College Retention is Everyone’s Challenge

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For generations past, graduation from high school was adequate and more or less guaranteed employability at a living wage. College was for the rich and otherwise privileged minority on their way to a business or professional career, and to continued advantage.

That division of labor, well-suited to an economy in need of many trainable entry-level employees, no longer meets our economic and social needs. Education and skill requirements for an increasing number of 21st century jobs continue to escalate.

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College Bills Require Strategy

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According to The College Board, in inflation-adjusted dollars, the cost of tuition more than doubled between 1973 and 2013; per student borrowing increased from $1,066 in 1970 to $6,928 in 2012; the number of borrowers more than doubled over the past decade; and 41 percent of student borrowers who began college in 2003 had at least $10,000 in educational debt in 2009. (5 percent had at least $50,000 in debt.) Even more troubling, 15 percent of those not enrolled and with no degree had between $10,000 and $30,000 in such debt.

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‘Seamless counseling’ can stay the course

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Danny was doing OK in high school, a B and C student and good athlete, vaguely content to plod along in his city high school. But when a teacher asked him if he was going to college, he said that he was not sure and that he could not really see himself as a college student. No one in his family had ever gone to college, although his mother and uncle told him to try.

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Seamless Counseling Is Focus of May Conference in New London

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“Seamless Counseling: The Cutting Edge of Access to and Success in Higher Education” will be the topic of CHERE’s May 14 conference at U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.  

Strategies and programs to help high school seniors get into an appropriate higher educational institution, survive the “summer before” and once enrolled, succeed toward graduation.  Finding the balance between “seamless counseling” and “seamless enabling.”  Community-based and campus-based programs in Connecticut from New London, Hartford and Bridgeport, and a program in Providence, will be featured. 

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CHERE on WATR

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CHERE Director David Johnston discussed the upcoming Student Debt and Financial Aid conference on Waterbury radio station WATR on March 25.  The conference was rescheduled due to weather predictions and was held on April 17.  Veterantalk show host Larry Rifkin and Johnston discussed some of the critical issues faced by students in financing their education, and the long-term ramifications – a preview of the upcoming conference.

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