Friday Fragments

The Boy had his college graduation pictures taken this week.  

It was a bit of a shock to see them. He is very much a grown man at this point.

He has a job lined up that starts on June 1. He and his girlfriend have signed a lease on an apartment in Manhattan. The monthly rent is 90 percent of our monthly mortgage payment; had I been quicker on the draw to refinance when rates were lower, his rent would actually be higher than our mortgage payment. But it’s a much easier commute to Mt. Sinai from there than from here, and he won’t need a car. He’ll still be on our health insurance plan and cellphone plan for a while, but otherwise, he’ll be self-supporting.

The plan is to do two years at this job and then apply to medical school and/or public health programs. The job is designed precisely for that, so there’s no issue of perceived disloyalty.

College went fast. It seems like he just got there.

The actual graduation ceremony is in May, so he’s in the final stretch of college right now.

I belong to the school of thought that says that the point of parenting is to get the kids to the point where they don’t need parents anymore. He’s there. He’s a decent, smart, caring, hardworking, engaging young man who knows what he wants to do and has a realistic plan to do it.

I’ve never been prouder to step out of the way.

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The College Scorecard has updated its data and added some new categories. It’s worth a look.

As with any one-size-fits-all data, one can nitpick. Average salaries, for instance, are as of four years after graduation. For someone who graduates from a community college and goes on to a four-year college followed by law, medical or graduate school, four years out they’d still be students. Their earnings at that point would be misleadingly low; medical students don’t make much, but graduates of medical school usually do.

In clicking through to earnings by major, I saw a lot of “data not available” placeholders. I can understand why that would be true at most underfunded public institutions, though I had to wonder at some of the Ivies.

I’ll leave it to the folks with greater statistical chops than my own to find the hidden patterns. Suffice to say that the outcomes of colleges with very different reputations are often much more similar than one might expect.

Happy hunting!

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I was able to catch part of a webinar from New America on Thursday describing ways that some community colleges have been successful in recruiting and supporting working adult students. One of the more effective strategies, apparently, is the large-scale deployment of HyFlex classes.

HyFlex classes are in-person classes with a simultaneous remote option. The idea is to allow students to show up when they can and Zoom in when they need to. In a recent discussion with colleagues at other colleges that have adopted HyFlex at larger scale, they report that about 80 percent of the students actually show up in person on any given day; the ones who Zoom in are usually dealing with some sort of life event, whether it’s car trouble, childcare or illness.

I’m curious to see if other places that have moved to HyFlex at scale have seen similar results. I’ve seen two major fears around HyFlex: one is that nobody would show up, and the other is that the training and tech support needs are overwhelming. Now I’m hearing that neither is true.

Wise and worldly readers at places that have taken the plunge, what has been your experience with it? As always, I can be reached via email at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com, on Twitter at @deandad, or on Mastodon at @deandad at-sign masto (dot) ai. Thanks!