Default: The Student Loan Documentary

Default - The Student Loan Documentary from Aurora Meneghello on Vimeo.

Improving the Graduation Rate

Graduation rates in New Jersey

Improving the college and high school graduation rate would make for a good course topic.  The statistics show that we definitely have a problem and one you can easily quantify.  

According to US New and World Report, "Thirty percent of college and university students drop out after their first year. Half never graduate, and college completion rates in the United States have been stalled for more than three decades" (see "Dropouts Loom Large for Schools").  There are many reasons why students drop out, ranging from immaturity to lack of funds (see "The Dropout Dilemma"), but all of these problems can be addressed with careful programs to help students understand the importance of a college degree.  The problem is that the University does not have the resources to address the issue and has little incentive, especially since for every drop-out there are many more students looking to get into college.  However, if we made retention more of a priority, we could probably improve graduation rates in significant ways.  

The Lumina Foundation is one organization working to improve graduation rates.  According to their website, even New Jersey -- which has perhaps the best performance of any state in high school and college graduation rates for its citizens -- sees just over a third (35%) complete a B.A. or more advanced degree.  But 20% drop out of college.  That means we could top 50% if we could just address the drop-outs or if we could get more people completing an Associate's degree to get more schooling.

One reason we should be concerned about graduation rates is global competition for jobs.  According to Lumina's website,  the United States has seen less than 40% of its population complete a BA or AA for the past 40 years.  Forty years ago, 40% meant we were the most educated country in the world.  Today, it means we are nowhere close to the top.  That means our global competitiveness is rapidly declining.


But it is not just about college.  A lot of our declines start even earlier.  "Graduation rate for US high-schoolers falls for second straight year" was a recent headline, describing a national average of only 68% graduating high school.   Even in NJ, 13% never finish high school and a significant number resort to the GED to finish that degree.  According to an analysis of these data (see "How Cutting the Teen Drop Out Rate Could Stimulate the Economy"), the drop out rate has a significant economic impact.  Drop outs earn over $9,000 less each year than graduates, so that even cutting the drop-out rate in Trenton, NJ (our state capital) by 50% would raise the earning potential of those students by over $9 million per year (according to an analysis by the Alliance for Excellent Education).  

Improving the college and high school graduation rates should be a national priority because it would benefit all Americans in terms of more jobs and better tax rates in an increasingly competitive world.  So there are many rational reasons to resist the forces of privatization that are making it increasingly difficult for most Americans to afford higher education.

History for Dollars

New York Times columnist David Brooks offers a surprisingly strong argument for studying the humanities in this age of market-driven careerism.  It is a hard case to make in the current economic climate.  As he notes: "When the going gets tough, the tough take accounting."  And none of my students last term seemed interested in defending the humanities, let alone majoring in them (unless we include "Economics" in that area).  There are many good reasons to study the humanities, as Brooks argues.  But maybe he should mention that the market for the humanities has got to get better -- and with everyone rushing to accounting, good writing and a deep understanding of human nature may just be in short supply when you graduate.

Protests Fizzle

"Protestors object proposed NJ cuts" (The Daily Targum, April 21) was the headline in The Targum, but nowhere does it tell you how many students actually protested or even how many gathered to watch.  Journalism 101 is that you always give a crowd estimate -- especially when, as in this case, you could count on your fingers and toes the number of students involved. The numbers were few and the arguments were weak.  If this is the best students can do, then I suspect there will be very little resistance to budget cuts and rising tuition in New Jersey.

Using PowerPoint 2007 for Your Presentation

For our class presentations, students should use PowerPoint slides to maximize their ability to communicate information quickly and in a compelling way while taking advantage of the technology at hand.  To get the most out of PowerPoint, you should also try to escape the traditional "text-based" slides to create at least some more engaging visual ones. We are going to work on that in class today.  For some explanation of why you should try to take advantage of the visual power of PowerPoint, I suggest you read the classic article by Cliff Atkinson titled "Five Ways to Reduce PowerPoint Overload" (PDF, 2004), which had a lot to do with getting presenters to think "beyond bullet points" and to recognize that the speaker is the most compelling channel of communication and that PowerPoint's power comes from visual elements.

PowerPoint

Let's get started by reviewing PowerPoint, which may have changed a bit since you used it last (they went the way of all Windows products, migrating to a sleeker graphical user interface that can be a challenge for users used to the old system).  Besides the basic video tutorials embedded above, you can find a host of tutorials on the web.  In fact, if you are trying to do something fancy with PowerPoint, I suggest you search YouTube or Google for tutorials -- you are bound to find something on exactly what you want to do without having to invest in a costly book.  Here are some good basic sites for those who just need an introduction or help adjusting to the new interface:

•  YouTube: PowerPoint 2007 - Get up to speed
  Designed for people used to the old PowerPoint.  Embedding is disabled or I would have shown this one above.
• YouTube: PowerPoint 2007 Demo
• PowerPoint 2007 Reference Guide
  This is the handout I presented in class.
• PowerPoint 2007 Tutorial from GulfCoast
• PowerPoint 2007 Tutorial
  A useful tutorial with pictures by topic area. Easy to navigate.
• Baycon Group Tutorial
• Create a Basic Presentation in PowerPoint
  If you are struggling just to get started, here is not a bad place to begin. Throw on a template and you are in business.
• PowerPoint Video Tutorial
• PowerPoint 2007 Effects

Graphing Numbers

To take advantage of the graphing capabilities of PowerPoint, you should all try to make your own graphical slide.  Here are some basics for doing that:

1) Find some numerical data you would like to graph.  Remember that there are some good guides to finding statistical information at our Sakai site under Resources.  You can also find some good data on the web, as we have covered in class.  

2) Decide how you want to represent the numbers.  Remember that line or bar graphs are good for making comparisons (such as graduation rates of male vs. female college athletes), while pie charts are good for showing the segments of a whole (such as the numbers of athletes by sport represented as a segment of the total athlete population at Rutgers).

3) Insert a new slide in your presentation, and you probably want to choose "Title and Content" as the theme.

4) Choose Insert-->Chart from the dialogue in the ribbon above OR simply click on the chart icon that should appear on your slide.

4) Use the dialogue box to decide on the type of chart you want (decided in step 2).

5) Then enter the values.

It's that simple!

Finding Images

In a school presentation context, you have a lot of freedom to take advantage of the images available on the web in order to enhance your presentation.  Copyright issues are over-ridden by fair use in this context -- unless you plan on publishing your presentation online or something like that.  Ideally, every slide should have an image on it to illustrate the core idea of that slide.   But if you just want to use a few meaningful images, that is fine also.

I regularly use images found online in this blog.  Since I am re-publishing those images online, which is not covered by fair use, I try to stick to the spirit of copyright, mostly by using the feature of Blogger that allows me to show images on the web by simply referencing the URL or web address.  Here is a good image I found and published earlier this term in reference to Obama's plans to expand Pell grants:

In some cases, I decide to edit and republish images, but generally only if I am using a very small portion of an image.  

However, none of the concerns of republishing on the web apply to your presentation!

There are many ways to find images. The easiest place to start is Google Images:

Use the search box to look for images that might match your presentation.  When you find them, make sure that you are seeing the best version of the image you want -- the original image.  Right click on the image and choose "Save Image As" or "Save Picture" to save the image to your computer.  Be sure to pay attention to where the image is saved, or choose "Desktop" in the save dialogue box to make finding your images later easier.

When using PowerPoint, you can also try using "Copy Image" and pasting directly into your presentation, then adjusting the size.

You can also use Print Screen to get images. For the Mac, the best one is usually "Apple key ⌘ + Shift + 4" which allows you to select exactly what you want from the screen. If you use a 3 instead of a 4 you get the whole screen. It then prints an image to the desktop called "Picture#" with the latest number.

Rutgers Day Blog

Check out the Rutgers Day blog to prepare for the April 24th festivities.  This is a great day to learn more about the University and its role in the community.

"On the banks of the old Raritan, my boys..."

Wordle image of the Rutgers alma mater

The Daily Targum had an article yesterday (see "Council urges revision to traditional U. song") regarding the explicit gender and class bias in the Rutgers alma mater, "On the Banks of the Old Raritan."  I recall that there have been periodic complaints about the traditional song, written in the late 19th century, when Rutgers (like most colleges of the time) was an all male institution.  One could probably map these complaints onto concurrent historical events to show some pattern of when this issue gets raised -- though that would not answer why it never gets resolved.  The first complaints were raised following the 1972 admission of women to all Rutgers colleges.  I remember complaints in the late 1980s (during the rise of "political correctness") and a subsequent revision of the official lyrics (mp3) to substitute "my friends" for "my boys" -- still leaving in multiple other gendered references, including "My father sent me to old Rutgers, / And resolv'd that I should be a man" (implying, perhaps, that women sent to Rutgers were supposed to get sex changes).  The Targum article suggests that the current complaint is probably fueled by the recent change in the female to male ratio at Rutgers (which, like most US colleges, seems headed for 55/45 women to men, and probably 60/40 within the coming decade if current trends continue). 

There is no question that the song does not fit the current climate.  But rather than just change the words to the old song, someone ought to just write a good contemporary song for Rutgers that might actually catch on.  After all, I do not think our alma mater is much of a living thing for people in the ways it might have been in the late 19th century.


These questions seem so trivial to me now.  I have a funny little book on my shelf called The Remick Favorite Collection of College Songs, which often are set to old fashioned sentimental and nostalgic tunes (such as Swanee River, or the Scottish song about the old Dundee that provides the music for our alma mater).  When I first sat down to think about this course, I remember picking up that book and thinking that the topic of "college songs" was something someone with a literary or musical bent might want to explore in this course.  But as we have gotten immersed in the vital issues of college funding, privatization, binge drinking on campus, the anti-academic student culture, cheating, the value of a college degree, the influence of college sports, and a host of other vital issues, I recognize that songs to alma mater seem very much beside the point, and any debate on this issue is a distraction from much more important issues that should be our focus.