Happy New Years Eve

From Visually.

On holiday break

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On holiday break

From Visually.

On holiday break

by herrimanjoe.

From Visually.

On holiday break

From Visually.

On holiday break

Courtesy of: The Sleep Matters Club

Welcome to Winter

From Visually.

I was expecting

Pigeon Forge but then I haven't spent that much time in Franklin.  It sound wonderful, though. All in all, I've been to several of these: Amelia Island,  Bowling Green, Branson, Columbia, Las Vegas (Las Vegas?), Newport, Rapid City. Just not at Christmas. From Cheapism.com.

The Most Christmas-y Towns in All 50 States

FRANKLIN, TENNESSEE 

With the historic town's Victorian architecture serving as a backdrop, Franklin celebrates Christmas in full style. The highlight of the season is the Dickens of a Christmas event on Dec. 8-9, which brings out 200 musicians, dancers and characters who fill the streets. Among the wandering characters is Fagin from "Oliver Twist," Jacob Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim from "A Christmas Carol" and a Victorian Father and Mother Christmas who are handing out treats for the children. It's hard to get more charming than that.

Where the elite meet

Attending an elite college can help you if you're a woman, minority, or low income student. If you're a rich, white guy, it doesn't matter. Save the money and attend the public flagship. From The Atlantic.

Does It Matter Where You Go to College?

This month, economists from Virginia Tech, Tulane, and the University of Virginia published a new study that reexamines the data in the Dale-Krueger study. Among men, the new study found no relationship between college selectivity and long-term earnings. But for women, “attending a school with a 100-point higher average SAT score” increased earnings by 14 percent and reduced marriage by 4 percent. That is a huge effect. Has one of the most famous papers in education economics been debunked? 

Not quite, says Amalia Miller, a co-author and an economist at the University of Virginia. “The difference we found is that college selectivity does seem to matter, especially for married women, by raising earnings almost entirely through the channel of increased labor force participation,” she says. 

If you’re not an economist, that might sound complicated. But it’s pretty simple. For the vast majority of women, the benefit of going to an elite college isn’t higher per-hour wages. It’s more hours of work. Women who graduate from elite schools delay marriage, delay having kids, and stay in the workforce longer than similar women who graduate from less-selective schools. 

This finding complicates the trendy “opting out” theory, which says that women who graduate from top schools are particularly likely to drop out of the labor force after they have children. In fact, the only gender-specific effect of attending elite colleges is that female graduates are more career-focused. 

Selective schools also seem to make a difference in the lives of minorities and students whose parents have no college education. A 2017 study led by the economist Raj Chetty found that lower-income students at an elite school such as Columbia University have a “much higher chance of reaching the [top 1 percent] of the earnings distribution” than those at an excellent public university, such as suny Stony Brook in Long Island.

Save the date

Georgia Adult Education Association (GAEA) conferences are held annually and will help your organization better prepare for a successful future. GAEA conferences provide an opportunity for you to gain assistance in solving problems through networking, identifying valuable instructional materials and resources, and sharing new programs and ideas that have been proven to succeed. Each year, topics for the GAEA annual conference are selected by the Conference Program Committee, so the content is always fresh and relevant to your interests and challenges.

2019 Annual Conference

Save the Date: March 8-9, 2018

Location:Jekyll Island Club, Jekyll Island, Georgia

My retired buddy tells me

To never retire in Winter. So I'll hang on for a while.  Fortunately, I already live in a college town, which means I already live in one of the best places to retire. My alma mater is on this list, but I can't see me ever moving back north to Iowa. From Gobankingrates.com.

The Best Places to Retire in America Are All College Towns

Finding the right place to retire can be difficult. On the one hand, preparing to live on a fixed income and stretching your hard-won nest egg as far as you can has to be a priority. On the other, your golden years are supposed to be a time to really enjoy yourself. 

Major cities have a wide range of amenities, but they’re also really pricey. You might be able to spend less in small towns, but they probably won’t offer everything you’re looking for. College towns are the perfect balance — they tend to feature a wider variety of cultural attractions, but many are also located in relatively small cities in inexpensive states.

Infographic Friday

From Visually.

We can't blame everything

On Millennials. As much fun as it is to do so. The Great Recession has taken its toll on this generation. From CBSnews.com.

Millennials are much poorer than their parents

Millennials have been blamed for "killing" a range of industries, ranging from country clubs to chain restaurants like Applebees, because of a supposed shift in generational shopping preferences. The idea even sparked a Reddit page called "Blame Millennials," where articles citing the death of various industries are posted. People in their 20s and 30s are also often caricatured as "avocado toast eaters" and otherwise wasteful with their money.  

But millennials really aren't so different from previous generations when it comes to what they spend their money on, according to new research from economists at the Federal Reserve. Delving into data on consumer spending, the researchers found that the millennial generation has remarkably similar tastes as baby boomers and Gen Xers.  

"We find little evidence that millennial households have tastes and preference for consumption that are lower than those of earlier generations, once the effects of age income, and a wide range of demographic characteristics are taken into account," the researchers wrote. "This conclusion also holds for spending on automobiles, food and housing." 

Less income, more debt 

Millennials took a hit by coming of age during the Great Recession, the economists wrote. It's left them with lower income, even though their household income hasn't changed much, which is likely due to a higher rate of millennial women who are working compared with women in previous generations. 

That's not to say there aren't generational differences between millennials and older Americans. For one, they're more diverse and better educated than any other generation, while also holding the lowest marriage rates. But that's also been the case with past generations. 

One clear difference, the study notes: Generation X and boomers enjoy family income that is 11 percent and 14 percent higher, respectively, than comparable millennial households today. Millennials also have higher student debt than Gen Xers. 

SAILS not working?

There are still positives to be found, and it's too soon to try something new. The old way didn't work well at all. After all, math remediation is tough, to paraphrase Barbie. From Inside Higher Education.

Few Gains for Students in Tenn. Remedial Education Program

Tennessee’s unique approach to preparing students for college by requiring them to take remedial math classes in high schools instead of college doesn’t lead to improved math skills, according to a study released today by Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research. 

The researchers who have been studying the Tennessee Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning Support program (SAILS) also found that it did not increase the likelihood of students passing college math once they were enrolled in the course. 

“By moving the remedial course requirements to high school, the SAILS program increased the proportion of community college entrants taking college-level math, but only about half of students passed the course,” said Thomas Kane, faculty director of the center. “At least those students weren’t delayed by taking a remedial course, but the SAILS course didn’t improve students’ success in math.” 

Tennessee launched the SAILS program in 2012 as an alternative to traditional college remediation. High school juniors are placed in remedial courses based on their ACT score. Students in a SAILS-participating high schools who scored below a 19 on the ACT math exam could take their remedial math course in the senior year of high school. Those students who completed the course were then exempted from taking remedial math when they enrolled in a state community college. 

The Harvard researchers determined that during the first year in community college, SAILS students were 29 percentage points more likely to enroll in college math. About half of the students who enrolled passed the course. However, the passing rates for SAILS graduates were not higher than for students with similar ACT scores who scored just above a 19 on the ACT math and were not required to take a remedial course, Kane said.

First I've learned about this Tennessee initiative

Even though it's been around a while. It takes me back to the days when I registered students at the Iowa State Penitentiary at Fort Madison, Iowa. and the English professor who referred to it as Pen State. We offered correspondence courses with some live instruction until the prisoners rioted and burned down the education center. Talk about voting with your feet.

TENNESSEE HIGHER EDUCATION INITIATIVE, INC. 

Mission 

The mission of the Tennessee Higher Education Initiative is to provide access to on-site degree-bearing higher education for individuals in Tennessee prisons; to support our students in leading meaningful lives in and outside prison; to prepare our students for successful re-entry; and to help our students become contributing members of our communities.

Get busy

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Infographic Friday

From Visually.

Where Tennessee excels

Only two state rank above Tennessee: Wisconsin and South Dakota. That's good! Among the worst are New Jersey, Kentucky, and Illinois. From 24/7 Wall Street.

Every State’s Pension Crisis, Ranked

48. Tennessee
> Funded ratio: 94.1%
> Total pension shortfall: $2.7 billion (8th smallest)
> Gov’t workers as share of total workforce: 12.7% (10th lowest)
> Avg. annual payout per public retiree: $17,714 (6th lowest)

Tempus fugit

And at my age, it's breaking the sound barrier! Can we slow it down? I'm reminded of Catch 22's Dunbar, who believed you lived longer if your time was spent with "periods of boredom and discomfort. He spent time doing things he detested. From NBCnews.com.

Why our sense of time speeds up as we age — and how to slow it down

LIFE PASSING YOU BY? CONSIDER THE ‘HOLIDAY PARADOX’ 

But there’s a way to change this — to an extent. Surely, we can’t slow time itself down (that would require defying the laws of physics), but we can do things to pace ourselves and create more lasting impressions of times past. 

Costello draws attention to the Holiday Paradox, also called the Vacation Paradox, a theory of time-perception coined by psychology writer Claudia Hammond in her book “Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception.” 

This theory unpacks the subjective experience of how time flies when you’re having an enjoyable, new experience like a vacation, but then later, in retrospection, it feels like it lasted longer than it really did. 

We could spend a great deal of time (however you perceive it) discussing this theory, but here’s a helpful key takeaway: A novel experience may feel like it’s flying by, but you’ll have a deeper impression of that time and likely have a bundle of unique memories tied to it that will also give stretch and substance to that time gone by. 

CREATE NEW, NOVEL EXPERIENCES THAT ENGAGE YOUR BRAIN 

It doesn’t have to be a vacation or a visit to a foreign country to elongate your sense of the past. It can be as simple as consistently trying something new, and/or of continuously learning. 

“How can we stop that feeling of things going too fast, of missing out on our own lives? It comes back to learning new things,” says Costello. “Are you learning a new skill? Are you cooking something different? Introducing novelty into your life when you can will make the memories stand out and stretch time in a way.” 

Go new places. Meet new people. Be spontaneous when you can be. These are all exercises that Costello champions for enhancing your sensitivity to the passage of time. It’s also a system that mirrors childhood to an extent. 

“Children have routine and mundane moments, too, but they’re always learning something new,” she says. 

AT THE END OF EACH DAY, RECALL YOUR TIME AS VIVIDLY AS POSSIBLE 

Kesari suggests another potential retrospective-time enhancing hack: Remember your day as vividly as possible at the end of it. 

“I suspect that if you spend half an hour every night really reflecting on what has happened that day, it may ingrain them to make them more unique,” says Kesari. 

“Memory is short-lived and many of us just aren’t that engaged in the everyday things we’re doing, so if you slow down and engage more in the moment, and look back on everything deeply later, you may find time lasting longer.”

I'm not sure I'd advise anyone

To go to graduate school without an assistantship, workplace reimbursement, or some other type of support besides student loans. Student debt is that concerning. Sure, I took out a small student loan to finance my Ph.D., but it was less than $10,000. I had a good job but the terminal degree was my union card. I had to get it for advancement. It was a different time. From MarketWatch.

It’s time to start worrying about graduate-student debt

The average amount graduate students borrowed annually nearly doubled over the past two decades, rising from $11,900 per year in 1990 to $23,900 per year in 2014, the report found. When graduate students today enter repayment they have $65,000 in graduate debt alone compared to $19,400 in 1990. 

The report painted a bleak picture for graduate-school borrowers 

• In 2000, about 3% of borrowers with loans from graduate school defaulted on their debt within five years. For borrowers leaving school in 2009, that share jumped to 5%. 

• Even borrowers who don’t suffer the most dire consequence — default — are still struggling, the report suggests. Borrowers who left school in 2009 had repaid 11.5% of their balance after five years, compared to 16% for those who left in 2000. 

• For the first time, beginning in the early 2010s, borrowers with high balances — typically a sign of some graduate education — owed more than the amount they initially borrowed in the first years of repayment. 

• The share of graduate student borrowers attending for-profit colleges, whose graduates often don’t fare as well on the job market, grew from 1% in 1990 to 17% in 2014. 

“Increasingly, some of the same worrisome trends that we worried about for undergraduates seem to be occurring within the graduate student sector,” said Adam Looney, the director of Brookings’ Center on Regulation and the Markets and one of the authors of the report. 

Graduate-school borrowers are struggling to repay these loans 

Over the past several years, policymakers and experts have been particularly concerned with the plight of borrowers who took on debt to attend college at schools that didn’t provide them with valuable degrees or who dropped out before they could receive them. Often these borrowers have relatively small debts, but because their college experience hasn’t given them a boost in the labor market, they struggle to pay back the loans.

But the Brookings report adds to the growing body of evidence that an increasing share of borrowers who attended graduate school and have high loan balances are facing similar challenges. Obviously this is a problem for the borrowers themselves, but it also affects the government and taxpayers who hold the debt. 

Changes to federal policy are largely to blame for this new reality, according to Looney. The government expanded the types of programs eligible for federal student loans, including to those that offer education completely online. Whereas before there was less variation in the types and quality of graduate programs students used federal loans to attend, now that universe has expanded, putting more graduate students at risk of taking on high loan balances for credentials of questionable value. 

Policymakers also made it easier for students to get more loan money for graduate school. These days, graduate students can borrow up to the entire cost of their program. The government also expanded repayment options for borrowers, which allow them to make manageable monthly payments, but extend the lifetime of a loan. That means for students who struggle to repay their debts, the loans “will hang over their heads for 20 to 25 years,” Looney said.

Hanukkah started yesterday

From Visually.

Infographic Friday

Social media and student recruitment by Ellucian

Our hidden gem?

Some of these aren't as hidden as Tennessee's. Jekyll Island? The Outer Banks? I think they're pretty well known and out in the open. And I never would have guessed what they listed for our state. From Go Banking Rates.

Discover the Best Hidden Gem Destinations in Every State

Tennessee: Incline Railway
Cost: Tickets from $7 to $15 

After you take a Tennessee vacation, your friends might expect stories of country music and BBQ. Instead, regale them with stories of the Incline Railway, which takes you and family up a 72.7-percent grade on Lookout Mountain. It’s like driving up an insanely pretty wall. Before hopping on the car in St. Elmo, remember to bring some cash to spend at the microbrewery and collection of cafes and small-batch boutiques.

How am I doing?

Is there any upside to performance reviews? Poor review don't lead to improvement and good reviews just get ignored. From Fast Company.

The complicated and troubled history of the annual performance review

As the decades passed, with more middle management having more direct reports at larger companies, the investment in individual performance reviews started to get out of hand. For example, by 2015 a report from the Harvard Business Review revealed that at Deloitte it took 1.8 million hours across the firm. And at CEB, managers reported 210 hours for appraisals (that translates to 5 weeks per year). Adobe scrapped the practice after calculating that 2,000 managers were in for some 80,000 hours when dealing with performance reviews. Talk about a counterproductive way to spend the workday.

But it wasn’t just the hours that put the performance review on deathwatch. As Capelli and Tavis noted, research proved that workers “would rather be told they were ‘average’ than given a 3 on a 5-point scale.” 

Researchers at Kansas State University, Eastern Kentucky University, and Texas A&M also looked at how negative feedback during annual performance reviews affected employees and (shocker) it didn’t help them improve. But surprisingly, even positive feedback got misconstrued and failed to motivate. 

As for the future of the performance review, the bad news is that it’s not totally going away. But as Capelli and Tavis point out, there is a better way. “Ideally, conversations between managers and employees occur when projects finish, milestones are reached, challenges pop up, and so forth–allowing people to solve problems in current performance while also developing skills for the future,” they write. “At most companies, managers take the lead in setting near-term goals, and employees drive career conversations throughout the year.” Sounds like a much more productive and empowering way for everyone to spend their time.

Giving Tuesday

From Visually.

Cyber Monday

Infographic Friday

Black Friday

How to Shop on Black Friday and Cyber Monday Infographic - Valpak Online Coupons

Thanksgiving break

Courtesy of: Bedding Stock

Thanksgiving break

by ereplacementparts.

From Visually.

Thanksgiving break

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Pumping up the humanities

I suspect humanities enrollments will eventually turn around. But their pathway to college teaching jobs will remain treacherous. From The Atlantic.

As Humanities Majors Decline, Colleges Try to Hype Up Their Programs

To avoid further slippage in humanities majors, elite colleges and universities have resorted to an all-out campaign to convince students that such degrees aren’t just tickets to jobs as bartenders and Starbucks baristas. Colleges are starting early with that push. Stanford University writes letters and sends brochures to top-notch high-school students with an interest in the humanities to encourage them to apply, says Debra Satz, the dean of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. Prospective students can also take humanities classes at Stanford while still in high school. 

What’s puzzling to the college officials I spoke to is that they say students’ interest in humanities majors remains high during the college-search process, according to what students indicate on their applications. Then something happens between when students apply and when they actually declare a major, usually in their sophomore year. Perhaps students’ intentions on their applications weren’t serious, but if they were, Satz says it’s critical that humanities courses in the freshman year capture their attention. At Stanford, she said introductory courses in the humanities are focused on “big ideas,” such as justice, ethics, and the environment, to appeal to students trying to choose their major. 

“We have to make the offerings really good, really enriching,” Satz says. “Part of our challenge is when students see so many of their peers going into computer science.”

To help guide the course selection of incoming students, Grinnell sent a booklet to all freshmen this past summer that outlined the importance of a broad liberal-arts education.  

The college also added a session on the topic to orientation in advance of students meeting their academic advisers. Both initiatives, Kington said, were intended to encourage students to select courses across a range of academic disciplines, given that Grinnell lacks a traditional core curriculum with mandated requirements.  

Macalester’s tactic has been to try to inject some humanities into stem classes and some practical career training into the humanities. Last year, Rosenberg, the school’s president, brought the faculty together at a retreat to discuss the shifting balance of majors. One outcome was that faculty members were encouraged to pair together courses across academic disciplines so that, for example, a new class in social media might be a blend of computer science and philosophy. Professors in the humanities were also encouraged to give their students more career guidance than in the past, when many humanities students simply went to graduate school or law school after college.  

“The typical English major is designed to get students to go to graduate school,” Rosenberg says. “We need to rethink the curriculum so that it’s more focused on what employers will immediately find attractive.”

This pretty much says it all

Man, I hate the Myers-Briggs in general. Fun fact: its inventor had no training in psychology or sociology and was a mystery writer. Not that there's anything wrong with that...From Lifehacker.

It's Time to Stop Using Myers-Briggs at Work

For anything beyond a conversation starter, personality tests are the wrong tool for the job. Even CPP, which sells Myers-Briggs-related services to companies, warns that “The MBTI questionnaire should never be used in recruitment or selection because it does not measure a person’s skills or abilities ̶ just their underlying personality preferences.” 

If the right person for the job happens to be an ENFJ when you’re looking for an INTP, it’s usually perfectly legal to reject or fire them on the basis of that test. But it’s a boneheaded a move, just like if you fired them because they’re a Virgo and you somehow decided you’re looking for a Leo. 

And because the test is so variable, and predicts next to nothing about future performance, it can feel like a waste of time and resources. If you want to get your employees talking about how they like to communicate and solve problems, why not skip the test? In its place you can have a good, old fashioned, bullshit-free conversation.

Infographic Friday

Embedded from Digital Marketing Philippines

Today is the Great American Smoke Out

From Visually.

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette

West Virginia and Kentucky lead the list, with Ohio a surprising fourth. Not surprisingly, Arkansas is third. Tennessee is seventh. From 24/7 Wall Street.

States With the Most Smokers

7. Tennessee
> Adults who smoke every day: 16.0%
> Lung cancer deaths per 100,000 people: 54.3 (5th highest)
> Cigarette excise tax: $0.62 (10th lowest)
> Adults reporting poor health: 6.7% (8th highest)

What's the most popular last name in Tennessee?

According to Ancestry.com, it's Smith, Johnson, and Jones. 

Thinning the herd

Words escape me. From CNN.

More than 250 people around the world have died taking selfies since 2011

Snapping the perfect selfie can be fun. But if it involves flying a plane or holding a loaded handgun or standing on slippery rocks near the top of a waterfall, you may want to think twice. 

Some 259 people worldwide have died while taking selfies, according to a study published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care. Researchers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a group of public medical colleges in New Delhi, scoured news reports on selfie deaths that occurred from October 2011 to November 2017.

They found that the most selfie deaths occurred in India, followed by Russia, the US and Pakistan. Most of the victims were men (about 72%) and under the age of 30.
India accounted for more than half the total -- 159 reported selfie deaths since 2011. Researchers attributed the high number to the country's enormous population of people under 30, which is the world's largest. 

Although women generally take more selfies than men, researchers found that men were more likely to take risks -- like standing at the edge of a cliff -- to capture a dramatic shot. "It justifies the higher number of deaths and incidents for men," the study said.

From Visually.

Infographic Friday

Infographic created by folks at Weekdone, the better team management tools company.

We're holding a conference

In one of Tennessee's tourist traps. Emphasis on tourist. The ACHE South Conference is April 1-4 in Gatlinburg. No fooling. Anyway, I've been to quite a few of these and it should reinforce how important tourism is to Tennessee. From Bestlifeonline.com.

30 American Tourist Traps That Locals Totally Hate

5 Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue; Nashville, Tennessee 

This statue, unveiled in 1998, features Confederate general Nathan Bedford in a cartoonish sneer atop a gold-colored horse. While thousands of visitors every year feel the need to stop and take pictures with the statue, locals are ashamed that such an overt sign of racism exists in their city, since the statue was created by Jack Kershaw, a co-founder of the League of the South, a white nationalist and white supremacist organization, and former lawyer to Martin Luther King Jr.’s killer. While many calls have been made to have the statue removed, it still stands as a bizarre reminder of the country’s controversial past. 

19 Beale Street; Memphis, Tennessee 

Otherwise known as the “official home of the blues,” Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, housing many musical points of interest, restaurants, and other predictable tourist traps, is cleverly avoided by most locals—if they can help it. Each year, more than 11 million people crowd the streets, giving little room for the locals to enjoy their own culture. 

27 Gatlinburg, Tennessee 

Gatlinburg, a town full of scenic mountain passes and entertainment for the entire family, is such an effortless vacation experience that most living within a reasonable radius of the town have at least visited once. In fact, it’s estimated that around 12 million people visit Sevier County, housing both Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, every year. Currently, there are over four thousand people living in the city—residents who have to constantly contend with inflated prices and tourist traffic.

Promises, promises...

I'm glad this is getting students to return to colleges to finish their degrees. But I'm not sure how to reconcile the $500 flat rate with an estimated cost of attendance of $5,893. A lot of fees in there? If I weren't so busy with budget stuff, I'd dig deeper into it. Western Carolina, after all, is just over the mountains in North Carolina. Well, a little more than just over....

Why Many College Dropouts Are Returning to School in North Carolina: A new plan to lower tuition has lead to a 60 percent jump in the number of students who have re-enrolled at one university.

This fall, the state launched a program called NC Promise that sets tuition at a flat rate—$500 a semester for in-state students, and $2,500 a semester for out-of-state students—at three public universities in geographically disparate parts of North Carolina. To fund the program, the state legislature has set aside $51 million. And its goal is self-evident: Make college affordable enough to boost the number of students who enroll, while ensuring that they aren’t saddled with debt that could affect whether or not they graduate. And, for all intents and purposes, it’s working. The three institutions—UNC Pembroke, Western Carolina University, and Elizabeth City State University—have seen immediate enrollment jumps of 14, 6, and 19 percents, respectively. 

But perhaps more interesting than the enrollment jumps themselves is how the promise program has affected so-called “readmits”—students who dropout of college and then re-enroll. Pembroke, in particular, has seen a 60 percent increase in its readmit population so far this fall. “We certainly anticipated an increase,” David Ward, the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Pembroke, told me, “but I'm not going to say that we foresaw the size of increase that we did.” Overall, the institution had an 838-student increase—including readmits, transfers, and new enrollees—from the last school year. 

To put the NC Promise program into perspective, the estimated cost of attendance for a commuter student at UNC Pembroke last year was was $8,495. But this year, the cost dropped to $5,893, an amount that, for low-income students, can be covered in full by Pell Grants. Of course, students still have to to pay for basics like housing and food on their own. But, Ward told me, the re-enrollment rates are encouraging, and signal that lowering tuition is having its intended effect. “The reality is that many of our students are one car breaking down, one [broken] transmission away from not being able to complete a semester,” he said. “Lowering the cost directly to the student is a great incentive.”

Tennessee is still

In the bottom ten when it comes another health measure; this time it's heart disease. West Virginia, of course, is the worst at number one, along with the usual suspects: Alabama, Kentucky, and Mississippi. Hawaii is number 50. Pass the biscuits and gravy, please. From 24/7 Wall Street.

States With the Most Heart Disease

5. Tennessee
> Prevalence of major cardiovascular disease: 9.8%
> Adults who report healthy weight: 28.8% (8th lowest)
> Adults who report fair or poor health: 20.5% (9th highest)
> Median household income: $51,340 (10th lowest)

Raising kids

While attending college. Is it any wonder these students struggle? From Inside Higher Education.

'Time Poverty' of Students Who Are Parents

College students with preschool-age children take longer to complete their degrees and are less likely to stay in college than their childless peers, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Higher Education. 

The study explored the relationship between degree completion and parental status and determined that “time poverty” -- the lack of available time that student parents can spend studying and completing course work -- was a primary factor in degree completion. Students with preschool-age children had only about 10 hours per day to dedicate to schoolwork, sleeping, eating and leisure activities, compared to the 21 hours that childless students had. The study's abstract is available here. 

Claire Wladis, a mathematics professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College at the City University of New York, conducted the research alongside Katherine Conway, a business professor and CUNY colleague, and Alyse Hachey, an education professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. 

"I think a lot of the motivation for the theory and the idea that this was important for students came from serving as advisers for community college students and seeing that they just didn’t have enough time … for work, for academics," Wladis said. 

The group used transcript and survey data from 15,385 students at two- and four-year colleges at CUNY and controlled for whether the student had a live-in partner. Two-thirds of the student parents surveyed said that childcare services did not provide them with enough time to complete their academic work, and three-fourths of those students were on financial aid. 

"I think an interesting finding is that student parents actually do much better in college than you’d expect if you control for how much time they’re spending," Wladis said. "Student parents precisely have a really strong incentive to go to college and to do well in college because it can pay off for their children." 

Congress increased federal investment in financial aid for student parents in 2016 by upping the funding for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program (CCAMPIS), a federal aid program for student parents, from $15 million to $50 million annually. 

But meanwhile, the number of institutions that offer childcare is declining, according to a briefing paper by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Infographic Friday

[Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

Tennessee Promise

Seems to be increasing community college graduation rates. And that's a good thing. From The Tennessean.

Tennessee community colleges see highest graduation rate, enrollment increase

Highest three-year graduation rate 

The College System of Tennessee has also recorded the highest three-year graduation rate in the history of the system. The three-year graduation rate tracks first-time, full-time freshmen through the summer of their third year and counts who graduates.

The graduation rate for the 2015 to 2018 group was 23.7 percent, which is a 10.1 percentage point growth from the 2010 to 2013 rate. Deaton said that while an increased graduation rate is a success, there are still challenges. 

Deaton said the graduation rate tracks graduation of first-time, full-time freshman, and many of the students enrolled in community colleges do not fall into that category. He said there is also a gap in the graduation rate when broken down by race “that needs to be addressed.” 

With higher enrollment and graduation rates, the system has also seen an 82 percent increase in the number of awards given from 2009 to 2018. 

In 2009, there were 8,370 awards (associate’s degrees and certificates) given. In 2018, that had increased to 15,240 awards given. 

“This is the product of years and years of hard work,” Deaton said. 

Tennessee Promise, Reconnect participants higher this year 

According to preliminary enrollment numbers, the College System of Tennessee also has higher numbers of Tennessee Reconnect and Tennessee Promise participants this year. 

The number of Tennessee Reconnect students outnumber the number of Tennessee Promise students, with almost 14,700 Reconnect participants and over 14,500 Promise participants.

Participants in Tennessee Promise have also become more diverse, according to Amy Moreland, Director of Policy. The number of black, Hispanic and underrepresented minorities participating in Tennessee Promise in the system have all increased since 2015.

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[Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

Scrutinizing free tuition programs

To determine the true impact. Most of the criticism of last dollar scholarships revolves around subsidizing students who could afford to attend anyway, while not providing enough support to low income students. While they could do more for low income students, it's hard to imagine they aren't improving access to higher education. From CBSnews.com.

Free college programs sound great, but do they work?

Free college programs, however, have their limits. For one thing, tuition makes up only 20 percent of the cost of attending a two-year public college and living off-campus. States like Oklahoma and Louisiana provide aid dollars in excess of tuition directly to students to use for other costs such as room and board and transportation, but many others don't.  

Nine of the 15 existing free college programs and 10 of the 16 proposed plans kick in only after a student has exhausted other potential funding sources such as Pell Grants, limiting the numbers of students who would potentially benefit from them. 

"Clearly, states are faced with difficult choices," an Education Trust report said. "One appeal of free college may be that middle-income families deeply concerned about the cost of college can receive tuition assistance. At the same time, it may be challenging given limited state resources for free college to both cover tuition for all and more than tuition for low-income students."  

Another question concerns the programs' effectiveness, and the answer isn't clear. A Brookings Institution study of a program in Milwaukee in which randomly selected students received $12,000 in college funding found its impact was muted. 

"We are continuing to track these effects; however, it seems clear at this point that many of the potential benefits, during and just after high school, did not emerge," the think tank said, adding that the program was poorly designed. 

As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities noted, state spending on public colleges and universities remains below historic levels. States have made up the funding shortfalls by hiking tuition and cutting instruction, rendering higher education increasingly unaffordable for many middle class families.

Infographic Friday

From Visually.