Tag Archives: Pew Research Center

Race and Ethnicity in Digital Technology

June 30, 2011

Accountability, Affordability, Education Reform, Innovation, Jobs, Online learning, Technology

By Gretchen Livingston

Latinos are less likely than whites to access the internet, have a home broadband connection or own a cell phone, according to survey findings from the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. Latinos lag behind blacks in home broadband access but have similar rates of internet and cell phone use.

While about two-thirds of Latino (65%) and black (66%) adults went online in 2010, more than three-fourths (77%) of white adults did so. In terms of broadband use at home, there is a large gap between Latinos (45%) and whites (65%), and the rate among blacks (52%) is somewhat higher than that of Latinos. Fully 85% of whites owned a cell phone in 2010, compared with 76% of Latinos and 79% of blacks.

Hispanics, on average, have lower levels of education and earn less than whites. Controlling for these factors, the differences in internet use, home broadband access and cell phone use between Hispanics and whites disappear. In other words, Hispanics and whites who have similar socioeconomic characteristics have similar usage patterns for these technologies.

Hispanics, on average, are also younger than whites. However, even within each age group, Hispanics show lower levels of technology use than do whites.

Survey questions also probed for the use of non-voice applications on cell phones. Respondents were asked specifically about whether they access the internet and whether they use email, texting or instant messaging from a cell phone. The findings reveal a mixed pattern of non-voice cell phone application use across ethnic and racial groups. Hispanics are less likely than whites to use any non-voice applications on a cell phone (58% vs. 64%), and they are also less likely than whites to send or receive text messages (55% vs. 61%). However, Hispanics and whites are equally likely to access the internet and send or receive email from a cell phone. And Hispanics are more likely than whites to engage in instant messaging (34% vs. 20%). Compared with blacks, Hispanics are less likely to access the internet (31% vs. 41%) or send or receive email (27% vs. 33%) from a cell phone, but rates of texting and instant messaging are similar for the two groups. Read More

US College Fees Soar

June 28, 2011

Accountability, Affordability, Education, Education Reform, Jobs

18 Comments

The spectacular rise in US college tuition fees is becoming a serious problem for students and many American families as they grapple with the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.

In the past week Michigan State University announced a 7 percent tuition hike, Oklahoma State University raised its tuition by 4.8 percent and the University of Nebraska increased its prices by 5 percent for incoming undergraduates.

“College prices have been going up faster than any others costs in the American economy, faster even than healthcare and certainly faster than inflation and family income,” said Patrick Callan, Founder of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

“What we see in this economic downturn is an acceleration of a trend that’s been going on for three decades and it shifts more and more cost on students and families.”

Anger at federal budget cuts to education spilled over into nationwide protests in March and April and students are clearly struggling to cope with the added financial burden.

Natalie Papini will be a junior this year at Middle Tennessee State University, where officials have proposed a 9.8 percent increase in fees and tuition, according to online publication Inside Higher Ed.

“I just think it’s this never-ending cycle. I just see it keep going up and not going down,” said Papini, who receives multiple scholarships but still rents her text books rather than buying them. Read More

Most Presidents Prefer No Tenure for Majority of Faculty

June 24, 2011

Accountability, Affordability, Education, Education Reform, Excellence, Higher Ed, Higher Ed Controversy, Jobs, Transparency

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Even many leaders of private and public colleges want more long-term contracts for professors

By Jack Stripling

The deteriorating number of tenured positions in higher education is a common source of concern for faculty, but few college presidents seem perturbed by the trend.

Less than a quarter of college leaders who responded to a Pew Research Center survey, done in association with The Chronicle, said they would prefer full-time, tenured professors to make up most of the faculty at their institutions. Instead, 69 percent said they would prefer that a majority of faculty work under long-term or annual contracts.

Leaders of private four-year institutions were less enamored of tenure than were their public peers. Forty percent of leaders of four-year private colleges who responded to the survey, conducted this spring, expressed a preference for faculty with long-term contracts, while 30 percent favored tenure.

At four-year public institutions, half of the presidents surveyed said they preferred tenured faculty. Thirty-six percent preferred professors on long-term contracts.

Advocates of tenure say it is the surest protection of academic freedom, creating a system of due process in which the burden of proof is upon administrators to demonstrate that a professor’s dismissal is for cause, rather than a response to controversial scholarship.

But critics say that tenure’s protections make it difficult to get rid of incompetent faculty and can promote a culture of complacency among those who have attained the status. Read More

Crisis of Confidence Threatens Colleges

June 24, 2011

Accountability, Affordability, Education, Education Reform, Excellence, Higher Ed, Higher Ed Controversy, Innovation, Jobs, Online learning

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Higher Education in America: a Crisis of Confidence 1

Randy Lyhus for The Chronicle

By Karin Fischer

The American higher-education system has long been seen as a leader in the world, but confidence in its future and its enduring value may be beginning to crack along economic lines, according to two major surveys of the American public and college presidents conducted this spring.

Public anxiety over college costs is at an all-time high. And low-income college graduates or those burdened by student-loan debt are questioning the value of their degrees, or saying the cost of college has delayed other life decisions.

Among college presidents, the rising price of college is not the only worry. They’re concerned about growing international competition and declining student quality, with presidents from the least selective, and thus sometimes the least financially stable institutions, the most pessimistic.

But perhaps the most troublesome finding from the surveys is this: More than a third of presidents think the industry they lead is heading in the wrong direction.

Without a change in course, presidents fear, American higher education’s standing around the globe could erode. Although seven in 10 college chief executives rated the American system today as the best or one of the best in the world, barely half predicted that a decade from now the United States would be among the top globally.

“We should be worried,” said Nancy L. Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York system. “We are in a flat world. We are going to have to evolve.” Read More

In Choosing a College, Make Sure it is Affordable

June 23, 2011

Accountability, Affordability, Education, Education Reform, Excellence, Higher Ed, Jobs, Technology

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Story by CHRISTINE CULLEN and TOM RISEN

The seniors and parents of seniors who graduated from high school this year are coming to terms with the harsh realities of this new economy and are doing whatever they can to keep the costs of higher education manageable.

With an exceptionally soft job market, parents and students realize that it pays to save, rather than to become encumbered with student loans that could take decades to repay. That cost-versus-reward issue is the primary reason a Pew Research Center study shows that far fewer people today believe that a college education is worth the price. Of the people surveyed, 57 percent said college and trade schools do not offer good value for the money. Only 22 percent believed most Americans could afford college in this economy.

Yet, interest in college among Worcester County public school graduates is up slightly since 2008. Board of education statistics show that 81 percent of the county’s 526 graduates in 2010 continued as compared to 82 percent of the 496 graduates in 2009 and 79 percent of 550 graduates in 2008. One reason for this stable level of interest could be that parents and students are doing what they have to do to make it all work.

Approximately 84 percent of Stephen Decatur High School’s graduating class of 2011 is going on to some kind of post-high school study, according to Kay Russo, a guidance secretary who handles scholarships and works on student’s college applications.

“A big thing is when choosing a college, make sure that is a college they will realistically afford,” Russo said. “We try to tell these kids not to get themselves in so much debt that they wont be able to dig themselves out of it.”

Russo “constantly encourages students to complete scholarships,” based on everything from athletic ability to financial need. There are also hundreds of community-based scholarships available to those students who take the time to find them and apply.

Rachel Slotter just graduated from Decatur and will be attending Salisbury University in the fall to study business and biology. With only one parent to help support her financially, Slotter earned as many scholarships as possible. “I didn’t want to dump all the cost on my mom,” she said. “It was important to my family that I help out and do what I could to help pay for college.” Read More

Higher Education is at—or Even Past—Its Breaking Point

June 17, 2011

Accountability, Affordability, Education, Education Reform, Excellence, Higher Ed, Higher Ed Controversy, Innovation, Solutions

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Colleges in Crisis – Disruptive Change Comes to American Higher Ed

By Clayton M. Chri… and Michael B. Horn

America’s colleges and universities, for years the envy of the world and still a comfort to citizens concerned with the performance of the country’s public elementary and secondary schools, are beginning to lose their relative luster. Surveys of the American public and of more than 1,000 college and university presidents, conducted this past spring by the Pew Research Center in association with the Chronicle of Higher Education, revealed significant concerns not only about the costs of such education, but also about its direction and goals.

Despite a long track record of serving increasing numbers of students during the past half-century, graduation rates have stagnated. A higher proportion of America’s 55- to 64-year-old citizens hold postsecondary degrees than in any other country—39 percent—but America ranks only tenth in the same category for its citizens aged 25 to 34 (at 40 percent). And none of America’s higher-education institutions have ever served a large percentage of its citizens—many from low-income, African-American, and Hispanic families.

Indeed, the quality of America’s colleges and universities has been judged historically not by the numbers of people the institutions have been able to educate well, regardless of background, but by their own selectivity, as seen in the quality and preparedness of the students they have admitted. Those institutions that educated the smartest students, as measured by standardized tests, also moved up in the arms race for money, graduate students, and significant research projects, which in turn fueled their prestige still further, as faculty members at such schools are rewarded for the quality of research, not for their teaching.

More fundamentally, the business model that has characterized American higher education is at—or even past—its breaking point. Many institutions are increasingly beset by financial difficulties, and the meltdown since 2008 is but a shadow of what is to come. Undergraduate tuition has risen dramatically: at a 6.3 percent annual clip for nearly the last three decades—even faster than the much-decried 4.9 percent annual cost increases plaguing the healthcare industry. The full increase in the price of higher education has actually been hidden from many students and families over the years because gifts from alumni, earnings from private university endowments, subsidies from state tax revenues for public universities, and federal subsidies for students have been used to mitigate some costs. But universities are exhausting these mechanisms. Read More

Open the Doors and Windows to the Ivory Towers

June 15, 2011

Education, Education Reform, Higher Ed

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Dr. Ronald L. Trowbridge

A firestorm now rages in Texas over transparency and accountability in higher education. Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Public Policy Foundation have encouraged regents to peek inside the ivory towers, and the universities are responding. History argues that we must peek.

Perry wrote on May 13 that “efforts to protect taxpayers and get more results from our schools are not universally welcomed in academia. The attitude of some in the university world is that students and taxpayers should send more and more money, and then just butt out.” He adds, “Four-year graduation rates at Texas institutions of higher education currently average just 28.6 percent.”

Asserts the governor: “The big lie making the rounds in Texas is that elected or appointed officials want to undermine or deemphasize research at our colleges and universities. That disinformation campaign is nothing more than an attempt to shut down an open discussion about ways to improve our state universities and make them more effective, accountable, affordable and transparent.” Such a goal nationwide at all universities would be laudable. Read More

Is There Value in a Four-Year Education?

June 1, 2011

Education, Education Reform, Higher Ed, Higher Ed Controversy, Innovation, Technology

4 Comments

BY Marian Salzman

I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Value.

Okay, that wasn’t exactly how it went. But just as our view of plastics has changed significantly since the era of The Graduate, the American dream of the 1960s — marriage, a family, a house in the suburbs and hopefully a decent college education for your children — has changed a lot, too.

We’ve talked ad infinitum about marriage becoming obsolete, how the very notion of family has been rocked on its mom-and-dad-plus-two derrière and how suburbanites are returning to cities in droves as they bid the white picket fence adieu. So what of the college ideal? (All easy for me to type, as someone who never married and is living with my partner — and his four children — in the suburbs and it’s the week before my 30th reunion from my Ivy League alma mater, my first in 25 years because I love nostalgia almost as much as traditional roles and lifestyles. But I digress.)

Well, two surveys released by the Pew Research Center in one report on May 15 assessed the value of higher education. Read More