Towards information symmetry in student loans
Seems like every May, right around the time that commencement rolls around, the New York Times likes to remind graduating seniors that they are financially screwed. Investigative and opinion pieces lament the high student loan burden. In 2010, the story hit close to home as the Times published an account of a student who attended my alma mater and the $100,000 debt she incurred (see original article and the student’s response). At the time, I was working in admissions at NYU and my colleagues and I spent a lot of time discussing this case. As admissions officers, we met many students who, even against our advice, take on onerous loans to attend NYU.
The stories of debt are always accompanied by debates over where to place the blame. Generally, it falls into two categories:
- Blame the students and their families who took on too much debt and passed up cheaper college options. Plus, to make it worse, these silly kids are studying History and Linguistics. What do you do with a BA in English?
- Blame the greedy system. Banks are giving six-figure loans to 18 year old kids. Universities keep increasing tuition so they can build bigger stadiums and better dorms. The government guarantee of student loans gives the colleges an incentive to keep raising their sticker price
Alas, both sides have a point. Like the mortgage mess, the student loan crisis (and yes it’s approaching crisis level) is a result of both lack of individual responsibility and a system that encourages and rewards bad choices.
As I look back on my own experience, I’ve come to realize that information asymmetry is a huge problem when it comes to student loans. Solving the information problem can be a good first step in fixing the problem. Apocalyptic newspaper articles are one way of making sure everyone knows college is crazy expensive, but what I’d like to see is a platform that gives students and families useful information before they sign on the dotted line.
Here’s my modest proposal for a more useful/usable/user-friendly presentation of student-loan information. Before students/families sign up for loans, present them with:
- The total expected loans they’ll take on over 4 years. This should be based on both their financial aid package and historical tuition/cost increases at the university: while I was attending NYU, the cost of attendance grew around 5% each year and I definitely did not factor this into the cost equation
- The total amount they’ll pay for their loan, including interest and principal, over the term of the loan period
- The total monthly amount they’ll be paying each month. I was fortunate enough to attend NYU mostly on scholarships. For a $200K education, I came out with about $35K in debt. My first job out of college paid $60K, much higher than the overall expected 1st year earnings at NYU. My loans, paying the minimum amount, come out to about $400 a month
- Monthly calculator that shows expected net salary and estimated expenses for various courses of study and in different cities. This is where it gets really interesting. Even as a money-saavy undergraduate, I did not consider this before taking on my loans. Telling me that I’d have to pay $400 a month (and I didnt even know this) is still pretty abstract. But if someone said, given your intended major, you’ll probably make $50K. That $50K will give you $3200 take home pay. If you want to live in a shared apartment in certain neighborhoods in New York, you’ll spend $1200 in rent, $200 in utilities, and $200 commuting (mostly by public transit). You’ll also likely have a $100 phone bill. You’ll have $1500 left over to cover food, health, entertainment, savings, etc. Your $400 loan bill has to come out of the $1500. And all of this assumes you have zero credit card bills
I don’t know that providing the context above would stop students and families from taking out six-figure loans for undergrad, but I think it would make them think much more carefully about the potential repercussions.
We can argue over who’s to blame for the high cost of college. But in the mean time, let’s at least work toward information symmetry. Colleges may not like this model because it asks them to disclose things they don’t like to talk about (e.g., who graduates in 4 years, how much do they make, how does what they make break out by academic discipline). Students and parents may not like it because it forces them to confront financial reality rather than romanticized notions of college. But, given the facts, if a student still wants to take on $100K debt to study Art History and a bank is willing to give him that loan, then so be it.
When we talk about the high cost of student loans, we tend to focus a lot on government (lower interest rates, provide more PELL grants) or universities (cut your costs). It’s time we also focus on giving consumers more and better information to guide their decision making.
My last piece of advice is this simple… Persevere. Because nothing worthwhile is easy.
Source: barackobama
I’ve been doing some reading about the upcoming National Science Standards which reminded me of the image above. A group of scientists are proposing the framework in the image above as a new way of teaching science. From their website:
Science is often taught as a disjointed set of facts in traditional disciplines such as chemistry, biology, and physics without clear connections being made between the subjects. Today’s frontiers in science are often at the disciplinary edges. Aided by the explosion in technology and scientific discoveries, new fields are arising that were hardly imagined a generation ago like synthetic biology, digital organisms, and genomics. What we need is a radical overhaul of how science is taught- one that moves away from memorization of scientific facts to helping students develop a deeper understanding of science through questioning their observations, making connections, and seeing the relationship between natural phenomena. Since 2006, a group of prominent scientists and educators have been meeting at Michigan State University with the support of the National Science Foundation to develop a new framework for science education. These experts identified eight fundamental science principles, which form a new basis for teaching science called 8+1 Science. Study of these eight concepts are joined together by inquiry, that is the ‘plus One’. Inquiry, the uniquely human trait of asking why things happen around us, is a fundamental part of science.
What I like about the approach above is that it frames scientific inquiry around the big questions. I also like appreciate that it gives context for different scientific topics. I remember AP Bio and Chem courses in high school and just feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of facts that I had to memorize. When I read the 8+1 questions, different parts of my science education come flooding back. I wonder if I would have learned more/better had I had something like this as a guiding picture as I moved through each year of science.
Learning how to learn - the growing need for curation
As I mentioned in this previous post, I’ve been trying to learn web development. After years of just talking about it, this past month has been the furthest I’ve come in terms of actually learning and doing. It is still very early in my journey so I don’t feel like I can say anything definitive about how to learn to program. But I have been fortunate enough to find a few resources that have been useful guides. One very new one that I ran across on Hacker News this weekend is Teach Yourself to Code. It’s a new project and work-in-progress yet still a very comprehensive catalogue of online resources to learn programming.
One of the most challenging things about learning how to program - a challenge that I am still working through - is figuring how to learn. There are tons of resources available online, both free and paid. Often, a resource will start off solid but then I’ll discover it’s incomplete or outdated. Incomplete and/or outdated guides can still be valuable assuming the learner understands their shortcomings and knows where to fill in the gaps.
My experience figuring out how to learn has me thinking a lot about the challenges that K-12 students face today that didn’t exist just 10 years ago when I was in high school. Back then, our textbooks were still the definitive guide to what we were learning. Now many many teachers I talk to tell me that their schools are no longer even buying textbooks. In this new environment, students have to become really adept at figuring out how to learn. For example, as much as I love Wikipedia, searching for most academic topics on it brings up way too much information.
One hypothesis that I have is that curation will become really important in digital learning. One of the reasons I love Teach Yourself to Code is that it begins to solve the curation problem in programming. I could see it becoming a very robust tool to help beginners like myself navigate the labryrinth of online programming resources. As the resources for K-12 learning online continue to grow, ed-techies will need to get serious about curation. Especially considering the existing demands on teachers’ times, I see a huge need (or at least a huge forthcoming need) for tools to make search and discovery better.
Harvard and MIT team up to create EdX, a new distance college education problem.
Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) today announced edX, a transformational new partnership in online education. Through edX, the two institutions will collaborate to enhance campus-based teaching and learning and build a global community of online learners.
This looks interesting. From the press release, they say this isn’t meant to replace a campus environment (i/e the face to face aspect of learning), but I could definitely see how this could really help a lot of schools in struggling areas to create a high quality hybrid model.
Source: peterjung
Isaac Asimov on Creativity in Education
Just arrived at this wonderful interview from 1988 with sci-fi author Isaac Asimov courtesy of brainpickings.
He touches on many subjects that are incredibly timely (today!) for how we think about education. I especially enjoyed his insights on creativity and motivation to learn. He argues that we can’t make people learn things that do not interest them and that only when we let children explore and be creative will they develop an intrinsic motivation to learn.
Moyers: Do you think it’s possible that this contagion can be sent to ordinary folks out there, this passion for learning that you have. Can we have a revolution in learning?
Asimov: “Yes not only we can, but I think we’re going to have to. As computers take over over more and more of the work that human beings shouldn’t be doing in the first place because it doesn’t utilize their brain, it stultifies and bores them to death, there’s going to be nothing left for human beings to do but the more creative types of endeavors. And the only way we can indulge in the more creative types of endeavors is to have brains that aim at that from the start. You can’t take a human being and put him to work at a job that underutilizes the brain and keep him working at it for decades and decades then say “well, that job isnt there, go do something more creative.” You have beaten the creatively out of him. But if from the start children are educated into appreciating their own creativity, then probably we can almost all of us be creative. Just as in the old days very few could read and write, literacy was a very novel thing, we felt that most people just didn’t have it in them. But when you indulge in mass education, it turns out most people could be taught to read and write.
I MAY not be able to prove that my literature class makes a difference in my students’ test results, but there is a positive correlation between how much time students spend reading and higher scores. The problem is that low-income students, who begin school with a less-developed vocabulary and are less able to comprehend complex sentences than their more privileged peers, are also less likely to read at home. Many will read only during class time, with a teacher supporting their effort. But those are the same students who are more likely to lose out on literary reading in class in favor of extra test prep. By “using data to inform instruction,” as the Department of Education insists we do, we are sorting lower-achieving students into classes that provide less cultural capital than their already more successful peers receive in their more literary classes and depriving students who viscerally understand the violence and despair in Steinbeck’s novels of the opportunity to read them.
From Teach the Books, Touch the Heart
This opinion post in The New York Times, written by a public school English teacher, makes me sad. My friend Kristen and I have recently been talking a lot about standardized tests, and the effects that the Common Core will have on education. I see the need for some testing; we have to measure learning gains and ensure that schools are being effective. But I worry that more and more states are using tests as the sole deciding factors in school grades, funding, teachers’ professional and financial gains, etc. This is what elevates to tests to such high priority that some educators do what they know is against the best long-term interests of children simply for the sake of the test. I don’t see how we can continue on this path without causing the type of damage to instructional quality that the teacher above describes. In a test-driven culture, I don’t know how teachers will have the freedom for the type of creative instruction that instills deep love of learning.
We’ve got to do better…
The op-ed columnist suggests extensive written exams in place of multiple choice tests. I doubt anyone would dispute that those would be more powerful. Of course they’ll be a lot more expensive and in this era of testing everyone, they are highly unlikely. Beyond improved tests, what I’d really like to see are more comprehensive measures of school quality. Tests should play some role (and perhaps the greatest role) but I’d like to see experiments with other quantitative and qualitative measures. Things like parent and community satisfaction surveys, student surveys, on-site audits, etc. I’ll leave further thoughts on these for another post. But I believe that designing improved measures of school quality should become a priority for the education reform movement.
Source: The New York Times
Tech vs teaching: what can we say for sure about education technology
Last week, I attended an event for The Ed-Tech Meetup during which a panel discussed blended learning and using technology in the classroom. At one point, Matt Bowman, who manages technology integration at Seton Education Partners said:
“What we know works is great teaching. The most underhyped benefit of blended learning is freeing up teacher time”
He was making the point that most education technology is unproven. He is absolutely correct. There has been little research done on the impact of integrating technology in the classroom. While there are anecdotes that point to positive effects and null effects, most of the actual research on education technology is put out by vendors selling products. The truth is that we’re experimenting quite a bit with tech in education, and we don’t yet know much about what works.
One thing we do know for sure is that good teaching matters. Good teachers can close gaps and give students long-lasting gains. Bowman’s comment that evening left me feeling a little uneasy. After all, his job is to implement blended learning programs yet there he is admitting that he has little confidence in the tech he puts in schools. If we know for sure that good teaching works, why not focus our energy on that? Why not take the money and energy being spent on integrating technology and direct that instead to giving students access to better teaching?
I’ve been grappling with this question since the panel and I don’t think it’s a waste for us to use technology in education. But I do think we should be careful about what we promise and only say the things we know for sure:
- Technology can save teachers’ time: as Bowman pointed out, technology can significantly free up teacher time. Technology can help teachers take care of some time-consuming yet low-value tasks. For example, easy-to-use digital gradebooks can save hours of grading. Networks like BetterLesson allow teachers to connect to one another, and share proven curricula and lesson plans
- Technology gives teachers access to data: Technology has the potential to make good teachers better by providing them access to a wealth of data. A homework software program that identifies gaps in student knowledge can help teachers tailor and differentiate instruction. Good teachers want to meet the needs of students who learn at different paces. Technology could potentially make that easier to do
- Technology can be the next best thing to a good teacher: the interest in “flipped classroom” is one example of how technology can make learning easier when teachers cannot be present. Teachers have limited time period to deliver their lesson. Even though it may be less ideal that having a good teacher present, a good recorded lecture can provide a solid alternative. And for students who need to see or hear content repeatedly to grasp it, a recorded lecture may even be better than a live lecture or discussion
- Technology can be cheaper: this benefit is controversial as we don’t like to think of ourselves as skimping on education (though of course we do it - just ask educators in Texas right now). But costs-savings is a big motivator for using technology in classrooms. Technology can reduce costs for instructional materials (e.g., through open source alternatives). More significantly, it can cut labor costs. Schools like Rocketship, a charter operator in the Bay Area, reduce staffing costs significantly by having students spend 25% of their time in a learning lab working with software and being supervised by staff without teaching credentials.
There are, of course, other potential benefits of edtech. It’s possible that technology actually improves the instructional experience and makes learning richer. I hope that, in the near future, we’ll have research that will make the pedagogical case for tech as strongly as it does for good teaching. Till then, I hope those of us in the industry remember to promise only what we can deliver.
Context is everything: learning how the internet works
I’ve spent many years really wanting to understand how the internet works. I’m not talking about how certain memes become larger-than-life or how Youtube stars are made (though the social dynamics of the internet are very fascinating). I want to understand the underlying architecture of the internet. Why and how does it all function under the hood? Underground cables, servers, databases, communication protocols, that kind of stuff.
I’ve been on a quest to learn web development over the past year but unfortunately it’s been a series of fits and starts. Each time I pick up a programming course, there’s something missing. I studied math in college so the focus on semantics (arrays loops etc) gets really tiring really fast. Even after I pick up the semantics of a language, I still don’t feel like I really get it.
When I started Zora a few years back, I had to go from a blogspot blog to a real domain. Having to buy a domain name, buy hosting, and install WordPress taught me a lot about how the backend works. I learned even more when I started customizing a WordPress theme; I started with hooks then moved on to directly editing PHP files. I’m happy to say that I know enough PHP to break any theme’s files and introduce lots of server errors. Thankfully, I’ve also learned to always keep a backup copy of the files and how to use an FTP client to restore the blog.
I’ve come to better understand the reasons that my web development forays have not been successful so far. One of them is that the books and resources I’ve tried don’t provide enough context. When Codecademy was released last year, I thought its interface was slick. I also highly doubted that a beginner could really use it to learn to code. The system - and I must admit it’s been a few months since I’ve checked it - rushes into Javascript with zero context. I liked it but I saw no way that someone absolutely new to web programming or design could actually learn from it.
Like Codecademy, most books and online programs just don’t provide enough context. I am a context girl. I don’t function well not knowing how what I’m doing fits into the big picture. I actually follow directions really well. But I have a hard time internalizing anything without proper context. For example, I got a very good grade in Real Analysis, one of the most difficult math courses I took in college. But in retrospect I know the A was a joke because I couldn’t explain the concepts to save my life. Not even 5 minutes after the exams I aced. Thanks to my British Nigerian schoolling, I can memorize facts, proofs, and theorems and regurgitate like no other. But that doesn’t mean I actually know what I’m talking about or that I can apply them outside of contexts I’ve already encountered.
So as I embark (yet again) on learning web development - and for real this time! - I’ve focused on making sure I have a better understanding of how the pieces that run the internet fit together. One of my favorite resources for learning so far has been Tech Tuesdays, a blog series by Albert Wenger. His posts are an awesome overview of technologies - you dont get bogged down in details but you understand what each piece of technology is. And fortunately for me he is doing an overview of programming next which dovetails very nicely with what I’ll be learning. Another oldie-but-a-goodie resources is Google’s HTML5 demo book 20ThingsILearned. In addition to its whimsical fun design, it’s very well-written, clear concise explanation of web browsers and other internet topics.
I encourage anyone who is interested in starting to learn to program, or who just wants to look further “under the hood” of this wonderful internet thing that powers our world, to check out Tech Tuesdays or 20Things. If you have other good resource suggestions on learning how it all works, please leave them in comments.
50 words banned from NYC school tests
I thought the whole purpose of an education was to expose students to the world including, gasp, ideas that they or (more likely) their parents might find uncomfortable.
You know, ones you would expect: “politics,” “homelessness,” “poverty,” “crime,” “divorce,” “evolution,” “religion,” “rap music,” etc.
(via wnyc)
Source: capitalnewyork
