Higher Ed News

College Admission Gets Harder

The College Endowment Divide

Admissions at Prestigious Colleges Grows Even More Competitive

Does a Prestigious Degree Guarantee Success?

Young Women Outpace Young Men in Degree Attainment

Group Names Top 10 Issues of State Higher-Education Policy

The Unreliability of References

State Appropriations for Higher Education See Biggest Jump in Decades

Diversifying Through Football

Young Women Outpace Young Men in Degree Attainment

Applications to Colleges Are Breaking Records
Karen W. Arenson, New York Times, January 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/education/17admissions.html

Applications to selective colleges and universities are reaching new heights this year, promising another season of high rejection rates and dashed hopes for many more students. Harvard said Wednesday that it had received a record number of applicants - 27,278 - for its next freshman class, a 19 percent increase over last year. Other campuses reporting double-digit increases included the University of Chicago (18 percent), Amherst College (17 percent), Northwestern University (14 percent) and Dartmouth (10 percent).

Officials said the trend was a result of demographics, aggressive recruiting, the ease of online applications and more students applying to ever more colleges as a safety net. The swelling population of 18-year-olds is not supposed to peak until 2009, when the largest group of high school seniors in the nation's history, 3.2 million, are to graduate.

College Admission Gets Harder
Peg Tyre, Newsweek, January 3, 2008
http://www.newsweek.com/id/83159

The children of the baby boomers are flooding colleges with applications, making the process more competitive than ever. Flagship state schools, like the University of Texas at Austin, where the number of students applying has jumped from 14,982 to 27,237 in the last 10 years, are turning away more kids than they want to.

The College Endowment Divide
John Maguire and Lawrence Butler, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 18, 2008
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i19/19a03301.htm?utm_
source=cr&utm_medium=en

Roughly 50 institutions now control more than half of college and university endowment money while educating fewer than 2 percent of the nation's students. Their combined endowments amount to approximately $180-billion.

Admissions at Prestigious Colleges Grows Even More Competitive
Christopher C. Morphew, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 18, 2008
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i19/
19a03401.htm?utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

In 2007, Princeton University rejected more than 90 percent of its applicants, and Stanford rejected 89.7 percent. Harvard turned down 1,100 students who scored 800 on the math portion of the SAT, while Yale reported rejecting several students who scored a perfect 2400 overall.

Does a Prestigious Degree Guarantee Success?
Thomas Sowell, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 18, 2008
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i19/19a03402.htm?
utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Small colleges dominate the list of the 10 institutions with the highest percentage of students going on to receive Ph.D.'s; a higher percentage of Grinnell College graduates, for example, receive their doctorates than those from Harvard or Yale. Of the CEO's of the 50 largest American corporations surveyed in 2006, only four had Ivy League degrees, and just over half graduated from state colleges, city colleges, or community colleges.

Young Women Outpace Young Men in Degree Attainment
J.J. Hermes, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 11, 2008
http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/01/
1186n.htm?utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

Nearly one-third, or 33.1 percent, of women ages 25 to 29 reported in 2007 that they had earned a bachelor's degree or higher. That compares with 26.3 percent of men in the same age range.

Group Names Top 10 Issues of State Higher-Education Policy for 2008
Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2008
http://chronicle.com/news/article/3736/
group-names-top-10-issues-of-state-higher-education-policy-for-2008?at

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities has compiled a list of the top 10 issues of higher-education policy that it expects to be at the forefront this year in the states. Many of the issues, such as affordability and accountability, seem to play a role in state legislative sessions most years. Others, such as tepid budget forecasts, portend a potential new direction for debates in 2008. Here's the list:

Affordability
States' more-tepid fiscal forecasts
College preparation
Accountabilty
Campus security
Immigration
Themes raised in the 2008 presidential campaign
Affirmative action
Retooling state financial-aid programs
Economic development

The Unreliability of References
Dennis M. Barden, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 11, 2008
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/01/2008011101c/careers.html

Even the best and most experienced search committees and consultants are destined to be misled at some point.

State Appropriations for Higher Education See Biggest Jump in Decades
Jean Evangelauf, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 11, 2008
http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/01/1187n.htm

Total appropriations from state tax revenue climbed 7.5 percent in the 2007-8 fiscal year, to $77.5-billion.

Diversifying Through Football
Inside Higher Ed, January 11, 2008
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/11/black

At many Division I universities, sports remains a major - if not the primary - route to college for black men, data from more than 300 colleges. Scholarship athletes make up at least 20 percent of the full-time black male undergraduates at 96 of the nearly 330 colleges that play sports in Division I, the NCAA's top competitive level. At 46 of those colleges, according to the data, which are from 2005-6, at least a third of the black male population play a sport. And at 31 one of them, football players alone make up at least a quarter of the black undergraduate men.

Young Women More Likely Than Young Men to Receive Bachelor Degree
Inside Higher Ed, January 11, 2008
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/11/qt

Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau Thursday show that among those aged 25 to 29, women are much more likely to have a bachelor's degree: 33 percent to 26 percent.