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New study reveals steady rise in multiple funding methods needed to pay for college
LAWRENCE — New research from a University of Kansas professor reveals that the proportion of students who utilize only one or two funding sources for college has decreased in recent decades, while those juggling three or more increased. Students mobilizing multiple sources have also become less likely to obtain a graduate degree. The study appears in The Journal of Higher Education.
Study finds K-12 education journalists prefer gut instinct to analytics to determine who’s reading
LAWRENCE — A new study from the University of Kansas shows that while journalists do use new technologies to better understand their audiences and what they would like to read, K-12 education reporters and editors still largely rely on gut feelings as opposed to analytics software to guide coverage, suggesting limitations to the practice. The study was conducted with a group of respondents covering education in Kansas.
Center for Montessori Research director is lead editor on first-of-its-kind Montessori education publication
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas researcher is an anthology editor of the upcoming Bloomsbury Handbook of Montessori Education, a comprehensive guide to Montessori education that serves as an authoritative and accessible resource tracing Montessori education from its historical roots to contemporary scholarship and issues.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, [email protected]
New study reveals steady rise in multiple funding methods needed to pay for college
LAWRENCE — Few costs have ballooned more than those of earning a college education. As such, the methods students pursue to fund college have also expanded.
A new study explores the association between the use of multiple funding sources and how that affects future educational pursuits.
“Pursuing multiple funding sources used to imply ambition,” said ChangHwan Kim, professor of sociology at the University of Kansas. “Now it implies desperation.”
His article titled “Changing Undergraduate Funding Mix and Graduate Degree Attainment” reveals the proportion of students who utilize only one or two funding sources decreased over recent decades, while those juggling three or more increased. Students mobilizing multiple sources have also become less likely to obtain a graduate degree. The study appears in The Journal of Higher Education.
Co-written by former KU doctoral student Byeongdon Oh of the University of California, Berkeley, the pair’s study finds that one funding source is typically insufficient. Mixing three or more funding resources is currently the most common financial strategy.
“In older days, if you funded through multiple resources, it actually indicated you are capable. More ambitious. You knew how to work within the system,” Kim said.
“Now people try to find multiple resources because they are desperate. One is never enough. So in older days, if you funded your school through work, you were equally likely to go to grad school compared to people who were funded by their family. Today there are clear disadvantages.”
This research accesses the 2013, 2015 and 2017 National Survey of College Graduates by exploring the change in funding mixes across three cohorts: those born in 1953-1962, 1963-1972 and 1973-1982. The NSCG asks whether the respondent utilized each of 10 funding sources for college tuition, room and board, fees, books and supplies:
1. Family contributions, not to be repaid
2. Tuition waivers/fellowships/grants/ scholarships
3. Assistantships or work-study
4. Personal earnings
5. Personal savings
6. Employer support
7. Assistance from the Veterans Educational Assistance Act (i.e., G.I. Bill)
8. Loans from schools, banks or government
9. Loans from parents or relatives
10. Other resources.
The sample size for each of these data sets averaged 15,000 respondents.
Also accompanying such rising costs is rising debt.
Kim said, “Those who use multiple funding sources usually receive some money from family. And they usually work. But neither family support nor their own work is enough. So in response, they add debt.”
Thus the reason for the drop in pursuing further schooling: Students accumulate so much debt from their undergraduate degree that the last thing they want to do is pile on more for a graduate degree, according to Kim.
The need for numerous funding sources is related to institutional changes as well, the study concludes. Policymakers have increased loan eligibility for a wider variety of students through a series of institutional changes, such as the Higher Education Amendments of 1992 and the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007. A loan represents an attractive and widely exploited option for middle-class families as well.
“It’s just a gradual change over time. It’s not tied to any event or the economy,” Kim said. “It’s more about the gradual change in our education system. The whole American system has moved from supporting the university to supporting individuals. Then they make all those steps of borrowing money much easier.”
In his article, Kim referred to college being considered “the great equalizer.” Is it?
“Over time, the impact of college as a great equalizer has diminished. But nonetheless, I believe it is still a great equalizer,” he said.
Both Kim and Oh are natives of Seoul, although they met in Kansas. Kim has taught at KU for 15 years, and he researches the labor market. His previous papers on college funding issues include “Broken Promise of College? New Educational Sorting Mechanisms for Intergenerational Association in the 21st Century” and “Are They Still Worth It? The Long-Run Earnings Benefits of an Associate Degree, Vocational Diploma or Certificate, and Some College.”
For his own university funding, Kim utilized a scholarship and parental support to pay for his undergraduate degree in South Korea. He recalled that per-semester tuition was around $1,000.
“At this time, if I worked by myself, I could make about $300 per month and pay my own tuition,” said Kim, who earned his doctorate from the University of Texas.
Currently, it’s almost impossible for a student-level job to pay for the average cost of college.
“America is quite unique in this sense. Many European countries provide pretty cheap education to everyone. We have this mentality of college is for everybody,” Kim said. “Yet we make this education much more expensive than almost anywhere else.”
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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings
Study finds K-12 education journalists prefer gut instinct to analytics to determine who’s reading
LAWRENCE — A new study from the University of Kansas shows that while journalists do use new technologies to better understand their audiences and what they would like to read, K-12 education reporters and editors still largely rely on gut feelings as opposed to analytics software, suggesting limitations to the practice.
Education news has always been a topic of strong reader interest in community journalism, whether it is coverage of a local school bond issue or an increase in lunch prices. In recent years, there has been heightened interest with news of school closures during the pandemic and controversies about subject matter covered in the classroom. Stephen Wolgast, professor and Knight Chair in Audience and Community Engagement for News in the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications, interviewed journalists and educators from seven news organizations that cover education in Kansas to find out how they determine who is reading their work.
For most of their profession’s history, journalists had limited means to assess how many people read their articles or whether they finished the stories. Reader demographic information was largely unavailable. Technology and the migration to online publishing have changed that, but Wolgast’s study found analytics don’t yet have all the answers journalists need.
Programs like Google Analytics, Chartbeat and Parse.ly are now widely available, the researcher noted. Google Analytics is good at giving demographic and geographical information about who visits a site, which is largely useful for selling ads. Chartbeat and Parse.ly are designed more specifically for news sites. Wolgast interviewed journalists and editors who cover K-12 education across Kansas to find out which they use, how effective they are and how they compare to the old-fashioned method of pursuing a story: the gut feeling. The study, published by the Kansas Press Association, was a replication of one conducted by James Robinson, who interviewed education reporters and editors in New York. While New York and Kansas are very different, findings were not.
“The results were essentially the same. It’s the gut. My sense is that’s because digital analytics don’t provide the details they are looking for,” Wolgast said.
Respondents said sources and people they met in person most inform their reporters’ instincts. In their job, they talk to school administrators, policymakers, teachers, parents and others involved in their local schools.
“What education reporters want to know is, ‘Who’s reading my story today?’ That is hard for analytics to know,” Wolgast said.
Reporters said their readership fell into three categories: parents, residents who don’t have children in school but pay taxes, and school staff and the school board. Journalists reported all three groups were invested in schools in at least one way and some on multiple levels. While respondents said they did consider newsroom analytics, they relied more on what people told them in person to determine whether they were providing the news their audience wanted.
One exception to reliance on gut feelings and in-person interactions was when a story went viral or generated significant engagement on social media. Several respondents said they would check when their story was posted on the publication’s Facebook account, and if it generated a large number of comments, they knew the topic was of interest and likely worthy of a follow-up article. The same was the case when a story drew a larger-than-average number of unique visitors or was widely shared online.
While analytics software offers insights into which articles people clicked on and how long they stayed on the page, education journalists said they were not concerned with just numbers.
“Several journalists said, ‘My boss doesn’t just want me to get clicks, they want me to cover the news well,’” Wolgast said. “If they don’t have to focus on that, it suggests that there should be more attention paid by news organizations than to just stats.”
The study is part of a larger body of work. Wolgast said he hopes to continue to work with journalists to better understand how analytics can inform their work and whether they are reaching their intended audiences. The technology will continue to improve, but it is yet to be seen if the information it yields can be used effectively, especially when covering education, a topic of general interest to communities of all sizes, and increasingly at state and national levels.
“Can we use analytics to reach audiences consistently or figure out how to reach people more effectively?” Wolgast said of the topics he hopes to explore. “The next question is if the data is there or if journalists know how to use it. Or is it that the analytics tools don’t know how to provide the information journalists need?”
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Contact: Alicia Marksberry, Achievement & Assessment Institute, [email protected], @AAI_at_KU
Center for Montessori Research director is lead editor on first-of-its-kind Montessori education publication
LAWRENCE — Angela Murray, director of University of Kansas Achievement & Assessment Institute’s Center for Montessori Research, is an anthology editor of the upcoming Bloomsbury Handbook of Montessori Education, a comprehensive guide to Montessori education that serves as an authoritative and accessible resource tracing Montessori education from its historical roots to contemporary scholarship and issues.
Set to be published April 6, the handbook will be one of the largest published by Bloomsbury with 64 chapters by almost 100 scholars and practitioners from over 20 different countries. Murray began developing the handbook in 2019 with co-editors Eva-Maria Tebano Ahlquist from Stockholm University, Maria McKenna from the University of Notre Dame and Mira Debs from Yale University.
The handbook encompasses a broad range of topics related to Maria Montessori and Montessori education, including foundations and evolution of the field, global reach, key writings, pedagogy across the lifespan, scholarly research and contemporary considerations such as gender, inclusive education, race and multilingualism.
“This is a first-of-its-kind publication. There’s not anything out there on Montessori education quite like this,” Murray said. “This is a unique contribution to the field in how comprehensive it is.”
Montessori education has been around for over a century but has largely remained separate from mainstream education scholarship. This handbook, consistent with CMR’s mission, helps bridge the gap and provides a solid foundation for future rigorous research.
Although Montessori practitioners are expected to be among the key readership, Murray said she hoped that the handbook could also serve as a starting point for anyone interested in learning about Montessori education.
“This book takes what’s historically been information that’s spread out across many different sources, and it puts it all in one place,” Murray said. “It serves as a valuable reference and makes Montessori education more accessible.”
Yong Zhao, Foundation Distinguished Professor in the KU School of Education & Human Sciences, wrote in the book’s foreword, “This book is thus much more than a promotion of Montessori education. It is a reconnection with education’s past with the future of educational transformation.”
The scholarly perspective of the handbook also is intended to offer a more balanced and nuanced approach to Montessori education than is found in other popular Montessori texts. Zhao commended the contributors, writing, “While they faithfully present Montessori education, they are critical examiners.”
For more information, please contact Angela Murray at [email protected].
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