I still remember being a restless high school senior waiting to cut my ties and finally make it to college. My sister had chosen a community college for her freshman-sophomore experience just three years before me, and since I followed in her footsteps in most areas I naturally considered taking the same route.

So on a hot day in mid-May back in 2004, my mom and I made the journey just one hour south of Wichita, Kansas, to check out the college that would soon be my new home. While my stay there was short – just two years until I could snag my associates degree – it was memorable. And the following two years spent at Wichita State University securing my bachelor’s degree were even more enjoyable than the first.

When I was looking for schools, my top priorities were proximity, price and degree offerings, among other minor considerations. Out-of-state universities weren’t an option for me as tuition would’ve been outrageous. And along the consideration of price, I also wanted a school that could offer me a scholarship.

Earlier this month, Forbes announced its list of top 650 colleges in America. Among its highest-ranking universities were Princeton, Williams College and Stanford, with Johnson & Wales and Texas Southern University snagging the last spots in 649th and 650th place.

While some have criticized the methods Forbes and other news sources, including US News and Newsweek, use to determine their respective rankings, there’s really no one, tried and true way to determine which colleges are superior. Because the truth is, everyone has their own opinion about what makes one college better than another. Read the rest of this entry »

While students at Barnard College are thrilled that President Obama will be delivering their commencement address this year, their peers at Columbia College were less than thrilled with the announcement. Several Columbia students recently posted comments on the school’s student-run blog, Bwog, that protested Obama’s decision to speak at Barnard instead of Columbia, his alma mater, and also that insulted Barnard students’ and their intelligence. Many of these comments were highly anti-feminist in nature.

Some of the comments were more offensive than others. A few of the most offensive were submitted to Jezebel.com, and refer to Barnard students as “c*m dumpsters,” “academically inferior,” and “feminazis.”

There has been a great amount of opposition from the student bodies at both schools towards these sexist comments. A Facebook group has been created to admonishes those who were making the comments and many administrators and students have been speaking out against them as well.

Debora Spar, president of Barnard College, and President Less Bollinger, University President, made a joint statement in which they showed their displeasure at the comments which were made in several online communities.

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According to new studies from the Teachers College at Columbia University, many community colleges are placing students in remedial classes when the students do not actually need them. The schools are relying on the students’ scores on standardized tests, but the studies show that they would be better able to place students in the appropriate classes if they relied on the students’ high school GPAs instead.

Most students would not like to take remedial classes if they do not have to, and the reason why this is makes a lot of sense. Remedial classes are a waste of money and time if students do not actually need them because they do not receive any credit for these classes. In fact, more than 75 percent of students who start out taking remedial classes in college do not earn a degree, and this could be simply because they get burned out taking remedial classes.

“We hear a lot about the high rates of failure in college-level classes at community colleges,” said Judith Scott-Clayton, a professor at the Teachers College and the author of one of the studies. “Those are very visible. What’s harder to see are the students who could have done well at college level but never got the chance because of these placement tests.”

The placement tests that Scott-Clayton is referring to are most commonly the College Board’s Accuplacer and the ACT’s Compass. These tests have been used at many schools since the 1980s to determine what classes students should be placed in, based on their scores on the tests. Many students are told not to prepare for the tests because they are only used for placement, but this can lead to students  being placed in classes that are not the appropriate level for them. According to the two new studies from Columbia University, schools would do well to rely less on these tests and more on the students’ high school GPAs as an indicator of the students’ abilities.

The trend is being seen in schools across the country.

“I haven’t seen the studies, but what I do know is that when I talk with leaders of community colleges, a lot of them have issues with the diagnostic tests and sense that far too many students are being put in developmental, remedial education, especially in math,” said Walter Bumphus, president of the American Association of Community Colleges. “Almost every one of them has some plan to change that.”

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Mitchel David “Mitch” Albom was born on May 23, 1958 in Passaic, New Jersey. Albom attended high schools in Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia. One of his schools included Akiba Hebrew Academy in Lower Merion. Albom attended Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts and earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology. Albom went on to graduate school and earned Master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Albom then received a MBA from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.

Albom worked his way through graduate school with a few minor writing jobs. He wrote for the Queens Tribune, a weekly newspaper. Albom even he wrote for local supermarket circulars. Eventually he took a part-time job with SPORT magazine, which began his interest in sports writing. Albom freelanced as a sports writer for multiple publications such as Sports Illustrated, GEO, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Albom earned his first full-time position in 1983. He was hired as a full-time feature writer for The Fort Lauderdale News Sun Sentinel. Eventually he became a columnist. In 1985 Albom won the Associated Press Sports Editors award for best Sports News Story. This lead to Albom’s promotion to lead sports columnist for The Detroit Free Press. In 1989 Albom branched out from sports writing. He was asked to write a non-sports column. The column ran on Sundays in the “Comment” section. It dealt with American life and values. Eventually Albom’s column was syndicated across the country.

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The first student I heard of who earned college credit for participating in Occupy Wall Street was Henry Perkins, a junior at the University of Alabama. However, Perkins will certainly not be the only student earning college credit for participating in the movement.

Columbia University recently announced plans to offer a course next semester in which students can study and participate in the movement. The class will be offered through the anthropology department and will be taught by Dr. Hannah Appel, a veteran of the movement. It is called “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement.” Upperclassmen and graduate students will be able to take the class.

“Class requirements will be divided between seminar at Columbia and fieldwork in and around the Occupy movement,” according to the class syllabus. “In addition to scheduled seminar[s], this class will meet off-campus several times, and students will be expected to be involved in ongoing OWS projects outside of class, to be developed in close conversation with the instructor.”

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When an unseasonal snow storm swept through the Northeast last week, many families were left without electricity. This means no heaters, no warm water, and the worst thing for high school seniors: no computers or internet to use to submit their early applications for college acceptance.

The deadline for many colleges for early application was November 1, 2011. For many students who wanted to apply early to their choice schools, the lack of power in their homes forced them to flock to local coffee shops, bookstores, and other public places that still had electricity to charge their laptops and working Internet connections in order to submit their applications.

“I actually had a nervous breakdown, said Victoria Ngo, a high school student who wanted to apply early admission to Villanova University. Ngo found herself without power and was unable to complete her personal statement, which was saved on her laptop, because the computer’s battery had died. Luckily, Ngo was able to go to her cousin’s home in another city where she could charge her computer and finish her personal statement on time.

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The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University uncovered a link between social networks and drug, tobacco and alcohol usage. The center surveyed teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 and found the majority, 70 percent, of those who checked their Facebook or Myspace daily were more likely to try and even abuse these substances.

The study revealed that these adolescents were five times more likely to try tobacco, three times more likely to try alcohol and twice as likely to try marijuana than their non-avid using counterparts.

“We’re not saying (social media) causes it,” Joseph Califano said, the center’s chairman. “But we are saying that this is a characteristic that should signal to (parents) that, well, you ought to be watching.”

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Each year, U.S. News releases rankings of the top universities around the country. Although many education experts question the value of college rankings, most schools use these rankings a marketing tool. The list of best colleges is almost unvaryingly topped with Ivy League institutions, followed by highly competitive technical universities, such as MIT and CalTech. The rankings are determined by a number of criteria, including student matriculation rate, class size and the average ACT/SAT score of the student body.

This year, California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology both rose from the 2011 rankings, in an odd tie between five universities for the fifth position.

Here are the top 10 Colleges, according to U.S. News:

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I remember exactly where I was when I heard that the World Trade Center in NYC had been hit by two planes. I was in middle school and we had just came inside from recess when my friend told me what had happened. I remembered the panic that seemed almost tangible in the hallways and I remember the one teacher who actually let us watch the news during her class.

However, many Americans (about 20 percent) were too young to clearly remember this defining moment in our country’s history. In order to help these younger students understand the significance of September 11, 2001, a history teacher at Purdue University, Randy Roberts, has begun teaching his students about the day.

“The sense I get is, ‘Something happened,’ and beyond that, things get a little bit fuzzy,” said Roberts. “We have a new generation for whom this is a story. They know it’s an important story, but they just don’t know exactly why.”

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Alan Greenspan was born on March 6, 1926 in the Washington Heights area of New York City. He is the son of Herbert Greenspan and Rose Goldsmith.

Greenspan attended the Juilliard School from 1943 to 1944. There, he studied clarinet. He eventually dropped out to join a professional jazz band.

However, in 1945 Greenspan returned to school. He attended New York University (NYU), where he received a Bachelor of Science in economics summa cum laude in 1948. Greenspan also earned a Masters of Art in economics in 1950. Intending to pursue advance economics, Greenspan attended Columbia University, but subsequently did not earn a degree there.

In 1977 NYU awarded Greenspan a Ph. D. in economics.
Greenspan’s career has been lengthy and extensive. Some of his endeavors has included working as an economic analyst at The National Industrial Conference Board from 1945 to 1953.

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