—– High school counselors know that kids are not being prepared for college
From a College Board survey conducted last year:
When it comes to getting students into college (and prepared to succeed there), school counselors have a unique vantage point — seeing firsthand the factors that hinder their students from moving forward. A national survey of counselors, being released today by the College Board, finds that these counselors generally think their schools are not succeeding in the areas that the counselors believe are most important to promote student advancement.
Meanwhile, high school teachers seem clueless about college readiness of their students.
Total enrollment at American colleges and universities eligible for federal financial aid fell slightly in the fall of 2011 from the year before, according to preliminary data released Tuesday by the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics.
The data from the department’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System show that 21,554,004 students were enrolled in fall 2011, down from 21,588,124 in fall 2010. While that drop is smaller than two-tenths of one percent, it is the first such dip since at least 1996, according to officials at NCES.
In many ways the result is not surprising; college enrollments boomed in the late 2000s, as they often do during recessions, as workers lost jobs and sought to retool or opted to continue their educations because they didn’t like their prospects for employment.
So it’s possible that enrollments are leveling off (and shrinking slightly) now because the economy had begun rebounding enough by fall 2011 that some of those who had flocked to higher education during the recession began finding jobs. It’s also possible that college tuition levels — which have continued to rise in recent years, driven in part by cutbacks in state support and other traditional sources of colleges’ revenue — are pricing more students out of higher education.
Possible impact on ‘completion agenda’
Whatever the reasons, the data — if they persist — could pose a problem for the many policy makers and advocates seeking to increase higher education attainment. While many of those promoting the “completion agenda” are focusing on improving the performance of students who are already in college, they also strive to increase the level of college-going, particularly for those historically underrepresented in higher education.
—– Unattractive women scientists
“My impression of the Conference of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans. There are thousands of people at the conference and an unusually high concentration of unattractive women. The super model types are completely absent. What is going on? Are unattractive women particularly attracted to neuroscience? Are beautiful women particularly uninterested in the brain? No offense to anyone..”
This reminds me of the popular University of Chicago slogan: “University of Chicago: Where the squirrels are cuter than the girls”
During my early years working in the oil fields, many of us laughed at this 1978 letter to Ann Landers from the wife of an oil geologist who wrote to complain about her husband having to train a new female scientist.
My husband is a geologist for a major oil company. Recently he had to take a young woman geologist out to an oil well to train her. They were together constantly for three weeks, traveled thousands of miles alone in the car, ate all their meals together, even slept out on the rig.
I’m not worried about the physical attraction, because most women geologists are so ugly they could go lion hunting with a switch….
Some things never change.
Cost of College 