in 2007. While Spanish and French still dominate student
schedules — and Chinese and Arabic are trendier choices — Latin has quietly
flourished in many high-performing suburbs, like New Rochelle, where Latin’s
virtues are sung by superintendents and principals who took it in their day. In
neighboring Pelham, the 2,750-student district just hired a second full-time
Latin teacher after a four-year search, learning that scarce Latin teachers have
become more sought-after than ever.
On Long Island, the Jericho district is offering an Advanced Placement course in
Latin for the first time this year after its Latin enrollment rose to 120
students, a 35 percent increase since 2002. In nearby Great Neck, 36 fifth
graders signed up last year for before- and after-school Latin classes that were
started by a 2008 graduate who has moved on to study classics at Stanford (that
student’s brother and a friend will continue to lead the Latin classes this
year).
Latin is also thriving in New York City, where it is currently taught in about
three dozen schools , including Brooklyn Latin, a high school in East
Williamsburg that started in 2006. Four years of Latin, and two of Spanish, are
required at the new high school, where Latin phrases adorn the walls and words
like discipuli (students), magistri (teachers) and latrina (bathroom) are
sprinkled into everyday conversation.
“It’s the language of scholars and educated people,” said Jason Griffiths,
headmaster of Brooklyn Latin. “It’s the language of people who are successful. I
think it’s a draw, and that’s certainly what we sell.”
Adam D. Blistein, executive director of the American Philological Association at
the University of Pennsylvania, which represents more than 3,000 members,
including classics professors and Latin teachers, said that more high schools
were recognizing the benefits of Latin. It builds vocabulary and grammar for
higher SAT scores, appeals to college admissions officers as a sign of
critical-thinking skills and fosters true intellectual passion, he said.
“Goethe is better in German, Flaubert is better in French and Virgil is better
in Latin,” Dr. Blistein said. “If you stick with it, the lollipop comes at the
end when you get to read the original. In many cases, it’s what whets their
appetite.”
Latin was once required at many public and parochial schools, but fell into
disfavor during the 1960s when students rebelled against traditional classroom
teachings and even the Roman Catholic Church moved away from Latin as the
official language of Mass. Interest in Latin was revived somewhat in the 1970s
and began picking up in the 1980s with the back-to-basics movement in many
schools, according to Latin scholars, but really took off in the last few years
as a language long seen as a stodgy ivory tower secret infiltrated popular
culture.
Harry Potter books use Latin words for names and spells, and at least two have
been translated into Latin (“Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis”), as have
several by Dr. Seuss (“Cattus Petasatus”). Movies like “Gladiator” and “Troy”
have also lent glamour to the ancient world.
“Sometimes you need to know Latin to understand that part,” said Adrian
McCullough, 10, a sixth grader in New Rochelle who plans to reread the Harry
Potter books now that he is learning Latin.
Marty Abbott, education director of the American Council on the Teaching of
Foreign Languages, said it was possible that Latin would edge out German as the
third most popular language taught in schools, behind Spanish and French, when
the preliminary results of an enrollment survey are released next year. In the
last survey, covering enrollment in 2000, Latin placed fourth. “In people’s
minds, it’s coming back,” she said. “But it’s always been there. It’s just that
we continue to see interest in it.”
Ms. Abbott, a former Latin teacher, said that today’s Latin classes appeal to
more students because they have evolved from “dry grammar and tortuous
translations” to livelier lessons that focus on culture, history and the daily
life of the Romans. In addition, she said, Latin teachers and students have
promoted the language outside the classroom through clubs, poetry competitions
and mock chariot races.
In Scarsdale, N.Y., where Latin enrollment rose by 14 percent to 80 this year,
the high school sponsors a Roman banquet on the Ides of March during which
students come wearing tunics and wreaths in their hair. Seniors serve bread,
olives, roasted chicken and grapes to younger students, and all of them break
bread with their hands. Dr. Marion Polsky, the Latin teacher, said that former
students still send her postcards written in Latin and that at least three have
gone on to become Latin teachers.
Here in New Rochelle, the district introduced a Latin class for sixth graders
last year and is now adding a second Latin class for seventh graders. Richard
Organisciak, the superintendent, said the district had spent $273,000 since 2006
to promote foreign languages including Latin. Last month, the district also
started a dual-language English-Italian kindergarten and a Greek class at the
high school; it is considering offering Chinese next fall.
The high school principal, Don Conetta, said he had encouraged more students to
study Latin, though he acknowledged that he was hardly “a stellar student”
himself in Latin and came to appreciate its value only later in life.
“If my Latin teachers could hear me now,” he said. “I took three years in high
school, and four semesters in college, and I can’t remember the first line of
Cicero’s orations.”
Students like Ciera Gardner, a sophomore, started Latin three years ago with two
friends who have since dropped out because of the workload. But Ciera, an
aspiring actress, said that she had persisted because Latin would look good on
her college applications and that in the meantime, it had already helped her
decipher unfamiliar words while reading scripts. “It’s different,” she said.
“Everyone says ‘I take Spanish’ or ‘I take Italian,’ but it’s cool to say ‘I
take Latin.’ ”
Max Gordon, another sophomore, said that he had learned more about grammar in
Latin class than in English class. And he occasionally debates the finer points
of grammar with his mother, Kit Fitzgerald, a video artist who studied Latin,
while washing dishes after dinner.
“In some ways, it’s really frustrating,” he said. “I’ll hear someone say
something that isn’t grammatically correct and I’ll cringe.”
A Dead Language That’s Very Much Alive, NYT, 8.10.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/nyregion/07latin.html
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