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Community Colleges Commit To More Overseas Students

Community Colleges Commit To More Overseas Students

By Bonnie Miller Rubin,Chicago Tribune (TNS)

CHICAGO — Despite the fact that they don’t play football, basketball, or soccer, Sergio da Silva and Armindo Goncalves were hotly recruited by Joliet Junior College.

The two young men arrived on campus in January, leaving behind their island home in the South Pacific — a leap of faith, considering they are the first members of their respective families to ever board an airplane, much less pursue higher education.

“Right away, we learned that we should have brought socks,” said da Silva, 20, who is studying agri-business.

The duo represents a new push by community colleges nationwide to attract students from not just around the block, but from around the world. No longer content to be known as sleepy commuter schools, these two-year institutions are hiring international coordinators, attending overseas college fairs, and setting lofty enrollment goals in places far beyond their surrounding ZIP codes.

A culturally diverse student body is an essential component for success in an era of increased globalization, experts said. But there’s another payoff as well: Foreign students pay three to four times as much in tuition as their district peers.

“Most countries don’t have a community college system, so they are sending students here for training,” said Karen Hunter Anderson, executive director of the Illinois Community College Board. “It helps globalize our campuses, but it’s also an extra revenue source. It’s a win-win for everybody.”

While foreign students have flocked to four-year U.S. colleges — more than 886,052 international students were enrolled in 2013-2014, up 40 percent over the past decade, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE) — community colleges are just beginning to catch up.

There were almost 88,000 foreign students nationwide at community colleges on student visas last year, about an eight percent increase over the past decade, with almost 20 schools hosting 1,000 or more international students, according to IIE.

None of the top destinations are in Illinois, but Anderson said that should change, as more people become familiar with the third largest community college system in the U.S.

“People are discovering what we have here,” said Anderson, who just returned from a trip to Cuba to help raise the profile of the state’s 48 community colleges.

Still, evidence of an impending boom is everywhere. A few years ago, Joliet Junior College had two students from overseas. This semester, 14 are on campus — a number projected to double by next year, according to Dayna Crabb, the school’s international student services coordinator.

Crabb, who was hired in 2013, attributes the growth to an emerging middle class and a lack of capacity in their own countries. She went on a recruiting trip to Vietnam, Thailand, and New Zealand last fall and considers Southeast Asia “the next hot market.”

Other factors that make community colleges an increasingly popular option include small class size, skills-oriented curriculum, and affordability — the same reason that has attracted American students.

The story is much the same at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, which reports 119 students from 46 countries. At Harper College, 123 foreign students are enrolled at the Palatine campus.

“There’s no question that recruiting has exploded,” said Jill Izumikawa, Harper’s coordinator of international student services.

At College of Lake County, a center for international education was established five years ago. But even more telling is the school received a U.S. State Department grant to open an American Culture Center in Xi’an, China in 2012, explained Tammy Mireles, CLC’s international student recruitment coordinator.

“Diversity and global engagement are written into our strategic goals,” Mireles said. “It’s an area that is extremely important to us.”

Popular areas of study include business administration, computer science, engineering, and allied health fields. Many students use it as launching pad to four-year institutions, but others — like da Silva and Goncalves — plan on returning to their home countries with a two-year associate degree.

The students are from Timor-Leste, a small nation between Australia and Indonesia, which was liberated in 2002 after decades under Indonesian rule. They belong to a new generation focused on jump-starting economic development at home, where their farming families work much the same way as they have for decades.

Their tuition and living expenses are covered by the Timor-Leste Hillary Clinton Scholarship Program, a USAID-funded scholarship to expand opportunities and nurture future leaders. They chose Joliet because it was the first community college in the U.S., they said.

“We also liked that it was quiet here, so we could focus,” said Goncalves, 26, and the quieter of the two.

They praised Americans for being friendly, even helping them navigate their way from O’Hare to Joliet. They marvel at the size of their apartment near campus, the ease of public transportation, and the sheer size of American supermarkets.

Said Crabb: “Everyone else’s shopping carts are filled with processed foods…and then there’s Sergio and Armindo, with their produce and rice.”

Of course, adjusting to American life can be an education in itself. Language and money issues can hobble success (under U.S. law, foreign students are not permitted to work off campus). Homesickness can also be a factor. For four months, Goncalves was unable to establish any Internet connection with his family.

Even something as simple as classroom culture can be perplexing. In Timor-Leste, students never question a teacher, which can be a problem when your grade is based on class participation.

“You’re not allowed to speak unless spoken to,” said da Silva. “I like the American way much better. It has helped change my personality.”

Of course, nothing is as astonishing as snow, especially since the temperature in Timor-Leste rarely dips below 65 degrees and their wardrobe was mostly limited to T-shirts and hoodies. As they recounted their first experience, Crabb made a note to include “what to pack” in future orientations.

That she concerns herself with their food and wardrobe needs is typical for international student coordinators, who consider it their job not just to recruit students, but to look after them once they arrive, so they can thrive academically and socially.

Most schools have implemented some kind of support system to assist with the transition. Last fall, Crabb started the International Friendship and Mentoring Program. Faculty and staff volunteers have stepped up, from hosting Thanksgiving dinner to sightseeing to helping the newcomers find where to get their hair cut.

“While the initial reason was to benefit our international students, it is equally beneficial for the mentors and their families, who have shared how rewarding they’ve found the experience,” Crabb said. “They are thrilled to have the opportunity to invite someone from another country into their home…and to establish that sense of family.”

Photo: Brian Cassella via Chicago Tribune/TNS

Community College Students Learn Math By Using It

Community College Students Learn Math By Using It

By Katherine Long, The Seattle Times (TNS)

SEATTLE — The grinding sound of metal on metal filtered through the walls of Chris Lindberg’s math class at Shoreline Community College, but his students had no trouble tuning out the noise.

“We’ve got a ten-inch-diameter grinding wheel, and it’s turning at 1,910 revolutions per minute,” Lindberg said, jotting the numbers on a whiteboard. “What is the surface speed?”

The six students clicked away on their calculators to solve this fairly basic algebra problem, similar to the kind covered in high school classes.

But this is no ordinary algebra class.

In the most-copied idea to come out of Washington’s community college system, these students are learning basic math without having to take months — or years — of basic-skills classes for which they would earn no college credit.

Instead, they were catching up and earning credit at the same time, working toward a credential that can lead to jobs that pay between $15 and $35 an hour.

They also were learning algebra they will use — not years from now, but right away, when they go into the noisy shop next door, setting up complex lathes and milling machines, each the size of a small SUV.

Ten years ago, a handful of Washington community colleges piloted this approach as a way to boost the dismally high number of students who then were leaving before earning a credential, or even a single college credit. Called I-BEST (Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training), the program has been so successful that it’s now used at all 34 of Washington’s community and technical colleges, and has been copied by colleges in 29 other states.

I-BEST students are nine times as likely to earn a workforce credential as students who follow the traditional path of taking remedial classes first.

Even students like 25-year-old Troy Briones, who, by his own account, struggled in high school with fractions and other basic math concepts.

After a stint as an Army field artilleryman, the 25-year-old is back in Washington, training to be a skilled machinist, a high-demand job that can pay up to $35 an hour.

“Math is everything in machining,” he said. “I didn’t really know it, until a couple weeks into it — everything is math-related.

“The best part of the program is it’s very hands-on. As soon as the lecture ends, you go straight into the lab and try it…the instructors are with you every step of the way.”

A large percentage of students must take remedial classes in community college, which is one reason so few students complete degrees or career credentials. Washington state’s colleges, however, have developed a much better way to help students catch up and complete their programs.
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I-BEST’S KEY COMPONENTS

  • Students learn basic skills as part of vocational or academic classes for which they earn college credit.
  • Two instructors teach each class.
  • Basic skills such as math or writing are taught in the context of how they’ll be used on the job.
  • There’s a clear pathway that shows which classes to take next, helping students efficiently complete a credential or work toward a degree that leads to a job.
  • Students are grouped in cohorts, so they can learn from one another.

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Nearly 60 percent of students who enter community colleges aren’t prepared to take college-level vocational or academic classes right off the bat. And the failure rate is stunningly high: Only about a quarter of those students earn a degree in eight years.

That’s true nationwide as well as in Washington, and it’s not because the students flunk out.

At most community colleges, students who don’t do well on placement tests must take pre-college classes in their weak subject — math, writing, or reading. These classes can feel like a repeat of high school, and they can greatly extend the time and money it takes to finish a vocational or academic degree. Some students get discouraged or spend so much money on the remedial classes that they don’t have enough left to finish a credential.

Math is by far the biggest problem area, with more than half of Washington community college students required to take remedial courses in that subject. But they often don’t need an entire course of high school math; they’re just weak in some areas.

With I-BEST, basic math and writing skills are taught alongside technical skills, usually in the same classroom. The program pairs a basic-skills teacher like Lindberg with a subject expert, such as Keith Smith, the machining program instructor at Shoreline. The I-BEST approach is being used in academic transfer classes, too, for students working on associate or bachelor’s degrees.

Because it uses two instructors instead of one, I-BEST costs the community colleges almost twice as much as a conventional class. The college bears the extra expense, not the student.

But a national study showed that I-BEST programs produce long-term economic benefits that outweigh the added costs. And a state study suggested that I-BEST benefits the entire state because the graduates get better jobs, paying more in taxes over a lifetime.

The arrangement helps students like Briones who have struggled with math, as well as older ones such as Karen Luckmann, who was good at math in her 20s and almost decided to major in the subject as an undergraduate at Central Washington University.

But Luckmann is 53 now and starting a second career after she was laid off from Boeing last year. She hasn’t done algebra or calculus in decades, and she never took trigonometry — all skills she will need to become a precision machinist.

“If you don’t use it, you don’t apply it, it doesn’t stay with you,” she said.
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The beginning of I-BEST dates back to 2005, when educators with the State Board for Community and Technical College (SBCTC) became increasingly worried about the baby boom generation of skilled workers who were starting to retire.

A lot of young people were going to need advanced training to fill those jobs, and while they were enrolling in community college career programs, the completion rate was abysmally low.

“The truth was, our two-year system was hemorrhaging students with high school diplomas, or less, at a pretty alarming rate,” said Jon Kerr, the board’s director of adult basic education.

The staff began drilling into its data to try to figure out how the colleges could be more effective. One of the things it learned: Students who were assigned to basic education courses (scoring at tenth-grade level or below on a placement test) or developmental education (scoring at 11th- or 12th-grade level) were highly unlikely to ever get a credential.

They knew that a large chunk of their students — 40 percent — were working adults, and more than a quarter were raising children.

But they hadn’t fully appreciated that students who enrolled in basic-skills classes viewed those classes as a means to an end. “Their real goal was job skills to get a better job,” said Jan Yoshiwara, deputy executive director of education for the state board.

That was a big “aha” moment, she said. And that was when the colleges decided to experiment with weaving basic skills into career classes, so students could take the classes they really wanted from the start.

The state’s community college leaders also knew, through their research, that students who completed at least a year of college-level classes and earned a credential saw the biggest bump in earnings. They wanted to help more of them over that tipping point.

To see what would work best, a handful of community colleges launched pilot programs in 2004-2005, which showed they were right — teaching basic skills in context improved learning retention. It makes sense: When algebra for machinists is taught just before the students work on a metal-cutting project, they immediately apply what they’ve just learned, reinforcing it.

The pilot projects also showed that colleges could often accelerate the speed at which remedial math and writing are taught, just filling the gaps in students’ skills rather than requiring them to repeat whole classes.

Kerr also has interviewed hundreds of I-BEST students in his role as I-BEST director and dean at three different state colleges. Many said I-BEST was the first time their teachers had made a direct connection between academic work and job skills.

In addition, many I-BEST programs — and increasingly other community college programs — are providing a clearer path for students to earn a certificate or degree.

In the I-BEST machinist program, for example, students know that they can earn a basic manufacturing certificate in one quarter, preparing them for an entry-level job, or they can keep going for two quarters, or up to two years, adding skills as they go to earn an associate in applied arts and sciences.

“It all starts with one principle: Start with the end in mind,” said Davis Jenkins, senior research associate with the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

“If it’s a job, ask what are the competencies you need,” Jenkins said. “And create a clear path and map, and track their progress.”

Jenkins worries, though, that the higher cost of I-BEST has made it into a boutique program, not something that can be replicated on a large scale. Just 3,400 students in Washington participated in I-BEST last year; the community colleges have a head count of 400,000 students.

However, Jenkins believes many of its innovations can be woven into traditional programs for a lesser cost, by redesigning programs into career pathways and teaching math and writing in the context of the field the student is studying.

The lessons college administrators have learned from I-BEST’s success have influenced the way they structure other programs, including academic courses for students working on associate or bachelor’s degrees. And I-BEST has influenced the development of a new plan to change the way math is taught in Washington’s community colleges, one that would create career pathways for students and offer different kinds of math for different careers.
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I-BEST isn’t just about math. It also helps students who need to boost writing or reading skills. Renton Technical College’s anesthesia-tech program is a good example, using I-BEST practices to help students learn the vocabulary and other skills they need to aid anesthesiologists in the operating room.

It’s a small, very popular program, and no cakewalk.

Students must learn the special language of medicine, rooted in Latin and ancient Greek. They must understand complex medical procedures, and be ready to hand over the appropriate medical equipment to an anesthesiologist at the right time during an operation. They must know medicines and ratios so that they can question a dosage if it seems wrong.

Many of the students who enroll have no medical background. This year’s class includes a former blackjack dealer, a flight attendant, a corrections officer, and several Army veterans.

That’s why instructor Gary West wanted his course to become an I-BEST program. That way, he is team-teaching with Shokouh Pardakhtim, a basic-skills instructor who majored in math at the University of Washington.

While West teaches the procedure for inserting a central venous line with his quick wit and dry sense of humor, Pardakhtim is the quiet partner, helping students figure out drug regimes and formulas, work that involves multiplying fractions and understanding ratios. She also assists students with dense medical terminology.

Renton Tech was one of the original community colleges to participate in the I-BEST pilot. Now, the I-BEST approach is suffused throughout the entire school and helped it become recognized as one of the nation’s top community colleges this year.

At Renton Tech, about 82 percent of I-BEST students either completed a certificate or returned for another quarter of instruction in 2012-13. That’s far better than the non-I-BEST rate, which is 68 percent.

But it’s also typical of I-BEST across the state. In Shoreline’s manufacturing program, for example, 87 percent of I-BEST students completed a certificate or returned for another quarter — compared with 75 percent of non-I-BEST students.

Smith, the machinist instructor at Shoreline, is sold on the value of I-BEST — the application of skills, the support, the approach to teaching. He believes too many students falter at math in high school because the work is too theoretical.

With I-BEST, he said, “rarely does a student go through this program and not succeed at math.”

Photo: Mike Siegel via Seattle Times/TNS

Free Tuition At Community College Should Just Be The Start

Free Tuition At Community College Should Just Be The Start

It’s good that many Republicans have joined Democrats in declaring the growth of economic inequality a problem. And some are even looking to solutions beyond making the rich richer through tax cuts. As we’ve seen, rising stock prices do not necessarily lead to jobs — for Americans, that is.

The crumbling of the once-mighty American middle class has two unstoppable causes, globalization and automation, and one stoppable one, a poorly educated workforce. A high-school diploma no longer guarantees a decent income. That’s something we can fix.

President Obama’s proposal for a free community college education is a good start. Two-year colleges are the gateway to more job training or a four-year college degree.

Let’s dispense with defeatist talk that we can’t afford to educate our people. Obama’s plan is to pay for the schooling with higher taxes on America’s economic elite. It wouldn’t even bother with the upper middle class, just the super-rich.

Do we hate the super-rich? We do not. We can thank them as they contribute more to the country that made their fortunes possible.

Some less visionary Republican leaders have framed the proposal as an income redistribution plan. But the money would be redirected not from the rich to the non-rich but from the very rich to education. A more productive labor force makes the entire country more prosperous.

Not everyone gets this. There remains a view of education chiefly as an expense rather than an investment in human capital.

An example can be seen in the House Republicans’ recent bill calling for “dynamic scoring” of legislation. It would require the official bean counters to include the economic benefits of tax cuts in scoring the cost of legislation. That would make tax cuts easier to pass.

The idea of “dynamic scoring” is not without merit, but the House’s vision has eyes only for tax cuts. Spending on things like roads and bridges also produces economic benefits. So does improving the workforce. Universal education is what made America great in the 20th century.

Some Republicans, especially on the state level, seem more enlightened on the importance of education as an investment in the future. Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval has proposed a $1 billion tax increase to strengthen the state’s schools. Some fellow Republicans in the state Legislature think the conservative thing is to kill it and have vowed to do so.

In successful advanced economies, such as Germany’s, education is free right through med school. Here education has become a luxury item. It’s nuts that U.S. student debt has passed $1 trillion and that undergraduates who borrow for school now owe an average of $30,000. Nearly 20 percent are in default on their student loans.

True, many students arrive at community college without the math they should have learned in fifth grade. Why? Lousy public schools? Chaotic home life? Newly arrived with little English?

Never mind why. Set up a classroom and teach them the math again — and, if necessary, again. For education, America should be the land of second chances, third chances and fourth chances.

As for the ages of those in the classroom, forget about that. Young to elderly, all should be welcome. And the learning should be free or just about.

Online classes already provide cheap and convenient instruction in almost every discipline. Perhaps Internet-based courses can break open the cages in which elite institutions trap students in ludicrously expensive degree programs.

Meanwhile, fight any effort to direct student aid at poor people only. Education should be regarded not as welfare but as basic, like water. So open the spigots, and let it flow.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

President Barack Obama speaks at the Anschutz Sports Pavilion on the campus of the University of Kansas on Thursday Jan. 22, 2015 in Lawrence, KS. (John Sleezer/Kansas City Star/TNS)

Unraveling The Myths Of Community College

Unraveling The Myths Of Community College

Months before Caitlin Johnson graduated from high school, she opened Ohio State University’s early-decision letter and felt the doors open wide.

For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to go to OSU’s veterinary school. She was on her way.

But on the drive home with her parents after visiting the campus, she heard the doors slam shut.

“It was a sobering visit,” she said. “It was so expensive. We knew there was no way I could do it without ending up with a mountain of debt before I even started vet school.”

About the same time, she got an unsolicited letter from Lorain County Community College in Northeast Ohio, where she lived. Her academic and extracurricular records qualified her for a two-year full scholarship to the college.

“I put the letter in the trash,” she said. “No way was I going to a community college. I was afraid it would hurt my chances of getting into vet school.”

Fortunately, maternal wisdom — abetted by a healthy dose of nosiness — intervened. “Moms being moms, my mom found the letter in the trash,” Johnson said. “She said: ‘You’re going. They’re giving you more than the cost of an education.'”

Reluctantly, Johnson enrolled in 2007.

In May, she will graduate from Ohio State’s veterinary school, and she already has a job with a rural practice.

“All my credits transferred,” she said. “And the classes were so challenging. A lot of the instructors were retired from larger universities.” She laughed. “Around the time I was taking organic chemistry, I knew LCCC was as tough as Ohio State.”

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama announced a plan that would provide tuition-free classes at community colleges for students who attend at least half time, maintain a minimum GPA of 2.5 and make steady progress toward a degree.

Predictably, Republicans and conservative commentators have lambasted this idea, often to the point of ridicule.

From last week’s Wall Street Journal editorial: “Community colleges … attempt to narrow the skills gap for high-school graduates who don’t attend four-year colleges. The schools vary widely in quality, and in practice they often provide remedial training in basic math and reading skills to kids who were promoted through failing K-12 schools.”

As for that 2.5 GPA? “You have to work hard not to get that grade.”

There is so much wrong with this attitude, starting with the description of people who attend community colleges and why.

Ken Phillippe, who oversees research at the American Association of Community Colleges in Washington, D.C., said there are many narratives about college students that are as false as they are enduring. Only 15 percent of students at four-year colleges, for example, are full time and living on campus, he said.

The average age nationally for a community college student is 29; the median age is 23. About 8 percent of them already have four-year degrees and enroll for additional training. As for this notion that community college students are mostly remedially challenged kids tumbling straight from failed tenures in high school?

“That’s a frequent misperception,” Phillippe said. “They’ve never visited a community college. They haven’t met any of the students.”

Nationally, the remedial rate for community college students is high, about 60 percent. At some urban community colleges, such as Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, the percentage climbs to 90, but spokesman John Horton is quick to caution against assumptions.

“If you haven’t been to school in decades, it’s a shock,” he said. “You should see how hard they work once they get here.”

Phillippe agrees. “It often takes only one class to get them ready. And keep in mind, a third of them are the first in their families to go to college.”

At Tri-C, 65 percent of the nearly 60,000 students enrolled attend part time. “Life gets messy,” Horton said. “A lot of these students are furthering their education while juggling all of their other responsibilities with jobs and families.”

Or, to put it another way, they aren’t Wall Street Journal editorial board members. A quick review of their online bios reveals an abundance of degrees from Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Georgetown, the University of Chicago and Oxford University.

I have no grievance with these revered institutions. Two of our children are Ivy League graduates. My beef is with those whose leave them with a sense of privilege that blinds them to how most Americans struggle and fuels a sense of superiority at the very thought of them.

When I asked Caitlin Johnson what kind of students she met at community college, she laughed again.

“The better question is, ‘Who didn’t I meet?’ There were people straight out of high school and those who were returning for second careers. There were a lot of people older and smarter than I am.”

I asked this bright young woman whether maybe “wiser” is the better word.

“Maybe,” she said. “All I know is that long before I realized it, they were getting me ready to be a vet for everyone.”

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and an essayist for Parade magazine. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: President Barack Obama speaks at Lorain County Community College in 2010 (Brian Smith/Flickr)