Choosing a College - Where to Start?

Your blogger recently spoke with the mother of a high school sophomore. Her daughter was starting to think about college and both she and her parents were concerned about how she would manage in college with her long-standing learning challenges.

"What's the best college for students with learning disabilities?" this mom asked, clearly hoping that I would give her the names of a couple of schools on which they could focus. Instead, I gently pointed out that she was asking the wrong question. Certainly, there are colleges whose primary mission is to work with students with learning and related challenges. These schools, such as Landmark College in Vermont, may be a good fit for a student whose learning issues are significant and who have needed extensive support in high school.

There are also schools and programs for students who cannot manage a traditional college curriculum -- or cannot manage it without additional preparation -- and who may be best served by a "transition to college" or vocational and life skills program. These include places like VIP at New York Institute of Technology, Threshold at Lesley University, or Thames Academy at Mitchell College;  each of them can provide important benefits to certain students.

But while the young woman in question has needed and received supports and accommodations in school, her grades and standardized test scores are solid and she has several interests that could be the basis of a future course of study and possibly a career. I suggested that this family start by identifying colleges that offered strong programs in their daughter's areas of interest. Did she want a program where she could pursue her interest in environmental science? Did she want a school with excellent music and theater departments where she could build on her skills with the cello or follow up on her starring role in her high school's musical? Is she an athlete? Or did she want a school that encouraged study abroad experiences for its students? Or maybe she just wanted a strong liberal arts curriculum where she could explore across disciplines and decide her direction later.

Only after considering what kind of school she wanted, using these criteria, as well as such things as location, size, cost, and admission requirements, would it make sense for this student to carefully consider whether the schools on the lists she had created offered meaningful accommodations and options for academic support. There are more than 4,000 two and four year colleges in the U.S. By working with her guidance counselor, using online tools, and visiting some of those schools that seem of interest, this family can develop a list to serve as a starting point. Then it would make sense to look intently at the commitment of each potential school to serving students with disabilities. All colleges must comply with the ADA - the Americans with Disabilities Act - but many go well beyond their legal obligations. What can a student expect from a college, and how can a student and her family determine what a college offers?

It's been a number of years since your blogger co-wrote Life After High School,  but the guidance offered on how to select a college that can meet a student's needs is still timely. Another resource is the K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Differences.

Hopefully, this family will find that they can help their daughter make choices that both celebrate her strengths and support her challenges. I've asked them to keep me posted.

College Programs for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders

We’ve written recently about the importance of supports for college students with executive function difficulties. Students who struggle with executive functions – organization, time management, and planning – may have excellent academic skills, but may not succeed in college because of their non-academic challenges.

Another group of students who may struggle in college despite their academic abilities and their absence of more “typical” learning challenges are those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). As described in an article in The Village Voice by Elizabeth Walters, “Because autism is such a broad term, it can be difficult to pin down. Some people with autism are nonverbal and have limited cognitive abilities, while others have IQs in the genius range. Clinicians refer to a "spectrum" because the term includes a range of individual disorders.”

Many students with ASD are capable of doing the academic work in college, but do not apply, or are admitted and are not successful, because of other factors. These include difficulties with social interactions, including reading the social cues of their classmates and instructors and responding with appropriate behavior; some expressive language difficulties; and the organizational and planning difficulties found in executive function disorders. In addition, students with ASD may have such “co-morbid” conditions as ADHD.

Given the prevalence of ASD – recent CDC data estimates that about 1 in 68 or 1.5% of children were identified with ASD in 2012 – colleges are increasingly encountering students with ASD who need appropriate supports to be successful. Furthermore, many colleges recognize the importance of creating an environment that is welcoming to students with ASD and is flexible enough to meet their needs.

College programs for students with ASD have been around for a number of years. The New York Institute of Technology Vocational Independence Program began in the late 1980’s and offers both a path to a college degree and a non-college post-secondary track. The OASIS program at Pace University began under a different name in 2009. Other programs can be found at Rutgers and Fairleigh Dickinson has a program at both its Metropolitan and Florham campuses. Fees vary for these programs, but none are free or inexpensive.

This makes the REACH program at five City University of New York (CUNY) campuses of particular note. The program - at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, Brooklyn College, the College of Staten Island, Kingsborough Community College and LaGuardia Community College – is operated under a grant and there is no cost to participating students, although the future of grant funding is not certain.

The CUNY description of the REACH program notes:

CUNY’s mission is to provide affordable and accessible higher education opportunities to ALL New Yorkers, especially those who have historically not had access to higher education opportunities, like students on the autism spectrum. Inclusive higher education is the next great civil rights movement, and CUNY wants to lead this movement by cultivating a University environment that promotes the success and full participation of students with ASD. 

So far, students enrolled in the REACH program who have stayed with the program have improved their grades, and report greater satisfaction with their college experience. If the program can obtain funding to continue it will be instructive to see further results.

Gallup on What Makes a College Degree “Worth It”

A majority of people in the United States believes that it is important to get a college education. For one thing, adults with only a high school diploma earn, on average, considerably less than adults who graduated from college. Perhaps more importantly, a more advanced degree also allows graduates more choices about the jobs they take and the lives they lead. The perception that college is critical prompts ever-rising numbers of young people to drive themselves into heavy debt to attain the goal of attending college. But is it really worth it?

The results of a recent study by Gallup provide some interesting answers. The Gallup-Purdue Index collected information about 30,000 college graduates in the United States, going beyond just salary to measure the subjects’ engagement in their work, the extent to which they thrived socially and financially, their sense of purpose, and even their physical well-being. The results indicated six elements of emotional support and experiential learning in college that are correlated with long-term career and life success.

These experiences impact graduates’ lives so heavily that Gallup calls them the “Big Six.” Adults who report experiencing all of the following six elements in college perform better on every measure of long-term success than graduates who missed out on these experiences. In college, successful adults generally report:

1. Encountering a professor who made them excited about learning

2. Working with professors who cared about them as people

3. Having a mentor who encouraged them to pursue their goals and dreams

4. Working on a long-term project

5. Placement in a job or internship where they applied what they were learning

6. Being extremely involved in extra-curricular activities

The difference between the outcomes of graduates who experienced all six elements versus those who experienced none of them is nothing short of astonishing. For example, results indicate that 82% of Big Six graduates felt prepared for life after college. In contrast, only 5% of those who had none of these experiences felt prepared. Sixty-five percent of employees whose college experience contained all six elements reported being engaged at work while only 25% of those who experienced none of the elements did. Keep in mind that the adults polled are all college graduates.

In light of these results, Gallup’s Brad Busteed, executive director of Education and Workforce Development, advocates adding graduation requirements that would prompt colleges to provide students with experiential learning and supportive relationships in addition to traditional coursework.

College hopefuls, and their parents, should read the original article and view the results in detail; careful selection of a school that can provide this winning formula could make all the difference.

Photo credit: State Farm via flickr cc

Assessing a College's "Value"

Any good liberal arts college will encourage students to understand that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. This key component of critical thinking is what explains why ice cream consumption does not cause drowning, even though both tend to increase at the same time of year - in the summer.

However, it seems that this principle is often being overlooked in evaluating the colleges our society relies on for teaching students how to think critically. The U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard provides in its rankings database, among other information, median earnings of graduates. A recent New York Times article notes that this promotes a causation-for-correlation confusion, and that a particular institution’s direct impact on future earnings cannot be assumed.

Confounding factors include admissions selectivity and the fact that students at expensive universities often come from privileged backgrounds, which also correlates with high earnings. Colleges also vary in their focus on particular fields, some of which are more high-paying than others, thereby impacting the average when earnings of graduates across fields are evaluated as a whole.

There are many ways to assess a college’s value. Graduate earnings are just one of them, and even if this is the variable used, it must be interpreted with great caution.