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    #243588 08/18/18 12:13 PM
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    I have a child in high school and two in middle school, so I am thinking more about college. I am starting this thread for articles on how students can flourish in college.

    The Case Against Cutting Class
    It’s a waste of money, and it’s bad for your mental health.
    By Jennifer L. Taitz
    Wall Street Journal
    Aug. 15, 2018

    Quote
    In late August I wonder how often people skip pricey, nonrefundable experiences that they’ve planned for years. Then I fantasize about buying college students old-fashioned alarm clocks.

    Depression and anxiety are prevalent on campus, and high rates of absenteeism aren’t helping. A Harvard study noted attendance dropped from 79% at the beginning of the year to 43% at semester’s end. At Harvard, where tuition and housing costs some $70,000 a year, each missed class amounts to several hundred dollars.

    As a psychologist, my student patients tell me skipping class is practical—attendance isn’t mandatory and lectures are accessible online. The mindset is that there’s little benefit to sitting in a room with peers while engaging with prospective mentors. Yet these young adults never contemplated enrolling in more affordable online schools.

    Cutting class also entails health risks. Getting up for lectures each day will help you cultivate good sleep habits, since one way to treat or prevent insomnia is to maintain a set wake time. If you stow your smartphone and mindfully participate, not only will you actually learn, but you may find yourself less stressed than when passively scrolling through social media or frenetically texting. Your British literature discussion may prove a nice distraction from ruminating about your relationships. And sitting in a room full of people you have something in common with is an opportunity to create meaningful connections and feel less alone.

    ...

    An Underappreciated Key to College Success: Sleep
    By Jane E. Brody
    New York Times
    August 13, 2018

    Quote
    Attention all you happy high school graduates about to go off to college, as well as the many others returning for another year of higher education. Grandsons Stefan and Tomas, that includes you.

    Whatever you may think can get in the way of a successful college experience, chances are you won’t think of one of the most important factors: how long and how well you sleep. And not just on weekends, but every day, Monday through Sunday.

    Studies have shown that sleep quantity and sleep quality equal or outrank such popular campus concerns as alcohol and drug use in predicting student grades and a student’s chances of graduating.

    Although in one survey 60 percent of students said they wanted information from their colleges on how to manage sleep problems, few institutions of higher learning do anything to counter the devastating effects of sleep deprivation on academic success and physical and emotional well-being. Some, in fact, do just the opposite, for example, providing 24-hour library hours that encourage students to pull all-nighters.

    (I did that only once, to study for an exam in freshman year, and fell asleep in the middle of the test. Lesson well learned!)

    An all-nighter may help if all you have to do is memorize a list, but if you have to do something complex with the information, you’ll do worse by staying up all night, J. Roxanne Prichard, an expert on college sleep issues, told me. After being awake 16 hours in a row, brain function starts to decline, and after 20 hours awake, you perform as if legally drunk, she said.

    Many college-bound kids start out with dreadful sleep habits that are likely to get worse once the rigorous demands of college courses and competing social and athletic activities kick in.

    I’ve yet to meet a parent whose teenage child, especially if male, doesn’t sleep until 11 a.m. or later on weekends, throwing their circadian clock out of whack in a perpetual struggle to make up for a serious midweek sleep debt. It’s as if they travel across three or more time zones every weekend, then spend Monday through Friday recovering from performance-robbing jet lag.

    ...

    How to Get the Most Out of College
    By Frank Bruni
    New York Times
    August 17, 2018

    Quote
    ...

    Many students, nervous about a new environment, follow friends from high school or people whose demographic backgrounds match their own into homogeneous cocoons. That can indeed provide solace and support. But it’s also a wasted opportunity — educationally, morally, strategically. Diversity opens you to an array and wealth of ideas, and being comfortable with it is an asset in just about any workplace or career. You can decide to establish that comfort in college.

    But perhaps the most important relationships to invest in are those with members of the school’s faculty. Most students don’t fully get that. They’re not very good at identifying the professors worth knowing — the ones who aren’t such academic rock stars that they’re inaccessible, the ones with a track record of serious mentoring — and then getting to know them well.

    As part of my research, I collected surveys from about 30 recipients of the prestigious Mitchell scholarship, a rough analogue of the Rhodes that sends 12 recent American college graduates every year to universities in Ireland to pursue master’s degrees. (I was on the panel of judges who selected the winners from 2015 through 2017.) I asked them to reflect on college and to rank, in order of importance, such activities and dynamics as coursework, travel abroad, internships, relationships with classmates, involvement in campus groups and reading done apart from any class obligation.

    Relationships with faculty members was also an option, and it was the clear winner, placed near the top by almost all of the scholars and at the top by many, including Azza Cohen, a documentary filmmaker who graduated from Princeton in 2016. To explain that ranking, she directed me to a 2014 essay of hers for The Daily Princetonian that was titled “Empty Chairs.” It charted her realization and regret that she and so many classmates skipped professors’ office hours and didn’t avail themselves of invaluable conversations and counsel. “In the routine rush to finish our assignments, sometimes the breadth of the surrounding intellectual force field slips our minds,” she wrote. She was then a sophomore, and she mended her ways.

    ...




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    Thank you, Bostonian. Both our daughters began 9th grade last week. College is definitely on my mind.

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    This is not an article, but I have a couple bits of advice. I have done an undergrad degree as both a traditional student and a non-traditional student. Here's my advice based on those experiences.

    1. Make sure your professors know you by name. You can do this by asking interesting questions, or just engaging them in a conversation outside of class. This is important because when things come down to some sort of subjective decision that has to be made this will help tip the scales in your favor.

    2. If you are going to work a job while going to school, treat choosing that job the same way you would picking a major. Both times I've been through school, the line between student job and professional work was much more direct that the line to my degree.

    3. You don't have to go to college immediately. (Unless there's some sort of scholarship involved.) I was much more attentive, and responsible the second time when I had a respect for what life outside of college was like, and how much school costs. I also got better grades.

    4. Live in the residence halls. This is an easy way to get to know people outside of your classes and comfort zone.

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    Thanks - Bostonian! Those are important common sense pointers that I have been trying to drill in my high schoolers: attend (+pay attention) classes, avoid sleep deprivation, and cultivate relationships with select teachers. Perhaps I will iMessage the articles to them so it isn't just parental nagging.

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    This may not be widespread (yet) but my observation and experience lead me to believe there may be a trend toward professors becoming less interested in mentoring students... and colleges/universities expecting alumni to take over more of the role of easing students into the workforce, mentoring, providing references and letters of recommendation for internships, etc. This may be especially prevalent where there are fewer full-time professors and more assistant professors, adjunct professors, and part-time teaching staff.

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    Based on my experience (two undergrad degrees separated by a dozen years and working in higher ed for 10 years) I think faculty are just as, if not more, interested in those things. The problem is there are 30-50% more students than there used to be, and they now have 24/7 access to the faculty over email and social networks. So there is more interest on all sides, but the amount of time in the day hasn't increased.

    If the university is promoting networking and career development with the alumni, it's because the membership model of alumni engagement is in decline and they are looking for an alternative way to keep the alumni engaged over a lifetime. And alumni offer the chance to be mentored by a much broader audience and get a true one-on-one experience.

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    Don’t Close the Book on Books: At a college library, I saw more computers than volumes.
    By Danny Heitman
    Wall Street Journal
    August 29, 2018
    Quote
    As students return to school, I’m reminded of the cheerful Ivy League senior who casually confessed to me earlier this year that she didn’t like to read. A student guide, she was leading my family on a campus tour.

    I admired her candor and wasn’t shocked to hear she thought books were a bore. A 2015 survey by Scholastic and YouGov showed a sharp decline in the share of young people who read for pleasure—a trend I’d noticed as an adjunct writing professor when I polled my students. Though curious and ambitious, many freshmen in my classes hadn’t read a book for fun since middle school. When I wrote about it in a 2013 Journal op-ed, I heard many similar stories from readers.

    Even so, as I followed our guide around the immaculate campus, I was saddened that one of its degree candidates would soon be entering the world with no love for literature. The tuition, we learned, is nearly $70,000 a year. It’s tragic that such an expensive, elite education could yield a graduate unmoved by the magic of the written word.

    To encourage personal reading, universities should start by making books more visible on campus. On my family’s tours of five schools, I was struck by how few books I saw, even in the libraries. Instead of pointing to grand shelves thick with volumes, library guides invariably ushered us into media hubs with computer terminals. These newly reimagined spaces look as inviting as call centers. The sterile setting suggests reading is a rote exercise, devoid of emotion or imagination.

    Of course university libraries must adapt to technology. It is also true that digital texts can yield diversion and wisdom. But in a campus culture that venerates vintage buildings and old-time traditions, universities should continue to celebrate their libraries’ printed collections, many of which contain treasures inaccessible online, as part of a past that can inform and enliven the present.

    Hard-copy books can offer an enriching escape precisely because they’re not digital. If more young people would give them a chance, they might find traditional books particularly appealing—a nice tactile experience to complement their computer screens.

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    Originally Posted by article
    Hard-copy books can offer an enriching escape precisely because they’re not digital. If more young people would give them a chance, they might find traditional books particularly appealing—a nice tactile experience to complement their computer screens.
    Agreed!

    Books offer advantages such as:
    - stability of content,
    - transparent publication history (version/edition, copyright date, ISBN, authorship),
    - no data tracking of readers,
    - access:
    - - any number of persons may use/read/share a book,
    - - a book may be used/read for an indefinite length of time without additional costs imposed,
    - - a book has no scheduled outage or downtime,
    - - a book has no unplanned outage or downtime,
    - - - a reader can access book pages in any order:
    - - - can thumb through to see what is being taught/learned,
    - - - can flip pages to observe context and tone of the information provided,
    - - - can ascertain gaps/omissions/censorship... what is NOT being taught.

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    Since buying books for college can be quite expensive, here are my tips.
    • Do not buy your books new.
    • Do not buy your books until after the first day of class. The list may be wrong.
    • Do not buy your books from a college bookstore. The discounts can be even greater online.
    • Amazon has a Prime Student program for free 2-day shipping.
    • Check the university library to see which books they have available to borrow.
    • Some books are available as class reserve to check out for a couple of hours in the library. Good for doing readings.
    • Many textbooks are available through the university online either to read online or download by chapter or complete text.

    While paper is great, ebooks offer some good features for academic reading.
    • Round trip footnotes
    • Define terms or lookup info without leaving book
    • Highlighting and note taking
    • See popular highlights
    • Text-to-speech
    • Full-text search

    Last edited by mckinley; 09/04/18 05:08 AM.
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    Maybe giving advice to college students does little good:

    Lack of Study Time is the Problem, but What is the Solution? Unsuccessful Attempts to Help Traditional and Online College Students
    Philip Oreopoulos, Richard W. Patterson, Uros Petronijevic, Nolan G. Pope
    NBER Working Paper No. 25036
    Issued in September 2018
    NBER Program(s):Children, Economics of Education
    We evaluate two low-cost college support programs designed to directly target insufficient study time, a common characteristic among a large fraction of undergraduates. We conduct our experiment across three distinct college-types: (i) a selective urban college campus, (ii) a less-selective suburban college campus, and (iii) an online college, using a combination of unique survey and administrative data. More than 9,000 students were randomly assigned to complete an online planning exercise with information and guidance to create a weekly schedule containing sufficient study time and other obligations. Treated students also received weekly study tips, reminders, and coach consultations via text message throughout the academic year. Despite high levels of fidelity and initial participation, we estimate precise null effects on academic outcomes at each site, implying that the planning treatment was ineffective at improving student credit accumulation, course grades, and retention. We do find suggestive evidence, however, that the planning treatment marginally increased student study time. Taken together, the results suggest that, in addition to helping students stay organized, an effective intervention may need to provide stronger incentives or specific guidance on the tasks to complete while studying.

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