Amid gold rush to recruit veterans, concerns over rankings of "military friendly" colleges

In press releases and ads, colleges love boasting they're "military friendly" and "veterans friendly" ? and that isn't just because veterans are usually good students and campus leaders.

It's also because the newly expanded Post 9-11 G.I. Bill will pay colleges of all types around $9 billion this year to educate nearly 600,000 veterans, and virtually every school wants to expand its slice of that pie.

But some schools touting their spots on proliferating lists of "military friendly" colleges found in magazine guides and websites have few of the attributes educators commonly associate with the claim, such as accepting military credits or having a veterans organization on campus. Many are for-profit schools with low graduation rates.

The designations appear on rankings whose rigour varies but whose methods are under fire. Often, they're also selling ads to the colleges. Some websites help connect military and veteran students with degree programs that may match their interests, but don't disclose they are lead aggregators paid by the institutions ? often for-profit colleges ? whose programs they highlight.

"They're not real rankings," said Tom Tarantino, a veteran who is deputy policy director of the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "What they are is advertisement catalogues." Labeling them "a huge problem," he called for standards to be established for proper use of the term "military friendly" schools.

There are signs something like that may happen. But as with the U.S. News & World Report college rankings, demand for signalling devices to help consumers shortcut complicated choices could make such lists tough to dislodge. Many experts say the lists are symptoms of a wider problem: Service members aren't getting the advice they need to make sound decisions on using the substantially expanded education benefits. It's no surprise businesses are stepping into that void.

At a large military education conference last month in Florida, some educators criticized the lists and pushed for a sharpened definition of "military friendly" colleges, to be developed either by the federal government or an education coalition called Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges.

Meanwhile, Washington is paying increasing attention to the broader problem of veterans getting reliable guidance. In recent weeks a slew of bills on the subject have surfaced.

The latest, unveiled Tuesday by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is called the "G.I. Bill Consumer Awareness Act" and would push colleges and the Department of Veterans Affairs to disclose more information on questions like licensing and job placement rates, and to develop policies to prevent misleading marketing.

Another bill would boost education counselling resources at the department, and separately, 14 senators have asked the department to trademark the term "G.I. Bill" so it will have more power to crack down on misleading advertising.

"It's not only these major lists, but all of these pay-to-play websites that come up with these nefarious rankings," said Jim Sweizer, vice-president of military programs at American Public University System. APUS operates two for-profit online universities, American Military University and American Public University. Founded in 1991 by a former Marine, it calls itself the largest provider of education to the military, with two-thirds of its nearly roughly 110,000 students in the Reserves, active duty, or veterans. But last year it boycotted the best-known "military friendly" list, published by G.I. Jobs magazine, saying the system had too many shortcomings.

"The people who suffer from this are the service-members who don't know any better," Sweizer said. "They see an ad that says, 'No. 1 ranked school,' but they don't say, 'by whom?'"

Officials at other institutions say they don't like the lists but can't afford not to be on them, for fear of appearing "military unfriendly."

"Some schools feel 'I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't," said Ramona McAfee, assistant dean of military and federal programs and Columbia College in Missouri, a critic of the lists whose school still participates.

But for some lesser-known colleges, such lists can get their names in front of prospective students ? which, they say, expands veterans' horizons. Last year, when G.I. Jobs magazine published its list, a flurry of colleges shared the news in press releases, and local newspapers often followed with stories.

"We certainly aren't going to change the landscape of our campus by seeking out tons of veterans but we wanted to make sure we were giving them every opportunity and making this transition easier for them," said Sarah Palace, assistant dean for adult enrolment at one school that put out such a release, the College of Notre Dame in Ohio (not to be confused with the larger University of Notre Dame in Indiana, which also put out a release). The smaller Notre Dame has only about 20 full-time veteran students but hopes to recruit more. Palace listed practices she says make the place military friendly: encouraging transfers, examining military transcripts, working with a local veterans service centre.

It's impossible to say whether veterans are widely misled by "military friendly" lists. Some educators say it's patronizing to suppose military people read the lists uncritically.

But there are worrisome signs that, more broadly, veterans aren't making informed decisions and could waste their benefits on low-value degrees. While for-profit colleges may be a good choice for many, on average they cost more, have lower graduation rates and in some cases have accreditation limitations. They also recruit aggressively. In the first two years after the new G.I. Bill was passed in 2008, they enrolled 25 per cent of veterans using the benefits and collected 37 per cent of the payments to colleges.

After former Marine Cpl. Moses Maddox finished his first tour of duty in Iraq, he started ? and ended ? his college search with an Internet query.

"I looked up 'GI Bill friendly schools' and it said 'hey, come to the University of Phoenix,'" Maddox said. He won't single out Phoenix, which collected $133 million from the G.I. Bill in 2010-2011, but it wasn't a good fit, and he later dropped out, re-enlisted and returned to Iraq. After his second tour he enrolled in Palomar College in California, but discovered his Phoenix credits wouldn't transfer. He now gives education counselling to veterans at Palomar.

They're "just so lost after getting out that they just show up with a DD214 (military service record) and say, 'I want to go to school. How do I start?'" he said. When the benefit's 36-month expiration passes and they're stuck with credits they didn't realize were worthless, "it's the hardest part of my job to tell these vets you have to start all over again."

The G.I. Jobs "Guide to Military Friendly Colleges" is probably the best known list, with annual circulation of 135,000 and reaching more through its website, militaryfriendlyschools.com.

The publication insists it's far more rigorous than the apparently fly-by-night options that show up for pages in response to a Google search for "military friendly colleges."

G.I. Jobs sends questionnaires to 8,000 institutions, says it gets about half back, and lists the 1500 most military friendly (it claims that's the top 20 per cent, though of the responses, it's more than one-third).

Unlike others, G.I. Jobs does share the general formula used to select military friendly colleges: 45 per cent in one "effort" category, measuring things like flexible learning programs and academic credit, 35 per cent for financial effort (including tuition benefits and the percentage of recruiting budget directed to veterans),15 per cent for results (such as percentage of military students enrolled) and 5 per cent for a category that includes accreditations.

"We're the most stringent and transparent out there," said Sean Collins, who directs the publication for Victory Media. It's now begun surveying students about their experiences, and is beginning to include that data in its website, though it isn't used to determine which schools make the list. Collins says the magazine consults an advisory board of veterans education professionals on the survey questions.

Yet while G.I. Jobs discloses its general formula, and its website offers extensive raw data with college responses, it doesn't disclose a cutoff score or quantify what it takes to make the "military friendly" cut.

Its list includes some schools that, the magazine's own charts reveal, check hardly any of the boxes that comprise the magazine's criteria for inclusion ? for example the Academy of Cosmetology in Florida, which doesn't offer credit for military services, has no veteran-specific campus resources and where just three of the 75 students are veterans. Such schools may well be military friendly, but their inclusion raises questions about how 2500 claimed respondents failed to make the cut. In print, the guide from a leading rival, Military Advanced Education (MAE) magazine's "Guide to Top Military-Friendly Colleges and Universities," says of its formula only that any college wishing consideration can submit answers to a questionnaire.

The magazine sent the questionnaire to 1,800 institutions and received 362 responses. Of those, 289, or about 80 per cent, made the cut, said officials of the publication and its parent company, KMI Media Group.

Before this year, whether a school made the cut was up to editor Maura McCarthy, who reviewed the submissions and decided without using a point system.

"Maura had a good idea in her head as to what would make somebody military friendly," said Kirk Brown, publisher at KMI. This year, he said, it will move to a more objective system. "Each year that we've done this, we've attempted to raise the bar in terms of the criteria and our evaluation process."

Other sites that turn up on online searches, such as www.militaryfriendlycolleges.org, say nothing about their criteria. Typically they feature eclectic lists of colleges and sometimes ads for for-profit schools. An email sent via the "Contact Us" portion of that site went unanswered, as did a telephone call to the California phone number where the website is registered.

In fact, critics say, there's no right way to quantify whether a college is military friendly; a subjective judgment, like MAE's, may actually be more appropriate if well-researched. The objections are to false precision, and the criteria used.

Factors like whether a college offers online courses or gives credit for military work can be important. Still, few highly selective colleges offer course credit for military work; that doesn't mean they don't welcome veterans, said Jim Selbe, who has worked for decades in veterans education and is now an administrator at the University of Maryland University College, a large military education provider.

A small school, meanwhile, could have few veterans, no veterans "club," and few resources just for veterans ? yet still be very welcoming culturally, just as a large school with lots of resources on paper might not.

Selbe says none of the current designators of "military friendly" colleges are transparent enough that students should rely on them to make a decision. His advice: Spend time talking to a well-qualified academic adviser, to pick a school that's a good fit in terms of culture and expected outcomes.

"There are just too many variables in that decision to make it on a school being recognized by a publisher as military or veteran friendly," he said.

Maddox, the former Marine, advises students to go straight to www.gibill.va.gov and avoid any site mentioning veterans or the GI Bill ending with ".com."

Most critics would find the lists unobjectionable ? even valuable ? if they presented themselves simply as resources for information, and dropped the claim to identify who is "military friendly."

One site, Military.com, has done just that, and stopped using the term "military friendly."

"We stepped back and looked at it, and said the loose criteria we've allowed to become this term 'military friendly' isn't serving our members," said managing editor Terry Howell. "We can't make that promise, that guarantee, that that's going to be the service member's experience."

______

AP Education Writer Kimberly Hefling and News Researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.

Follow Justin Pope at http://www.twitter.com/JustinPopeAP

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A well designed Europe-wide financial transactions tax could be a ...

What would be the implications of a financial transactions tax in Europe? While the French argue such a tax would help stabilize the debt crisis, the British believe that the instrument would prompt an exodus of financial activity to other parts of the world. Iain Begg argues that the latter argument may not hold, and that the tax could become a source of revenue for governments if introduced as a ?tax for Europe?.?

There has been much debate in recent months about a financial transactions tax (FTT), with some Member States, notably France, very keen to see its introduction, while others are more sceptical. Given the prominence of the City of London in its economy, the UK, not surprisingly, is opposed to the introduction of such a tax in the European Union because of fears that it would prompt an exodus of financial activity to other parts of the world. For the UK, the argument is that unless a global FTT (which it claims to support) can be introduced, imposing such a tax unilaterally in Europe would be tantamount to an own goal.

Separately, the European Commission has proposed the introduction of an FTT as a new own resource for the European budget. The rationale offered in the communication?A Budget for Europe 2020,?presenting proposals for 2014-20 and released last June, is that ?the time has come to start re-aligning EU financing with the principles of autonomy, transparency and fairness?. In a Commission background paper, a justification offered for the choice of FTT is that it would be popular ?which could facilitate its acceptance? and would be likely to be supported in the European Parliament. It is also argued that it would open up a new revenue stream, easing the burden on national public finances ? a somewhat disingenuous assertion.

Three distinct questions arise in these debates:

• Can Europe go it alone on an FTT?
• Should new resources be used to finance the EU budget and;
• If so, is an FTT a suitable resource?

Recent research suggests that contrary to some fears, the fact that so many financial transactions go through electronic trading platforms means that they can be ?captured?, reducing the likelihood of avoidance. Consequently, a tentative answer to?the first question? is that if it is well-designed and not set at too high rate, an FTT could work if imposed only in Europe.

The case for new EU own resources is one that is made time and again, yet has repeatedly been rejected by the European Council when it has to decide. Instead, the EU is financed largely by national contributions. Arguments abound about the strengths and weaknesses of the system that is in place, although its one unassailable virtue is that it ensures the EU has the revenue it needs to finance its expenditure. Equally, there are several options for EU taxes or revenues that would be perfectly serviceable. However, none is ideal and it is important to recognise that many criteria affect the choice. Alternative financing systems affect fairness, economic efficiency and differ in relation to a number of other effects, so that the underlying question becomes: what attributes do EU citizens and decision-makers want an EU tax to possess?

These are discussed at length in a paper I have had published by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Among its conclusions is that although an FTT might work well enough for Europe as a whole, it would not be a good choice as a ?tax for Europe?, principally because it would have too uneven an incidence across Member States. Germany and, above all, the UK would bear a disproportionate share of the cost?

A more comprehensive report on the implications of the FTT is published here. ?

This article first appeared on Budget in Perspective.

Please read our comments policy before commenting.

Note: ?This article gives the views of the?author, and not the position of EUROPP ? European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

____________________________

About the author

Iain Begg ? LSE European Institute
Iain Begg is a Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE European Institute. His main research work is on the political economy of European integration and EU economic governance. He has directed and participated in a series of research projects on different facets of EU policy and his current projects include studies on the governance of EU economic and social policy, the EU?s Lisbon strategy, the social impact of globalisation and reform of the EU budget. Other recent research projects include work on policy co-ordination under EMU and cohesion policy.

Related posts:

1. Brussels blog round up for 17-23 March 2012: The European Parliament drags its feet on EU wide constituencies, Ashton is criticized, and the IMF demands more guarantees on Greece.

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Health and fitness And Pilates ? July BlogBest Campaign Blog, Best ...

Folks right now are starting to know the importance of excellent wellness, that is accomplished via a properly well balanced diet plan, slicing out smoking and drinking, and incorporating some type of health and fitness plan into day-to-day life. Whilst you?ll find some outstanding opportunities such as walking, swimming, tennis, handball, or operating out in the fitness center, an additional option contains Pilates, that has taken our modern society by storm. As well as getting entertaining, Pilates is simple within the body even though making excellent outcomes.

Pilates requires a technique of movement coupled with therapeutic physical exercise. This specific fitness system took Joseph H. Pilatu more than 60 many years to fantastic. In addition to helping persons appear superior by toning and firming the body, Pilates tends to make folks feel improved. By way of precision toning and bringing stability to muscle tissue in the joint area, this health process stimulates circulation by utilizing muscular flexibility, proper musculoskeletal alignment, and array of movement.

Pilates also gives much better body consciousness though promoting coordination and generating new neuromuscular patterns. The result of this conditioning system is really a reduction or total elimination of persistent pain and/or damage or re-injury. Joseph himself grew up with arthritis and asthma, generating him feeble. His father was a prize-winning gymnast and his mother a practicing naturopath. Utilizing a discarded anatomy guide, Joseph studied and researched to superior have an understanding of the various physique components. Through the age of 14, he had learned how you can develop his personal physique, so considerably to ensure that he was hired as an anatomy design for other students to study.

With Joseph?s understanding and fine-tuning of this health and fitness method, he and his wife started training Pilates. The exciting factor about this health program is the fact that by being created around the all-natural movement of animals and other natural movements, millions of individuals are able to include the plan into their everyday lives, acquiring they look and feel greater. The bottom line is the fact that no matter if utilizing Pilates or some other kind of health, you are able to tone the muscle tissue, improve joints, and also lower tension on the heart and lungs, giving you a longer, healthier life.

We now see individuals from stay-at-home mothers to famous movie stars faithfully making use of Pilates with incredible results. In fact, if you would like the most from health, we suggest you combine Pilates having a cardio type of physical exercise for instance biking, walking, or swimming. By doing this, you get the best of each worlds. Ideal of all, fitness might be performed by men and women of all ages and expensive equipment just isn?t required to be effective. For that reason, in case you are weary of searching and experiencing negative, get concerned with an excellent physical fitness system just like Pilates.

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No need to whisper: Obama yearns for postelection `flexibility' on taxes, energy, immigration (Star Tribune)

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People Drive Small Business, Not Plans | Grow your business using ...

Since we have launched The Small Business Tour I have had the good fortune of working with some incredible people who work for great companies that are supporting small businesses in new ways, and not because they wrote it down in a ?strategic plan?.

The difference makers in business (small and large) are the people who engage because they care about the outcomes of people they serve (their customers, partners, employees and teammates).? To those special few, I solute you!

Great people move your small business forward

The community of small business owners and key players on teams in the Seattle/Bellevue area that I?ve been fortunate to be associated with are one of the reasons why 1000s of small businesses are experiencing success today.

When you speak to Mark Sandeno @markgustav at Rocketshipthe first thing you?ll notice is that he is committed 100% to delivering great results for his customers. His team creates custom web sites in about half the time and cost of more expensive design houses.

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After working with Aaron Booker @aaronbooker and his team at Varvidit is clear they have a great time doing what they love and that is put your story to video so you can share it. They are going to be producing the live video feed at The Small Business Tour.??

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Jimmy Kwan @cultofkwan My Turnstone is first to admit that thinking about finding furniture for your office isn?t the most fun, but I have to tell you that their new app for iPads to help you visualize what your office could look like is extremely fun!

?

The Small Business Tour is leveraging the expertise of Tara Barnes @PathableTera from Pathable to help us build our community web site. She and her team are driven to make events successful and it comes through with how fast Tara?s team has responded and willingness to do the little things.

?The common thread these people all have is they actually care about the people they work with and wants to make sure everyone around them is successful ? that?s what makes them a success. They all have strategic plans, but are not letting those plans box them into doing what?s right for their customers.

Amazing people in larger companies care about the success of small business

It is easy to think that small businesses all ban together to form an unstoppable economic engine, but people at some very large organizations are contributing as entrepreneurs from all over the world.

If you are trying to figure out the best way to stay in touch with your community of prospects and customers you quickly realize that Dana Pethia @Dana6167 of Constant Contact? is extremely resourceful and professional. She works for a big and fast growing company, but travels all over the Pacific Northwest speaking with small business owners.

?

When you work with Thomas Marks @WThomasMarks of Concur you can tell he is an entrepreneur at heart even though he works for a publicly traded company. His biggest desire is to make life easier for small businesses through helping them organize how they track and manage expenses.

?So, if ever you find yourself thinking ?big business? doesn?t care about the small business community, think about Dana and Mark ? they will be thinking about your success.

Yes, you need plans, but it?s the people who make them happen ? don?t forget it!

Every great entrepreneur has a plan ? they could be formally written down or somewhere inside their head. Ultimately a plan is made, then re-evaluated, then adjusted again to help make sure a business is steered forward. That said, a steering wheel is only as good as the person behind it. I?m confident that the companies we?re working with on The Small Business Tour have great drivers.

Source: http://www.coreconnex.com/2012/03/30/people-drive-small-business-not-plans/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=people-drive-small-business-not-plans

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For the very best web design York simply contact Vital Online Studio

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