The Smartest Students in America Go to...

I have been sent this article by a number of folks now and I thought it worth sharing with you.

Agree? Disagree? Why?

The Smartest Students in America Go to ... Community Colleges?

By ZAC BISSONNETTE Posted 11:41 AM 08/30/10

Ask anyone you know where the smartest people in America go to college.

Chances are you'll get all the same answers: Harvard, MIT, Yale, etc.

But I don't think that's true. If you ask me, the smartest people go to community colleges: What's smarter than saving $100,000 and managing to get an education that is just as good, and perhaps even better, than you can get at many top universities?

First, the cost side: Tuition and fees at the average community college run $2,544 -- and for most families, a tax credit will cover most of that amount, making the cost of attending a community college negligible. By comparison, four-year private colleges charge an average of $26,273 a year in tuition and fees. Then, factor in the significant savings that come from living at home while attending a community college for the first two years of a bachelor's degree.

But what about the quality of education? As Marty Nemko reports, studies show no relationship between college costs and the quality of learning: Students who attend community colleges learn just as much as students who attend four-year colleges. Most importantly, students who transfer to four-year colleges from two-year colleges are just as likely to earn bachelor's degrees as those who start at four-year colleges.

Student satisfaction? As I wrote last week on DailyFinance, surveys show that community college students report higher levels of satisfaction with their programs than those attending four-year colleges.

In other words, there doesn't appear to be any financial or education advantage to be attained from starting at a four-year college; and yet most families with college-bound high school seniors fork over tens of thousands of dollars or more for degrees -- and lard their kids down with debt in the process.

That's why, if you ask me, the smartest college grads are the ones who started at two-year colleges.

Zac Bissonnette's Debt-Free U: How I Paid For An Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, Or Mooching Off My Parents was called "best and most troubling book ever about the college admissions process" by The Washington Post.

This news article is reprinted from Daily Finance at:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/smartest-students-community-colleges/19612580/?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-w%7Cdl9%7Csec3_lnk2%7C167175#


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Summer Tour Stop #8 - The Counseling and Advising Center

Good Morning!

My week (or at least parts of it) in Counseling and Advising come to an end today. The common thread through all of my visits so far is that I continue to learn so much. It’s one thing to understand in general what an office is responsible for, but quite another to actually experience it first-hand. It makes all the difference.

 The Counseling and Advising Center was no exception to my education. The Center provides assistance in academic advising, career and transfer planning, and personal counseling to currently enrolled students at Parkland College.

The Counseling and Advising Center provides a full range of counseling and academic advising services on a voluntary, confidential basis.   All services are offered in a way that supports cultural diversity and promotes respect for individual differences.

Students can make a 50 minute appointment for personal counseling with one of the counselors. Patti Arthur very ably organizes appointments, phones, and student traffic, thereby minimizing the time a student is required to actually sit and wait for a counselor or an advisor.

The Center is led by Director Donna Tanner-Harold and assisted by Julie Shumate-Meece. There are seven additional counselors and four advisors, and a pool of part-time academic advisors and student workers support the unit.

The Center provides transfer planning, academic advising, career and personal counseling and crisis intervention.  Counseling services are offered free of charge to Parkland students. Assistance with issues such as relationships, depression, stress management, anxiety, grief and loss and gay and lesbian concerns is also available to all students.  

Intensive support services are offered to students returning after academic suspension and for students on academic warning and probation.  Counselors and advisors collaborate with and support the college by participating on committees, presenting workshops and classroom visits. 

Counselors and advisors also serve on a variety of community based boards and committees.

During the week, I was able to “sit in” with most of our advisors and counselors, but give that this is the first week of class, I wasn’t able to get in with everyone.

Our counselors and advisors have nearly infinite patience. This type of work with students requires exceptional listening skills and the ability to “translate” what a students is attempting to communicate. Some students provide very little information and other times, it’s a flood.

Each counselor and advisor has their own style, from the way they address the student to the set-up of their office. I found it very interesting to see the different techniques in action. I view it as a good thing that we have such a diversity of approach in the Center as it allows our students to find a compatible soul and a connection with that person.

I would extend my appreciation to all in the Center for allowing me to join you during a very busy week. I enjoyed the time and learned much.

An enrollment update:

At this point in time we are 328 in headcount ahead of where we were at this time last year. We are standing at 9,542 in headcount, up 3.5% from Fall 2009.

FTE stands at 6,632, 4.95% better than last Fall.

Reo offers a word of caution regarding the comparisons as, “we are not exactly comparing apples and apples since we are not dropping every night for lack of tuition payment.”

The next drop for lack of tuition payment will be Monday morning, August 30th.

The weekly drop gives us a chance to attempt to contact students to let them know that they will be dropped if payment is not received by the next deadline and the Call Center will continue to contact students with outstanding balances through tomorrow.

Have a great weekend!

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The First Week of Classes

The parking lots are full. The computer labs are loaded. Our classes are nearly full. 

Welcome to the first week of the fall semester!

According to the Director of Admissions, Reo Wilhour:

“After enrolling a paltry 16 students on dark Friday, August 20th, the college stepped it up with one of the most active Saturday enrollments in 10 years.

On Saturday, August 21st, with expanded Saturday staff and extended hours, we enrolled a hefty 135 students. 24 students helped themselves via WebAdvisor on Sunday, then came make-up Monday with a whopping 316 new enrollments to push us over +2% on headcount and +2.45% on FTE. (On the first day of class in 2009 we enrolled 275 students. And we thought that seemed busy!)

Yesterday was the first day of the Fall registration period that we'd pushed significantly into positive territory.

Today registration activity remains brisk. We do however need to temper our optimism somewhat with the fact that we have not been processing nightly drops for lack of tuition payment as we did last year. Our next drop for lack of payment will be Monday, August 30th.

Fall 2010	2010	2009	Diff	%Diff
Headcount	9014	8833	181	2.05%
FTE	6267	6117	150	2.45%

Congratulations to all those College personnel who have continued to provide one great piece of student service after another as we work our way through this always challenging, but rewarding time of year.”

In addition, I’m either paying more attention to the Financial Aid Office or there is significantly more activity happening there these days. I think it’s both. 

According to Director Tim Wendt:

We've received 8,451 applications as of today (Monday the 23). We've awarded:

Financial Aid FUND	Amount	Students
PELL Grant	$9,656,660.00	2,070
AC Grant	$2,600.00	3
SEOG Grant	$137,823.00	174
Illinois MAP Grant	$1,826,860.00	1,061
Federal Work Study	$164,206.00	53
SUB Loan	$6,395,371.00	1,789
UNSUB Loan	$2,379,893.00	791
PLUS Loan	$519,065.00	73
Alternative Loan	$193,173.00	28
Parkland Scholarships	$434,944.46	147
Foundation Scholarships	$107,986.59	145
Outside Scholarships	$124,698.12	142
Honors Scholarships	$250.00	1
Illinois Veterans Grant	$202,740.17	145
Illinois Nat'l Guard Grant	$44,146.00	24
Illinois MIA/POW Scholarship	$12,221.00	11
TOTAL AWARDED	$22,202,637.34

Last year, I believe that total award was @ $16,700,000. Great work by the Financial Aid staff.

Counseling and advising remains busy and the second ID station seems to be working very well in reducing wait times for students. Great idea! The best news, of course, is that our new data systems seem to be performing. Obviously, it isn’t perfect, and we still have a number of issues to work through, but overall, not bad. 

Also, my thanks to all the staff, faculty and students that spent time in the College Center on the first couple days of this week. It makes a difference.

In closing, I’ll share a suggestion made by Susan Short:

Dear Mr. President,

If it's not too late in the drafting stage, could I possibly suggest that the hallways in the new buildings be planned an additional 4' wide to allow for two additional pedestrian lanes of texters?

Respectfully,

Ss

I hope the rest of your week goes well. Thanks for all you do.


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A Power Outage and Recovery

Well, I think I jinxed us...talking about how good the Crisis Management was getting at dealing with situations.

For the record, at approximately 12:15 am Friday morning, we experienced and electrical short that took out power to B, D, X,  G, the CDC and part of A wing.

 Photo by: Vanda Bidwell/The News Gazette   

How did this occur and what can we do to prevent it from happening again?

The cause was aging cables. There is really no way to prevent it from happening again, short of re-wiring the entire utility ring. There is a ring of underground utilities that surround the campus, accessible by manholes spaced accordingly. Between the B and D wings, the electrical cable shorted out.  We lost power, air conditioning, and eventually, the uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) that keep our network and servers online.            

Had this short occurred just one week later, we would have had our new UPS and generator ready to take over. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. Had the new system been ready, the UPS batteries would have kept power to the servers with the natural gas-fired generator taking over indefinitely.

So our systems went down rather un-gracefully. 

AmerenIP worked through the night along with Troy Burns and Jim Bustard from the Physical Plant. Of course Gordon Green, Jim Pierce, Doug Brooks, Mark Guymon, Bryan Diller and possibly others that I am not aware, came to the College in the middle of the night to do what they could.

At approximately 11:30am, power was restored. It took another 3 hours to bring the network and servers back online.

Typically, we have some student service functions open on the Saturday before the semester begins, so we decided to extend the hours a bit. Here is the News gazette story.

Why did it take so long for computer systems to be restored? Why did they go down in the first place?

The Server Room

Bad timing. The "old" uninterruptible supply lasted for only @ 15 minutes before power ran out. This is exactly why we bid the replacement.

There are approximately 20 servers and sub-systems that need to be restored when power is interrupted. These systems must be cooled, turned on in a certain order, and verified/indexed. This takes 3-4 hours. Our thanks to Gordon Green and Doug Brooks, along with their teams for getting us back in service so quickly.

This morning (Saturday), we opened at 9am and served a significant number of students. By 10am there were nearly 80 students waiting in the Counseling and Advising area. Admissions, Financial Aid and the Business Office had steady traffic all day until we closed up for the day at 3pm.

At the risk of leaving someone out, I won’t try to thank everyone that came in on a Saturday to help out, but I’d like to recognize a couple special folks.

Billie Mitchell from the Adult Re-Entry Center served as an Admissions Advisor all day. Mary Katherine Denmark from TRiO became a Financial Aid Assistant, and in the Business Office, Lori Wendt, Kathleen Charleston, and Melanie Lewis served as cashiers. My special thanks to all of you for stepping-up today.

Days like today make me glad I work at Parkland College.

A poem by Trustee Linden Warfel:

Is this the 'zap' semester?

When things get very dark

and then the lights come on!

Brighter and brighter

and more long lasting

A shake down day

checking out emergency response

with the president 'down', well,

out of town

But the good people got it together

and the president came

and the computers hummed

after their little rest

Ready, now, for work to begin!

'charged to the hilt'!

Full power!

Let 'er rip!

Full speed ahead!

No turning back!

The light house is back!

Bring on Monday!

Summer Tour Stop #7 Financial Aid

August  2-5^th, 2010

Apparently, our students are interested in Financial Aid!

The office is a busy place these days, with students streaming in to apply, check their status, provide additional documentation, and ask questions about all things Financial Aid.

"Our mission is to help students finance their education and teach them life skills necessary to live productive and meaningful lives while making a positive impact on their communities.

Financial aid consists of scholarships, grants, loans (which must be repaid), and part-time employment. Parkland College makes every effort within its means to help all students with limited financial resources secure the funds needed to complete their educational goals."

My first assignment was to spend time at the front desk, primarily with Chris Wilson. My goal was to listen to the questions and concerns our students posed to Chris and to learn from his response. I naively assumed that after a couple hours, I would be able to begin helping students myself.

In a relatively short period of time (about 5 minutes), it became clear to me that my goal needed some modification. Chris has encyclopedic knowledge of the entire process and the ability to multitask in a nearly supernatural way. Chris can be working with a student, watching another log in to begin a FASFA, and help me answer a student question with apparent ease. He is an amazing resource and wealth of knowledge.

After learning how to find information on the two most basic FinAid screens in Colleague, I set off to “triage” the line of students that invariably formed throughout the day.

To give you an idea of scale and scope, the department received over 2700 phone calls that one day. As of the time I write this, over $20MM in student aid has been awarded to 8208 students.

I had the opportunity, over the next few days, to observe the Advisors (Dawn Good, Haiti Eastin, Holly Pickowitz and Kristina Taylor) in action. Each of the Advisors has a particular specialty and each rotates through seeing walk-in appointments.

Stacy Bennett is responsible for verifications. Sounds simple enough, no?

Not so much. The Federal Government selects every third student to be verified, meaning that tax records, selective service status, and residency among other things must be proved by the student. This takes significant time and results in the long lines you see occasionally at the Financial Aid counter. Stacy has a big job.

Mary Liggett sits across from Stacy and is primarily responsible for phones and email. As I mentioned, the volume of phone calls each day is huge. In addition, there were some 86 email inquiries one of the days I was there. Of course, Mary Nicholas is there as well, helping out part-time with scanning of documents and other duties.

Between working the line, an Advisor meeting with Director, Tim Wendt and Associate Director, Pam Lytel, the time slipped by very quickly. I was also able to attend a Financial Aid appeals meeting, which very much reminded me of my days working with exceptions to academic policy.

Obviously, the Financial Aid Office is extraordinarily busy these days with more students applying for and receiving some sort of Financial Aid. My respect and admiration to Tim Wendt and his office for not only serving the volume of students they do, but for doing it so well.

Thanks to Financial Aid!