James S Murphy Profile picture
Aug 28, 2020 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
The NYT has some of the best education reporters in the country, but stories like this are why so many people who work in and around higher ed see it as a force for harm. ImageImage
There are thousands of homeless college students. But they NYT thinks choice real estate is what this moment is about. Most students are not "renting giant houses with friends — sometimes in far-flung locales." ImageImageImageImage
People are worrying that they will be evicted right now, but "groups of students have named their college houses and made them social media official, creating shared accounts where they plan to post about their lives together."
Schools mentioned in this piece:
Yale
Grinnell
MIT
Columbia
Harvard
GW
Dartmouth
Williams
UC, Berkeley
Princeton
UNC, Chapel Hill
Penn
UCSD
Brown
Duke
Stanford
Middlebury
Michigan, Ann Arbor
U of Ottawa (he's living with 3 friends in Ireland) Image
So what? It's just one story, and it is happening. Sure. But the weight of the NYT is heavy and what it chooses to write about will strike some readers as typical or representative.
Watch how this story gets shared on FB and people start talking about "what college students are doing now," when the reality is that the colleges and experiences mentioned here are far from typical or representative. Same for the demographics of those pictures.
Final note: the reporter who wrote this thing is not an education reporter. There are so many great higher ed reporters out there, some who have lost their jobs during this pandemic.

Can we leave the education stories to the experts please?

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More from @James_S_Murphy

Jul 31, 2023
Some pointers for people who work with students on college applications:

1. The @usedgov will be releasing resources to colleges and universities addressing lawful admissions practices by Aug 15.

2. Don't listen to anyone's advice on how to advise students too much until then.
3. Yes, the @CommonApp opens tomorrow, but students can get to work on everything but the essay while we wait to see what ED says.

4. Chances are, little changes for students or their applications due to the SFFA decision.
5. Students should not be afraid of identifying themselves by race & ethnicity anywhere in their application.

6. Students can & should check the race/ethnicity box. It's up to colleges to redact that info if they don't want readers to see it.
Read 8 tweets
Mar 12, 2023
2023
College freshmen no longer know how to read literature.
2013
College freshmen no longer know how to read literature
1999
College freshmen no longer know how to read literature
Read 5 tweets
Mar 10, 2023
What's extraordinary about the @usnews Best Colleges reputation wurvey is that ANYONE FILLS IT OUT AT ALL.

Let's take a look 🧵
The most heavily weighted single factor in the Best Colleges rankings is Undergraduate Academic Reputation, which USN calls "Expert Opinion." Image
Here's the thing: there is absolutely no way the presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions they send the survey to can be qualified to answer the questions, let alone claim expertise. Image
Read 13 tweets
Mar 6, 2023
Let's talk about some dumb stuff people say about test optional admissions. 🧵
This might take a sec, so here's the tl;dr:

TO policies, in and of themselves, are neither a cure-all for what's wrong with American higher ed nor the end of what's good about it, but the evidence points to their doing some good and no harm.
Let's define TO first.

A test-optional policy is one that allows applicants to decide whether they want their test score to be considered. It does not "get rid of tests" or "ban tests."

Almost every 4-yr college in the US is currently test optional.
Read 28 tweets
Mar 4, 2023
When your flex shows just how weak you are. Image
For decades, colleges, med schools, and law schools have all made the point that standardized tests exist to show readiness to succeed in college or grad school.
Rankings were one of the incentives to focus on scores well beyond the readiness threshold and overemphasize tests. That emphasis has excluded lots of people who were highly qualified to become lawyers and doctors.
Read 4 tweets
Oct 1, 2022
While we're waiting for fall IPEDS data, I got curious about how segregated expensive private high schools are relative to public schools. 🧵
I used the 2019–20 Private School Universe Survey to identify schools that belong to the National Association of Independent Schools and go through twelfth grade. I got public school data from the Dept of Ed in each location. nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/pr…
I looked at just a few states. Here's my home state. I thought it looked bad, until I looked at...
Read 14 tweets

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