14 May, 2012
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Rebecca Johnson works at the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business. The Irmo woman graduated last week.
She applied for a Stafford Loan her freshman year; after her father lost his job.
“That is when I had to step up and get a job and had to pay for school myself. With the economy how it is, I want to help as much as possible and try to be financially independent.”
Like many graduates, Johnson is still paying off her student loans. However for students still school, the interest rates for Stafford loans may double July 1. Legislation passed by Congress in 2008 kept Stafford rates at 3.4% for the next four years. That expires June 30.
If Congress can’t find a way to pay for the $6 billion subsidy, the rate will double to 6.8%.
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14 May, 2012
Learn Using Learn
Virtual learning commons are one way that we can facilitate student learning by giving them the tools that they need to succeed in their studies. Many of them are set up by teachers for students in their classrooms, but why cant an institute set one up to help all of its students?
Thats a question that Michele Brannon-Hamilton, a graduate of the Master of Educational Technology program, asked herself as she worked her way through it. Using what she learned in the program, she is now working on developing just such a commons for her college. Michele joins us this week to give some insight into what shes doing, as well as to give a students perspective to life in the MET program. What should you expect going into it? What can you do with it? And just how much time you should plan to spend on your studies.
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10 May, 2012
Auditors Internal Auditors
Accountants have substantial career opportunities working as internal auditors at large corporations. These companies are expanding the audit function and providing a greater overall relevance for auditors. To bring the highest value to these businesses, accountants are improving their stature by passing the certified public accountant exam.
According to a study titled “Aligning Internal Audit: Are You on the Right Floor?”, business leaders expect their internal audit team to render key components of risk management. The study reveals that just 45 percent of executives who are close to the audit process describe the function as well managed. The majority expressed a need to improve with a greater reliance on new high quality auditors. Thi
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9 May, 2012
South Suburban Suburban
Two games decided by a grand total of two runs, it doesn’t get any closer than that. That was the end result of the Madison College baseball team’s doubleheader with South Suburban College (NJCAA DI) on Saturday, May 5 though. After beating the Bulldogs 4-3 in game one, the WolfPack would fall 6-5 in game two.
Game one, Treysen Vavra would give the ‘Pack an early lead. A first inning single to right by Vavra would score Ryan McShane, putting Madison College up 1-0. South Suburban tied things in the second, and took a 3-2 lead by the fourth inning, but it wouldn’t scare off the WolfPack. Trailing 3-2 in the bottom of the fourth, Luke Maldonado singled to right to plate Jon Dybevik, and then Vavra immediately drove in McShane once more to help Madison College regain the lead. Read full post…
7 May, 2012
One of the bravest, most astute, and honest scholar/journalists in the land is Naomi Schaefer Riley, who has written brilliantly about such touchy but crucial topics as the harm wrought by professorial tenure and the peculiar world of seriously religious universities. Ms. Riley has just been fired from her “brainstorm blogger” role by the Chronicle of Higher Education because she wrote the truth about another touchy topic, namely what passes for post-graduate scholarship in “black studies” departments on U.S. campuses. You can get some of the flavor of this squalid episode by reading her posts (here and here) and some of the hundreds of comments thereon. You can also read an account of the controversy here and can glimpse a sample of the vitriol heaped on Ms. Riley here. You can
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5 May, 2012
Dan Pink Motivates
From watching the great talk from Sir Ken Robinson on Changing Education Paradigms I recently found this talk from Dan Pink that illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.
Watching this helped me realise a similarity between the reward mechanism that is sometimes offered to employees and the reward (grade) offered to students from their assessment. Dan uses the example of Atlassian, an Australian software company, that releases their employees one day every quarter to work on anything they want, the only proviso (assessment) is that they show the results of this work or collaboration (see time-stamp in video above from 5:50).
What if we could get students working like this?
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