A College Board-financed study reaffirmed the SAT as an accurate predictor of academic success by looking at the correlation between students' SAT scores and their grade point averages in high school and freshman year of college, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. The study was conducted in response to widespread criticism of the SAT's role in college admissions decisions, as some feel that the test unfairly disadvantages low-income and minority students. The researchers concluded that admissions decisions that use SAT scores as a criterion do not hurt students from low socioeconomic classes because other factors are also evaluated in applications. The study did note that the SAT would weed out applicants of a lower socioeconomic status unfairly if test scores played a principal role in admissions decisions, The Chronicle reported. The most recent version of the article, "The Role of Socioeconomic Status in SAT-Grade Relationships and in College Admissions Decisions," was published in Psychology Today on Monday.
A study conducted by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce concluded that American students are lagging behind students in other industrialized countries in earning sub-baccalaureate degrees, which are post-secondary degrees that require less than four years to complete. This is problematic because the job-market is becoming increasingly dominated by white-collar jobs that require a post-secondary degree, Inside Higher Education reported. The United States ranks second in the world in the percentage of workers holding bachelor's degrees, but only 16th in the share of workers with sub-baccalaureate awards. The report attributes poor middle-class job training in the United States to the lack of workers with sub-baccalaureate degrees. Anthony Carnevale, who led the study, suggested a national "learning exchange" to help colleges tailor their programs to such workers by performing a "gap analysis" of wage record data and curricula offered, Insider Higher Education reported.
Women in Technology Sharing Online, a mentoring program linking female professionals from science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields with undergraduate women, will launch next month, The New York Times reported. WitsOn will run as a six week "massive open online course" or MOOC in which over 300 mentors will engage with undergraduate students to answer questions about STEM education and jobs. The project aims to increase the number of women nationally pursuing STEM degrees and may even help participants find jobs. Women currently outpace men in overall undergraduate degrees but earn fewer than 20 percent of STEM degrees. Similar online mentoring programs, or "connectivist MOOCs," are growing in popularity around the country, according to The Times.
