Extra! Student Papers Fill News Void

The New York Times: "Student journalists across the country have stepped in to help fill a void after more than 2,000 newspapers have closed or merged, leaving more than 1,300 communities without any local news coverage. And several young reporters have broken consequential stories that have prodded powerful institutions into changing policies ... A high school newspaper in Pittsburg, Kan., forced the resignation of the principal after discovering discrepancies in her résumé. After writing an article about a school employee’s unprofessional conduct charges, high school editors in Burlington, Vt., won a censorship battle against their principal. And when the State Department’s special envoy for Ukraine resigned abruptly last month, a 20-year-old junior at Arizona State University broke the news in the school’s student newspaper, a scoop that gained international attention."

"Despite little training and no university journalism program, the staff of The Michigan Daily has embraced its vital role. Last year, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, it published a lengthy investigation ... against a professor, leading to his early retirement ... The Daily also covers issues that matter to Ann Arbor’s 121,000 residents, such as the inner workings of the municipal government, cuts to the county’s mental health budget, and a police oversight commission that was created last year in response to the shooting death of a black woman and the violent arrest of a black teenager."

"In a sign of how seriously The Daily takes its responsibility to fully cover the city, Maya Goldman, 21, was elected editor in chief only after she was able to name the 11 members of the City Council, along with their wards and party affiliations ... Unlike many college newspapers, The Daily has the financial support — in the form of a $4.5 million endowment — to sustain its breadth of reporting, said Neil Chase, the chairman of the university’s student publications board."

Elite Colleges Tap Community Students

The New York Times: "Community colleges are the workhorses of higher education. They don’t charge a lot and they take everybody. It’s why nearly a third of college students in the United States attend one. They often are treated as places where workers retrain, add technical skills and earn job certifications. But they also have a quieter role, helping students earn two-year degrees that prepare them to transfer to a four-year college. In our status-conscious higher education hierarchy, however, the firepower of those campuses and their students is often overlooked."

"Williams College, a private liberal arts school in Massachusetts, enrolled eight transfer students from community colleges this year (up from two last year), including Lara and Jason Meintjes, who earned two associate degrees each at Long Beach City College in California while working multiple jobs. They moved to Massachusetts with their daughter, a sophomore now enrolled at Mount Greylock Regional High School. 'There has been a shift in how we think of really talented students from different backgrounds,' said Maud Mandel, the president of Williams. Such students, she said, 'represent a different kind of diversity on campus'.”

"Rising college costs have capable middle-class students rethinking how to structure their educations. It’s shaking up how a 'normal' college experience is defined, said Meghan Hughes, the president of the Community College of Rhode Island. Given federal data showing that nearly half of the students who earn a bachelor’s degree started at a community college, Dr. Hughes said, 'We are now the mainstream ... They are just ‘college students' ... But they are college students who 'make it work with duct tape,' she added. Such students are also challenging what college is for, particularly the part where you go in order to grow up."

Colleges Use 'Big Data' To Score Applicants

The Washington Post: "Colleges are collecting more data about prospective students than ever before — part of an effort, administrators say, to make better predictions about which students are the most likely to apply, accept an offer and enroll. Records reviewed by The Post show that at least 44 public and private universities in the United States work with outside consulting companies to collect and analyze data on prospective students, by tracking their Web activity or formulating predictive scores to measure each student’s likelihood of enrolling."

"Records and interviews show that colleges are building vast repositories of data on prospective students — scanning test scores, Zip codes, high school transcripts, academic interests, Web browsing histories, ethnic backgrounds and household incomes for clues about which students would make the best candidates for admission. At many schools, this data is used to give students a score from 1 to 100, which determines how much attention colleges pay them in the recruiting process."

"The vast majority of universities reviewed by The Post do not tell students the schools are collecting their information. In a review of the online privacy policies of all 33 schools using Web tracking software, only three disclosed the purpose of the tracking. The other 30 omitted any explanation or did not explain the full extent or purpose of their tracking ... Admissions officers say behavioral tracking helps them serve students in the application process. When a college sees that a qualified student is serious about applying based on the student’s Web behavior, it can dedicate more staffers to follow up."