Guide to Education Grants

Another Student Loan Resource:
According to an April 10, 2007 article by Scott Jaschik titled, “The Part-Time Impact,” that appeared in Inside Higher Ed, “As more and more students enroll part time, colleges have considered whether they are providing appropriate academic support for them.
 
“A study being released today suggests that they may not be providing enough faculty interaction. And more surprisingly, the study finds that as part-time enrollments go up, the faculty interaction of full-time students with professors goes down. The authors of the study — conducted by Indiana University scholars Thomas F. Nelson Laird and Ty M. Cruce, using a national sample — hope it will set off discussion on how institutions change when they enroll more part-timers.”
 
Basis for the Study
 
The study was based on responses to specific questions about faculty interaction from the National Survey of Student Engagement. Jaschik reported, “The questions focused on behaviors such as discussing grades or assignments with an instructor, talking about career plans with a faculty member, discussing ideas with faculty members outside of class time, and working with faculty members on projects that are not related to specific class assignments. Numerous studies have found that students who interact with faculty members in these ways are more likely to report better educational experiences over all. (The project examined data from 224 public, four-year colleges and universities in the United States, with a broad range of admissions competitiveness and size.)”
 
Who Gets More Face-Time: Part-Time or Full-Time Students?
 
The report uncovered some interesting facts that almost seemed counterintuitive. Jaschik reported, “As the percentage of part-time enrollment went up, the reported levels of faculty interaction of full-time students went down.” It seems as if it would be the part-time students that suffered from teacher interaction, not the opposite.
 
Jaschik quoted Nelson Laird, one of the study’s authors, as saying, “If we agree as a field that a key to increasing access is by getting more people to enroll in higher education as part-timers, then we have to be very mindful of trying to break down some of the barriers that exist to engagement.” Jaschik went on to write, “In fact, he said that one of the most encouraging findings was that when part-time students receive a high degree of faculty interaction, they show the same educational gains as full-timers do.
 
“Evidence suggests that ‘the classroom is key’ to not only teaching material, but to creating relationships that allow for more faculty-student interaction, Nelson Laird said.”
 
For all the information you need about student loans, go to www.nextstudent.com.
 
Be sure to tune in next Wednesday for my next blog on student loan legislation in the news.
  
Student Loan Girl
 
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Student Loans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.