High School Counselor Week

New Title IX rule faces first lawsuits
K-12 Dive – April 30, 2024
Conservative leaders in five states are making good on their promises to challenge new protections for LGBTQ+ students. The U.S. Department of Education warns that schools must comply with the regulations to receive federal funds.

Experts fear ‘catastrophic’ college declines thanks to botched FAFSA rollout
ABC News – May 1, 2024
Normally a time of celebration for high school seniors, this spring has been marred by the federal government’s botched rollout of the new FAFSA application. By May 1, students usually know where they’re headed to college in the fall. This year, most still haven’t received financial aid offers. Three months before the start of fall classes, many don’t know where they’re going to college, or how they’re going to pay for it. The CEO of the National College Attainment Network, Kim Cook, warned members of Congress this month about a potentially ‘catastrophic’ drop in college enrollments that would make the decreases of the pandemic seem mild. For colleges, too, the delays pose a major threat—Some colleges are pushing for emergency relief just to stay afloat.

Federal Student Aid chief to step down amid FAFSA chaos
Higher Ed Dive – April 26, 2024
Rich Cordray will step down as the chief operating officer of the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid office at the end of June. Cordray has been under mounting pressure to depart as head of the FSA office amid its bumpy rollout of the new FAFSA. Lawmakers from both major parties panned the revamped form’s debut. U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona sang a different tune in a Friday statement, praising Cordray for his work.

Do’s and Don’ts of the Wait-List
Post – April 24, 2024
College Advice & Timely Tips with Lee Bierer

How to Address School Avoidance
Edutopia – April 29, 2024
‘I don’t want to go to school!’ are words that induce worry, stress, and even frustration at times for the adults who care for children. Naturally, we look for an underlying cause of school avoidance, which at times is easily identified and at other times seems to entail concerning and sudden shifts in behavior and emotions without a reason. Inspired by one therapist’s work on managing anxiety disorder, I began piloting a strategy that I call ‘Practice the And,’ to support students with anxiety or school avoidance behaviors. The results at our school were surprising, it was really just a shift in the language that we use with students. We saw that students who struggled with school avoidance began to come to school more willingly, improving attendance and their overall academic performance due to an increase in instructional time. They also began transferring this strategy to other anxiety-provoking settings. School counselors and staff can model and encourage students to follow the strategy and steps described in this article, not only when students are present at school, but even in phone conversations or Zoom calls…

OPINION: Immigrant students need trained advisers to navigate the problematic college admissions process
The Hechinger Report – April 29, 2024
The new FAFSA promised to be an easy process for all students, especially those from immigrant families. For the first time, students with undocumented parents were told, they would be able to complete this form online. We should have known better. This isn’t the only roadblock my students face while attempting to pursue a college education. And it just underscores their need for help from someone familiar with the system and the frustration it brings. Sadly, there aren’t enough college advisers like me for the growing population of immigrant students. How many more could go to college if they had someone in their high school who could properly guide them through the college application process? We need state or city-funded immigrant liaisons at every school. Securing funding will be like working with FAFSA: We will need to be persistent and patient.

Is your teenager just moody? Or really struggling with mental health?
WBUR (MA) – April 25, 2024
More kids are dealing with serious mental health issues in life after the pandemic. Parents sometimes struggle to tell whether their kid is just a typical hormonal teenager grappling with becoming an adult, or if they’re dealing with something more serious. But research suggests that to help their kids, parents and caregivers need to take a look at themselves and their own mental health.

32 Questions to Ask on a College Visit
U.S. News & World Report – April 30, 2024
Here are 32 example questions, collected from college admissions and enrollment professions, that students don’t always think to ask on college visits. The questions were provided by Brian Lindeman, assistant vice president of admissions and financial aid at Macalester College in Minnesota.

Lifetime college returns differ significantly by major, research finds
Higher Ed Dive – April 25, 2024
he lifetime rate of return for a college education differs significantly by major, but it also varies by a student’s gender and race or ethnicity, according to new peer-reviewed research. A bachelor’s degree in general provides a roughly 9% rate of return for men, and nearly 10% for women, researchers concluded. The majors with the best returns were computer science and engineering. Black, Hispanic and Asian college graduates had slightly higher rates of return than their White counterparts

Study: 40% of 2013 HS Grads Who Started on a Degree or Credential Didn’t Finish
The 74 – April 30, 2024
The study followed 23,000 students starting with their freshman year of high school in 2009. Though 74% enrolled in college after graduating, almost half didn’t receive any postsecondary credential by June 2021. They are the fifth group the NCES has tracked for postsecondary outcomes, but the first cohort it began tracking in ninth grade

2024 High School Grads Could Face Nearly $37K in College Debt
NerdWallet – April 23, 2024
If there is good news for new college students, it’s that growth in the cost of higher education has slowed and even decreased modestly in recent years. The money spent on tuition and fees at public, four-year institutions goes further now than 10 years ago. However, this drop doesn’t mean higher education is affordable.

In a Disastrous Year, States That Mandate FAFSA Completion Fared a Bit Better
The 74 – April 24, 2024
While applications for federal student aid dropped by double digits across all 50 states this year, those with universal FAFSA completion policies seemed to fare slightly better, with the majority performing in the top half of the country.

Why Hiring Managers Are Widening Their Gaze Away From The Ivies
Forbes – April 30, 2024
Covid, technology, and a changing workforce have led employers to cast a wider net for collegiate talent, even as they sour on Ivy League grads. Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic; platforms like Handshake and Zoom; labor shortages; and a recognition that a diverse workforce is good for business, they’re looking at a broader swath of graduates and even applicants with needed skills, but no college degrees. By Handshake’s count, 72% of the nation’s 500 biggest companies each now hire from 200 colleges or more.

Companies Are Hiring Fewer College Grads—So Why Bother With School?
Forbes – April 30, 2024
As it turns out, the skills-based hiring movement is more talk than action. Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute recently studied 11,300 roles for which a bachelor’s degree requirement was removed from the job description. Of those, only 3.5% were filled by non-degree holders. That’s a barely perceptible uptick when applied to the broader workforce. College graduates are still more likely to get hired. But what happens when they do? The bigger issue is the widening gap between education and needed skills.