Colleges Might Soon Experience Some “Tough Love”

Marilyn Gardner Milton’s Latest Blog Post

It is no secret that the United States are quickly falling behind when it comes to international educational standards. We have been consistently slipping in basically every category as other countries overtake us in humanities, math, and the sciences. It seems as though educational critics of the government has finally noticed the lackluster performances of our educational institutions and have written a paper calling for the government to enforce a minimum standard of quality for any higher educational institutes that are looking for federal funding and support. While this doesn’t get to the root of the problem (that our public school system needs to be supported and revamped as opposed to slashed and left to rot), it would help set a precedent and will hopefully lead to higher quality college and university graduates that will be able to join the workforce in a more effective and efficient manner.

The paper was written by the Education Trust and is titled “Tough Love: Bottom-Line Quality Standards for Colleges”. Education Trust is a non-profit that focuses on educational equality and the paper goes lengths to promoting that. It calls for a system of accountability that sets requirements for the enrollment of lower-income students, graduate students, and the ability for colleges to produce graduates that can pay back their student loans. The paper also argues for penalties to be imposed on those 4-year colleges that end up in the bottom 5% of all schools. The paper also pushes for more scrutiny of “for-profit” colleges and universities as well as attacking elite institutions over the fact that they allow so few low-income students to attend.

The paper actually agrees with many of the governments ideas about how federal funding of higher education institutes should be run. Both the paper and government want more accountability and for colleges and universities to produce better, harder working, and more intelligent graduates who won’t be as saddled by student debt as the current generations students are. However it remains to be seen whether this can be realistically implemented and whether congress and the senate will actually take an attempt to fix things seriously.

If you’d like to read more, the link is posted below:

http://ift.tt/1kOXiEo

from Marilyn Gardner Milton and Education http://ift.tt/1kOXiEp

Advertisement

The Dangerous Trip for Ukraine’s Children

Marilyn Gardner Milton’s Latest Blog Post

When people think of volunteering they think of working at a soup kitchen or cleaning up trash from local parks are roads. However there are a group of people in the middle of the Ukrainian crisis that are risking their lives by volunteering to drive children and mothers away from the conflict zone and to safer areas. Why is this trip so dangerous? Aside from the obvious risks posed by nervous gunmen and falling munitions, the talked-about safe corridor for civilians to escape hasn’t actually happened due to disagreements between the Ukrainian government (who proposed the corridor) and pro-Russian militias (who require Russian troops to oversee the corridor to make sure the government won’t use it to attack).

The all-volunteer force that has taken it upon themselves to drive these minivans packed full of desperate children and mothers come from all walks of life and refuse to take political sides when it comes to helping people. One organizer and driver used to sell shoes in the local market while another ran a classic car club. However once they saw the chaos reigning and how stressed and afraid the people in the besieged cities were they all joined together to make a difference. With stories abound of vans being accidentally destroyed as well as one of pro-Russian militants kidnapping a van and sending it to Russia instead of it’s original location in Ukraine, these volunteer drivers literally risk life and limb so that they can help those in the most need escape to somewhere peaceful. The volunteers refuse to allow men into the vans (unless they’re driving) so that they can avoid accusations of ferrying combatants to different locations.

If you’d like to read more about these brave men and women risking death to save others, the link is attached below:

http://ift.tt/1hZaaNj

from Marilyn Gardner Milton and Volunteering http://ift.tt/1ilPAHg