In President Obama’s most recent State of the Union address I was a little concerned about something he said when speaking about higher education, tuition and financial aid.

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Just like most people interested in the politics of education, my ears perked up when President Obama said:

“When kids do graduate, the most daunting challenge can be the cost of college.  At a time when Americans owe more in tuition debt than credit card debt, this Congress needs to stop the interest rates on student loans from doubling in July.

Extend the tuition tax credit we started that saves millions of middle-class families thousands of dollars, and give more young people the chance to earn their way through college by doubling the number of work-study jobs in the next five years.

Of course, it’s not enough for us to increase student aid.  We can’t just keep subsidizing skyrocketing tuition; we’ll run out of money.  States also need to do their part, by making higher education a higher priority in their budgets.  And colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down.”

That sounds great!  Cheaper higher education for all! …

However like many that actually work in the higher education I am terribly skeptical of this proposal.  Not because I don’t like the idea, but I’m fearful of what it could mean for educational policy.

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What Obama actually said:

Student Loans are a Big Deal

“At a time when Americans owe more in tuition debt than credit card debt, this Congress needs to stop the interest rates on student loans from doubling in July”

Better yet, debt is a big deal.  I have student loans and I know many former students do as well, this of course has become the norm because of the immense amount of money that it costs to study in a higher education institution. This isn’t a new thing either, student loan debt surpassed credit card debt in the U.S. back in 2010, but the gap hasn’t stayed constant, but rather it has increased.

The statistics Obama uses in his SOTU are in my opinion conservative.  Most reports I’ve seen believe Student Loan debt to surpass $1 Trillion by the beginning of 2012.

The world economy runs on debt, so telling major financial institutions that we won’t be using loans as often makes large institutions such as Wachovia a little ancy.  You can see why this small sentence is fearful to those who follow the Trickle-down theory way of economics rather than Obama’s consistent Keynesian economic outlook.  This is one example how even trickle-down economics isn’t actively helping our education institutions.  The richer are getting richer (Harvard) and the poorer need more federal aid, state aid and tuition increases.

Most People need help paying Education

“Extend the tuition tax credit we started that saves millions of middle-class families thousands of dollars, and give more young people the chance to earn their way through college by doubling the number of work-study jobs in the next five years.”

College is expensive.  The Average cost of college has gone from $26,167 in 2000/01 to $31,876 in 2009/10.  That’s a 21.82% increase over a ten year period.  Even though this keeps in line with inflation, the wages and median income of U.S. families does not keep up with inflation.

in 2007/08 (the latest numbers I could find)  65.6% of students used some form of financial aid to pay for their education

51.7% used some form of grants, and 38.5% used some form of loans.

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We can surmise that the majority of students that are studying don’t have enough money to pay for school without using grants or loans.  This means a lot.  The diversity of types of students has increased over the past decade, which has added to the numbers, but overall the idea that college is expensive and people need help paying for school shines through.

Federal, State Funding to Education

“We can’t just keep subsidizing skyrocketing tuition; we’ll run out of money.  States also need to do their part, by making higher education a higher priority in their budgets.  And colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down.”

Even though this statement seems like Obama wants to cut Federal funding, he actually wants to increase Pell Grant funding among other things such as extending tax cuts and credits, which will be good for student’s families and others, but just like most people are asking about a lot of policies Obama is introducing: Who/What is going to pay for this?

Currently states governments and the federal government give money to state schools.  However this number has slowly decreased over the years due to states cutting budgets and overall the U.S. government not giving as much money to higher education as it did at one time (by percentage).  According to some of the major plans that Obama is wanting to enact this money would become even less and colleges would essentially be competing for this money through ranking systems and other items Obama is calling the College Scorecard

I don’t believe Obama believes in cutting federal money to universities,  that would be Ron Paul’s America more than it would be Obama’s, however the battle for federal funding and state funding will become a larger topic in the coming years within Obama’s plan.  Government rankings scare me.  A scorecard is even worse.  I can’t see colleges and universities being too excited to have a list of items to be graded on by the government.

Take-away:

Personal feelings aside, I do believe that cheaper education is a good thing.  I also believe that education comes in all shapes and sizes and many people are getting liberal arts degrees and working as a waiter.    There is need for major education reforms in the U.S.  Some of those are at the Higher Education Level, but many start at the elementary and secondary levels.

The reforms Obama plans in my mind are the financial and policy driven ideological equivalent of ‘having your cake and eating it too.’  When your language tends to make me believe you’re going to make major cuts, and then your policy introduces spending and increases student aid, it’s tough for me to know exactly which Obama is going to eventually enact policy.  (hence, why I am unsure)

It will never be perfect, but if we can make it more affordable then we will be better off as an educated society. Educated in how to create, innovate and make a U.S. that not only would my children be able to live in, but one my forefathers would be proud of.

Click here to watch the entire SOTU.

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Sources/More Reading:

White House Fact Sheet on Education Reforms

Natl Center for Education Statistics Cost of Tuition over time

Natl Center for Education Statistics Loan, Grant Statistics

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Good.is Loan Statistics $1 Trillion

Fox News’ Fact Check State of the Union

FactCheck.org State of the Union

FactCheck.org GOP Response to SOTU

Politifact Fact Check the SOTU

WhiteHouse.gov Transcript of SOTU

Book Review // 

 Origins, Journeys and Returns: Social Justice in International Higher Education

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3 out of 5

Short Answer:

The book explores the Ford Foundation International Fellowship Program (IFP), and the success of it to help those who would not as easily be able to afford quality education, specifically higher education.  The book’s editor describes it as a “qualitative reflection on the conceptionalization and inception of the program (Volkman, 2009).”  I would have to agree, instead of taking the facts and trying to understand them, it take the data and information at it’s face value and lets the reader draw a conclusion.

In the early parts of the book it defines how the program effectively works, and then it moves on to discuss more specific locations such as Nigeria, India, Vietnam, Brazil, Etc…  The book finally moves to discuss the return of these IFP scholars and their experience back in their home country. This was the most ‘real’ part of the book for me.  Brain drain is common with international student’s, but with this program it seems they have a fairly good rate of those staying in their home country after graduation, about 74% (Volkman, 2009).

I would’ve rated this higher, but the book was a bit more specific than the title and explanation of it suggest.  However it is a good book for what it’s supposed to be. I rate it 4 out of 5 for those who are looking for something to cite or use as a good book for source material on the subject of social justice in international education, but it reads like a text book.  Which is good in some cases.  For it’s overall readability I gave it a 2 out of 5.  It is very informative, but like I said reads like a text book (or rather research on a specific topic), which is really what it excels at.  That is why I gave it a 3 out of 5.

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Good book, but very segmented and specific to a specific audience.

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Long Answer:

I enjoyed this book, but it’s also because this book is very relevant to the field I work in and social issues that I see in the world through my career choice and other experiences.  Social Justice in itself is something I find to be a relevant topic in a world where privelidge is only relegated to few and the rest are unlucky enough to not be part of that few.  International Social Justice is a whole new spectrum than that which is often talked about in the U.S.

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The U.S. on the whole is a very privileged nation, we are really the 1% while many parts are left being the 99% if you allow me the liberty of taking a phrase from another group.  This book goes through some of the ways IFP scholars were chosen based on their disadvantage. Many people are disadvantaged, and deciding who receives assistance is a position I would never want to be in.  When everyone has a good reason for need, it’s hard to say no.

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What did I learn?  

I learned about one approach to combating social justice problems in the foreign countries.   There are obviously more  than just this approach, but this approach seems to be working well, but with everything could be better.  Seeing the vast number of problems that are possible in a project such as this, I commend the Ford Foundation for taking Social Justice as a real and definitive problem that the proper “leg-up” can help a nation and communities world-wide.

What I didn’t like:

It’s always tough to pull something out that I didn’t enjoy about a book, but specifically with this book it’s readability.  Each chapter reads more separate than I would like, but they are all written by different authors, so that is expected.  However when buying a book from Amazon, you don’t really have the luxury of looking through the book before buying.

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Takeaway:

The gain for International Students studying abroad for higher education is still a topic that has little research attached to it.  This book is a good start and opens up many questions for me about the real gain for international student’s from

J. William Fulbright believed like me that International Education helps build relationships and ultimately world peace through further educating each-other.  Without any research to back this up, I am of course left with the question of what is the ultimate gain of International Education?

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 Next Book: Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Ken Robinson

Sources:

Volkman, T. A. (2009). Origins, journeys and returns: social justice in international higher education. New York, NY: Social Science Research Council.

Every culture, age of academia and person has defined what a classroom is, or isn’t.

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Education has in most recent centuries had a major stake in the economic success of a society; education IS important. How to educate large numbers of people in effective ways is being discussed by all.  There are many questions when it comes to education, who will fund it, who will teach, what will we teach and ultimatley who gets the chance to be educated.

I won’t focus on those questions as much as I will focus on the new practices, technologies and other items that are focusing on the creative tactics of education. Look forward to more on this as I jump into Creative Education.

Creativity is what brings about change and helps us understand the world we see better.

Creativity is what brought about the wheel, chocolate chip cookies and Western society out of the dark ages.

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Creativity is what will help foster our future.

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Below is a video of Ken Robinson who sparked this interest in searching out more about Creative Education.  Watch it when you have time.

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Another thing I’ll be bringing to this blog is a review and exposition of a book every month.

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This January I’ll be starting off with a book review of a book I’ve been wanting to read for a while.  Expect a discussion and review of the book by the end of each month with news about which book I will be reading next.

This December I’ll be reading:

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Origins, Journeys and Returns: Social Justice in International Higher Education

Toby Alice Volkman, et al

Please suggest any books you think I should review or read.  I’ll add them to the list.

Education is Global.

Here are some numbers:

• In the 2010/11 school year, there were 723,277 International students studying in the U.S. (IIE)
• In 2009/10 school year, there were 270,604 U.S. students studying abroad for credit. (IIE)
• More than 200 million children in China are studying English, a compulsory subject for all Chinese primary school students. By comparison, only about 24,000 of approximately 54 million elementary and secondary school children in the United States are studying Chinese. (US Dept of State)
• International Students and their families contribute $20.23 Billion Dollars to the U.S. economy in the 2010/11 academic year. (NAFSA)

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The world is more connected than it has ever been.

Whether it is through the technology that binds us together or the modernization and globalization of our society. The global nature of our society is ever present.

In the U.S. we are no longer just thinking of how does our educational system stack up against other districts or states, but how are we as a society educating our youth against the world.

International Education is not just studying abroad, or foreign exchange students, but what happens for those students that introduce them to foreign cultures and many other foreign endeavors.

Global/International Education is not going away.  It will continue to grow and expand as society and our world as a whole continues to connect in a continually diverse fashion.

It’s a global marketplace of ideas, students, faculty and research that connects us and will ultimately drive our future.

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This blog will focus a great amount on International Education.  This is what I do for a living.  Working with International Students, but with my limited expertise and the combined expertise of others and their research I will hopefully give you a better glimpse of International Education and the emerging trends.

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for further reading:

Altbach, P.G., & Teichler, U. (2001). Internationalization and exchanges in a globalised university. Journal of studies in international education, 5(1), 5-25.

Bevis, T.B., & Lucas, C.J. (2007). International students in american colleges and universities: a history. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillian.

Altbach, P.G., & Knight, J. (2007). The internationalization of higher education: motivations and realities. Journal of Studies in International Education, 11(3/4), 290-305.

Rajka, B. (Ed.). (2011). Open doors 2010: report on international educational exchange. New York, NY: Institute of International Education

Schoorman, D. (1999). The pedagogical implications of diverse conceptualizations of internationalization: a u.s. based case study. Journal of Studies in International Education, 3(2), 19-46.

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This has always been something I hold dear to my own upbringing as well as something I find ever important in the world we all choose to live on.

For me education was something that I might have took for granted when I was younger, but now realize how wrong I was.

As we strive to educate the masses as the world grows to above 7 Billion, and educate them well; there are numbers of issues that have been arising all over the globe.  Who deserves education?, What should be taught? and How is technology is changing the classroom?

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“The Other Classroom”

There’s always an other side of the fence, something seemingly better and another classroom across the hall.  This blog is titled, “The Other Classroom”.  I will give you a window to see the other classroom and what’s going on inside, because things are always different in  The Other Classroom.

Over the next few weeks I will be begin to introduce you to different areas of education.  By the time the beginning of 2012 begins everything will be in “full swing”, with full articles and other media spanning the diversity of education.  In the mean-time you can read some older posts from my Internship at Qingdao University in Qingdao China.

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Sit back, enjoy while I explore education.

Some places are hard to leave.  This was one of those experiences.

I lived in China for almost three months.  That the longest time I’ve been abroad, but I don’t foresee it being the longest amount of time in my lifetime though.

It’s hard to say goodbye.  Especially with people that I had grown to enjoy their company and enjoy everything I had learned.  I felt as if I had just broken through something major just as I was about to leave and there was nothing I could do to stop my leaving.  Life was calling me back to the U.S.

The day before I left we all went to lunch together as an office, and I might be slightly responsible for the entire group arriving late to the office after lunch, and a portion of the group being slightly intoxicated.  It was quite an interesting day.

I had become accustom to this life in China.  I had become accustom to the food, the people and the culture.  I had almost become a part of the place that had seemed so foreign.  My Korean roommate which had seemed like a stranger was now a friend that I was going to miss.

I had packed my bags to the brim with souvenirs for my family and took my last photos before I left, of people that I might not ever see again.  My life that I had been striving to understand so strongly was now changing drastically and changing quickly.

Right before I got in the taxi outside of the university gates to take me to the train station I was standing there with my supervisor who said to me some very strong words about how everyone in the office enjoyed having me there during the summer, and was going to miss me.  In a culture where expressing your true feelings and emotions is often not done, this was the most emotion I had seen out of him the entire summer.

I knew he was sincere.

I was going to miss this place.  I was going to miss these people.  For all the frustrations and crazy things I had been through that summer, it was time for me to go.

Life was calling me back to the U.S.

I took a taxi, which took me to train, that took me to the subway that took me to the airport that took me to another airport that took me to a final airport, that took me to a car that took me back to my apartment where my entire existence had changed over a period of 48 hours.

I was back in the U.S., but my mind and heart were back in China.

I feel that someday, maybe sooner than later.

It will happen again.

Life will call me, but this time Life will call me back… back to China.

It took me right before the end to figure a lot of things out.

Like said before, I had read a lot about Chinese culture and been to China before, but I never felt like I understood China.  Even throughout the majority of my most recent trip I was on an uphill battle trying to understand the Chinese Culture and overall China.  Often you would hear people spell out the Acronym “T.I.C”  or This is China.  That was often peoples best explanation for why something was or wasn’t

However you never can really understand a culture until you’ve lived like they people of the culture do.  You could observe any culture from the other side of a window, but until you step outside hear the language, smell the food and walk amongst the people that are of that culture.    There is no real way to do it.  Many people visit countries in a very touristy manner and only skim the surface.

In my last week, the figurative light switch turned on a light in my head, and China didn’t feel like as foreign as it did before.  Maybe it was me, maybe it was my surroundings, but all of the sudden T.I.C. was not my excuse.  I knew why, I couldn’t put it into words, but I understood China, the Chinese and everything in between.

It was like a bright light just clicked on.  All of the sudden the language I had been having trouble with all summer began flushing in so easily.  My time working in the office was less in English and more so in Chinese.  I no longer felt like an outsider amongst the workers of the office, I was much a part of the office.

The Chinese collective culture is something that is hard to compare to a lot of places because it is so unique.  I still have trouble explaining it now because how strange it was.  I don’t know if it was me or if it was the people around me that had changed, but I finally didn’t feel so foreign I felt like family.

Yes, Family.  Thinking about it makes me long for those moments again.  It’s amazing, no one in the office is related to each-other, but we all felt like family.  It’s something that as an International student and one specifically from the U.S., where sometimes our families feel less familiar that our friends that this group of people can find a binding strain that makes them closer than others.

I would ask for anything to have that short week back, and play it over in my mind, not because of what happened, but that feeling.

So many times Internationals never find that feeling when they study or work abroad.  They search for something that is almost like family, because far from home there is only so many things that remind them of home.

I was still International.  Completely and fully, but I had figured something out that last week.  Something that I’m still trying to completely figure out; what it meant to be part of something larger even though I was myself alone.

Many Internationals are doing the same thing, and many are still alone.

In the light of recent shootings on U.S. campuses and other acts of violence worldwide campus safety is a hot button issue at every university anywhere.

Because of the social structure of China there are certain things within the University that may seem backward, but for the most part they are seen as very normal parts of every University.  The one thing I can think of specifically is curfew within the residence halls at Qingdao University.  Curfew was something that the University saw as necessary for all the residence halls and even closed certain gates on the exterior of campus at certain times of the day.

Now mind you this is a mid sized Chinese City of 10 million, so it wasn’t like we were in the equivalent of a sleep college town in southern U.S. where all the stores close down at 6 pm because they’re all local businesses.  I kept hearing people comparing Qingdao’s location in China to Boston in the U.S. So the equivalent of this would be Boston College, sorta.  So when you think about campus safety these are the best terms for me to relate them to for those of you who have never experienced a Chinese city.

So curfew kept students under control for the most part. Some of the native Chinese students I was able to hang out with were very adamant that they be in before curfew, and if they missed curfew they would choose to stay out all night rather than come back late, because not coming back at all was better than showing up late and the door man knowing who you were.

I went with this idea while living in my hall for the summer as well.  I was working for the office, and I didn’t want to get in trouble with the office, so I just decided to stay out those three times that I missed curfew, minus one time that I accidently missed. (Yes, that implies that the other three times were on purpose, let’s just say World Cup Games didn’t fit into a normal sleep schedule).

I had met the door man, and talked to him in my broken Chinese multiple times before.  So I figured that we were friends, but this one time I showed up late, because I was coming from the Train Station from a short weekend trip and I arrived 10 minutes after the door man shut the door.

I first knocked on the door and got the door man’s attention who was on the other side of the door.  He didn’t look happy.  I ended up making it back inside, but I had to argue with him for a good fifteen minutes about how I live in this building.  He didn’t seem to remember me, which I found very confusing. I hearken back to the thing my tour guide said to us when we were in Beijing, “All you Americans look alike”.

While sitting in on sessions with some of the campus safety officials, I found out how very structured and connected their security was.  The curfew was just a small part of a much larger machine. Security is strict at most Chinese universities, but it seemed like there was always a way around it.

In a society that bases much of its social rules from collective social ideals, campus security seemed to be one place that it was almost not present.  However, like all things in China, the Chinese way found it’s way back into much of  it.

That is just how China is sometimes though.  No matter what government controls China, no matter the different changes that China has gone through in the past decades; there still is that “something” about China that makes it Chinese.

As giants fight and politicians scream, normal people live their lives; just as they always have.

One part of my position that I got to see first hand was the admission part of the student experience for International Students in China.  Obviously this varies in some ways from University to university, but for the most part the Visa process and other things are similar. But the fact of being a student trying to be admitted into an international university can be quite tricky.

In my experience working in the office, I was known as the expert on all things English.  So, when it cam down to a certain student who kept calling the office that really couldn’t speak Chinese, I was forced to become the communicator for this young gentleman.  However for the most part everyone else was expected to conduct business in Chinese, even the foreign students who would visit the office.

However since they had me on hand this summer I was often their go to guy when it came to English.  So throughout the summer I got to be the first contact for this student who was an American living in China, but trying to move to Qingdao University, from his current University.

Me and this mystery man on the other side of the phone continued our conversations throughout the time as I walked him through the process of what he needed and what he needed to know.  I could tell that a fellow English speaker made him feel much more comfortable with the answers I gave him.

On of the major questions for admission came down to a few simple things.  Payment, Housing, and Student Visa.  My phone friend called me on multiple occasions asking about Visa’s and his issues with needing a Visa from when his Visa from his current university ends to when the new Visa starts.

I got to watch as this student ran into barrier after barrier, and issue after issue that kept leading him to one definitive answer that was not necessarily the one he wanted to hear.  The answer which cost him more money, and left him frustrated was one that related to his Visa.

Even though it wasn’t me, I felt his frustration a small amount and  felt like I was there along the way as he found the trek for admission to the University to be a troubling manner.  The truth is, is that admission was not a problem, the fact that he should pay for all of his tuition in cash, and the fact that he can’t have housing until a certain date before school starts are all basic things that International Students would have to deal with if they decided to come to Qingdao University.

However when you are used to one way, or not even sure how exactly it should be you often run into issues like this young student.  He was lucky because I was there to help him with all of his issues and at least help him figure out the facts instead assuming like many students do before they arrive at a University.

The one take away that I took away about the Admissions process is not that it’s terribly complicated, because honestly it’s fairly simple at most Universities, but that every student has there own diverse issues that could create issues and that even though we have one clear cut process that is garnered to fit all students; it simply does not.

So what do we do make exceptions?

I don’t have a clear answer, but I know that this student was not the only student that may have had trouble with the admissions process.  I just remember trying to find a  way to have this internship and how stressful that was.  Investment of more time and money for a student means an expectation of better dealings no matter the institution.

-NL