Domestically, Step Up Women’s Network is one of many nonprofits that provide programming to at-risk teens to better their odds of success upon graduating high school.   They provide roughly 100 hours of programming to more than 250 girls each year across chapters in  New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.   As a result 90% of program participants wind up in college upon completion of the program, despite the majority of the girls living at or below the poverty level.

This month SUWN is hoping to meet 60% of its annual teen programs budget needs by winning a $250K grant from the Pepsi Refresh Project. Vote for Step Up daily.  And text 103315 to 73774 every day in October.

The interior of the former Detroit Public Schools’ book depository is the first of many heart-breaking photos in James Griffioen’s Vice Magazine photo essay.   It’s not only sad to see a place of learning abandoned, but that so many resources that could have been used by other school districts and charities were left to rot is just criminal.

Via The Daily Dish

This week the New York Times reported the findings of a UC Irvine study about college student grade expectations.

a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading. . .

As someone who paid for grad school with an academic scholarship by way of a teaching assistant position, I saw this philosophy at play first hand.

At the beginning of the semester, I’d watch the professor explain the course requirements. Frequently, poor attendance resulted in an automatic dip in your final grade regardless of how brilliant your course assignments turned out.  Some professors graded on a curve with the directive to graders that a certain percent of students will receive A’s, A-’s, B+’s and so on.   Others assigned point values to everything from attendance to essays to tests to class participation so students could consistently ballpark where they fall on the grade scale.  The toughest said let grades fall where they fall without inflation.

Through out the semester I’d warn students when they only had one absence between themselves and an automatic one point drop in their grades (A work would become a B).  I’d leave detailed feedback on early assignments so they could self-correct on future ones (comments I’m convinced more than half never read.)   And I gladly handed off the work of angry students to another teaching assistant for a regrade, knowing well that despite my serious disposition, I’m actually an overly generous grader.

But the truth is, most students seem to only care about the letter on their transcript and not what and if they’re actually learning.  Student Y got a doctor’s note to excuse her from the class presentation assignment because public speaking made her anxious; I can’t really argue with a doctor’s note, but it should be pointed out that  glossophobia is believed to be the #1 fear in most.  People fear public speaking more than death.   A good way to get over that fear is to actually speak in front of supportive groups in public — like a classroom of your peers — on a regular basis.

I once spent 40 minutes explaining to Student X that the 4 most important components of an assignment were completely wrong, no wiggle room there.  The remaining 3 components were mediocre at best, hence the C- gift to him on his paper. After a regrade that dropped his grade lower, he began his  (unsuccessful) campaign to convince the professor that I personally wanted to squelch his chances of getting into business school.   That Student X had no comprehension of the material mattered not, it was my job to help him get into business school with the GPA he needed.  Umm. No thanks.  There already appear to be enough arrogant no-nothings in the business world if the Wall Street meltdown is anything to go by.

Far too often, students went to professors after grades were turned into to begin the negotiating process.

• Yes, the TA told me I had X absences, but I didn’t know you were serious about dropping me a full grade even though it says so in the syllabus.
• But if I don’t bring up my GPA, which you bumping me up a grade would do, I can’t go to London for the Spring semester.
• I need this class to graduate; I don’t want/can’t afford to go to summer school!

And far too often professors capitulate because it’s easier than the fallout from taking a stand: students reviews affect tenure in some departments.

What should concern everyone about this study is what sort of culture breeds these sorts of expectations.  Lead researcher Ellen Greenberger felt

that the sense of entitlement could be related to increased parental pressure, competition among peers and family members and a heightened sense of achievement anxiety.

So we have a public school system that teaches to the test, often because state and federal funding is tied to test scores.  Students are taught that X +Y = Z but no one takes the time to explain why that equation is true, since the grade is all that matters.    And college admissions is getting more and more competitive, leading students to attempt to outlead their peers in extracurriculars while juggling a far too ambitious course load because only one person at High School G is getting in to Ivy U or receiving a full scholarship to State College.   There’s no learning for the sake of learning or doing just for the experience of doing.

High letter grades are the carrots dangled in front of students: it’s the end not the means.

And red flags should be waving for us all because isn’t that part of the problem on Wall Street?  The stimulus package include 12 pages of compensation limits for top executives at companies receiving bailouts.  And in return Wall Street whines that it needs to pay out billions in bonuses or the “best” won’t stay in finance.

The “best” of the banking world is driven by their own brand of carrot — $$$$.  You’re not really the “best” when you drive your company into insolvency in the long term because it meant happy balance sheets and bigger bonuses in the short term.   It’s not good business and those employees are liabilities not assets.    But those employees wouldn’t know that because they get handed bigger and bigger bonuses each year because they’ve grown to expect that if they show up at work they get rewarded.

Rude awakenings for all?

In the past year, the web has become an increasingly popular place to turn when trying to amp up your learning. Per Justin Pope’s article “Internet opens Elite College for All,”

Figures from the Sloan Consortium, an online learning group, report about 3.5 million students are signed up for at least one online course – or about 20 percent of all students at degree-granting institutions.

iTunes launched iTunesU allowing people to download choice lectures on a variety of topics taught at respectable institutions across the US. Learn microeconomics for the first time or brush up on developments in feminist political discourse. After downloading the lectures, you can get your learn on anywhere you can take an iPod or mp3 player.

Adding more options for seeking to maximize their brand by offering up sample class experiences to prospective students and the general population, OpenCourseWare is bring a great proportion of the learning experience to the web. Now you don’t have to be matriculated at MIT or Tufts to experience coursework, complete with syllabi and lecture notes.

As the OpenCourseWare Consortium grows its membership and expands its offerings, it will become a great resource to see how like topics are taught in different parts of the world. No doubt the American Civil War is taught differently in the North versus the South but what about in England or Egypt. What spin is put on American history in other countries? Currently Japan is the most well represented country outside the United States, as the costs come down, I’d expect more schools, and accordingly more nations to be represented.

…for families earning $120,000 to $180,000 a year, costs will now be limited to about 10 percent of income, meaning that students from such families will pay a maximum of $18,000, a deep discount from the university’s full annual cost of more than $45,600.

Universities around the country now face a price war, with parents seeking the same treatment at other, less endowed universities. The pressure is on for private institutions to make their programs more affordable and further drive diversity.

I can certainly appreciate Harvard’s well meaning efforts, given that I went to UPenn, and my parents managed to just eek out on top of the ceiling for grants/aid direct from the university. My college education sucked up a third of my parents’ income after taxes for 4 years; I have no doubt there were dozens of other ways they’d have preferred to spend that money.

Ultimately, picking a school can be much like shopping for clothes. Sure I’d love to be wearing La Perla lingerie underneath my clothes every day, but Hanes does the job well too. College is about taking advantage of all opportunities presented to you, regardless of the initial sticker price. In college, I learned how to think critically. . . critical thinking is what the History & Sociology of Science major is know for. I probably could have learned how to think just as well at a smaller school that fell a bit further down the rankings.

Researchers at Princeton were able to show that ambition, not college choice, is the ultimate predictor of financial success. After tracking students for roughly 25 years,

In both data sets, Krueger and Dale, like other researchers, find that students who attended more selective colleges tend to earn higher salaries later on than those who attend less selective colleges. However, the researchers not only looked at the schools that students attended but also where they were accepted and rejected. They found that where a student applies is a more powerful predictor of future earnings success than where he or she attends.

Says Krueger, Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University: “It appears that student ambition, as reflected in the quality of the school to which he or she applies, is a better predictor of earning success than what college they ultimately choose or which college chooses them.”

Whether Harvard or your local State University, keeping your eye on the prize is more important than the name on your sweatshirt.