VOLUME XXXIII NO. 13
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF UTD — WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM
SEPTEMBER 9, 2013
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Educated and Empty-Handed Story by: MIGUEL PEREZ Mercury Staff Photo Illustration by: CATHRYN PLOEHN Graphics Editor
As 2011 census data show a rising poverty rate among 18- to 24-year-olds, many students remain uncertain about the value of a college degree. Kids Count Data Center, a national and state-by-state project that analyzes census data, reports poverty among this age group jumped from 20 percent in 2000 to 26 percent in 2011. Texas’ poverty rate among young adults matched national levels in 2011. Of the 51 most populated U.S. cities, Dallas ranks 17th in poverty among young adults (number one being the lowest rate) at 30 percent. Forty-three percent of Austin’s young adult population is considered poor, and Detroit represented the highest citywide rate from 2011 data at 51 percent. From an economic standpoint, poverty is determined by income and is measured by households. Susan McElroy, associate professor of economics, said an important factor that influences data on the poverty of young adults is whether they are pursuing a college degree. 2011 data from Kids Count reveal that 43 percent of young adults in Texas and 36 percent in Dallas were enrolled in or have completed college. “College students who live off campus are very likely to be in poverty, but a lot of people consider it a different kind of poverty,” said Anthony Galvan, a senior research associ-
Brain Blaze ANWESHA BHATTACHARJEE Web Editor
ate at the Institute of Urban Policy Research. “If you’re on scholarship or have some other mode that’s not measured as income that you’re using to pay for room, board and meals, then you have less of a need for income.” From a time management standpoint, if you’re enrolled in college, it’s going to limit how much you can work and, by consequence, your earnings, McElroy said. The problem students face is clear in the data: the Census Bureau reports that 72 percent of undergraduate students in the U.S. were working in 2011 and a fifth of undergraduates in Texas were working full-time, year round. “You’re sacrificing work and income to go to college,” said economics senior Prisha Gaddam. “That would be a huge detriment to getting your education if it means that you have to pay for tuition in addition to supporting yourself.” Jessica Palacios Gutierrez, economics and finance senior, said she remembers semesters where she had to work long hours just to make tuition and pay for books. “Honestly, I think it makes students more productive. It demands time management out of you, and if you’re really
Fifteen-year-old Trace McCaslin had heard a lot about his mother, about her trips to prison. Yet, as he started walking toward his great-grandmother’s funeral, he was excited — excited to meet April, his mother, whom he’d last seen when he was three. It was an awkward first meeting — the son who barely remembered his mother, and the mother, now reformed and married, who felt guilty after all these years for not being there for her child. As McCaslin stood through the service, he discovered, deep down, despite everything his father’s family had told him, his mother wasn’t a bad person. She’d just had a problem — an addiction to meth and heroin. And he was ready to give her a chance. “I wanted to get to know her myself,” McCaslin, an emerging media and communications junior, said. “There was
something skewed about the opinions of other people … So when I met her for the first time, I wanted to see for myself how I felt about her.” Now cured of her addiction, April started using marijuana and meth when she was 11 years old, and her addiction to meth led her to try harder substances like heroin. Her story isn’t unusual. An estimated 2.9 million people started using illicit drugs in 2012, of which 55 percent were under 18 years of age and more than half of the new users started with marijuana, according to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, or NSDUH, by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The survey found a hike in rates of illicit drug use among young adults aged 18-25 nationally, as well as an increase in marijuana usage from 18.2 percent in 2009 to
ABBY LAM/STAFF
Pres. Obama proposes college-ranking system to better measure true quality JAMES LOPEZ Mercury Staff
President Obama proposed the creation of a new federal college-ranking system on Aug. 22 with the aim of providing more complete information to students. Speaking at the University of Buffalo, Obama criticized private rankings such as the U.S. News and World Report, which he argued incentivizes universities to “game the numbers” and reward them with higher rankings. College rankings usually include factors such as academic resources, alumni giving rate and selectivity. According to an Aug. 22 article from The New York Times, Obama’s proposed system would factor in qualities such as a school’s financial aid, affordability, student postgraduation debt, rate of on-time graduation and post-graduate success. Obama said he believes that a school’s quality should be judged by how accessible a school is to students of all incomes, how high graduation rates are and how well
the students do in the workforce and graduate and professional school. Despite the clarity these metrics are supposed to provide, many college officials and lawmakers are debating whether metrics such as graduation rates give a picture full enough to help future students decide where to apply and enroll, according to The Wall Street Journal. “My concern is that (the metrics) wouldn’t recognize institutions that are transforming,” said Rodney Andrews, associate professor in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. “I worry that it might miss out on some of the things that UTD is investing in.” Andrews said the ideal way of evaluating universities involves much more than metrics such as graduation rates. Rankings might lead people into overlooking such academic qualities that even a lower-ranked school might have, he said. “You might miss out on a place that matches up well with your interests and proclivities, and you might not know that because those things are not evi-
dent in a single metric,” Andrews said. Obama’s new proposal would also allocate federal financial aid and resources to schools according to how they would rank in his new system. “I’m not sure that I see a (financial) threat for UTD,” said Terry Pankratz, vice president for Budget and Finance. Pankratz said federal funding, such as Pell Grants, makes up a very small portion of UTD’s infrastructural budget and financial resources. The university’s financial resources are unlikely to be affected by federal funding except for Pell Grant distribution, which, according to Pankratz, is currently distributed to 4,281 students at UTD. What other financial implications Obama’s proposed ranking system would bring is still unclear, but Pankratz said he isn’t worried. “Based on the quality of our student body, the success rate that they have, if there were an evaluation mechanism put into place, I think UTD would rank