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.