Author: eng209justinyoung

It’s been a while since I’ve last posted on my blog so I figured I should do ehh maybe like 3 more before this semester ends so in this blog I will talk about my progress on the Formal Report Project.

Overall, I am not too worried about it right now.  I don’t think we’re going to get anything lower than a B.  In fact, I feel that if my group makes the all corrections and the other stuff we should get an A.  We should be able to make the corrections to it by the due date, no late amnesty needed for this.

My group is going fourth so we’re probably going on Wednesday, although realistically all groups could go tomorrow.  My portion is done but it’s not all done yet so I guess that could be one concern.

Good luck to all who is presenting tomorrow.

People criticize each other in the workplace for many reasons.  One reason that people criticize each other is because they don’t want to be held back by that person.  Say you are in a group project and you do your part well but overall it is viewed poorly because everyone else is not holding their own weight.

Another reason that people criticize each other is because they want people to improve.  Well if everyone can improve and do their part well then everything will be pretty good.  Also I guess people criticize others because of hygiene.  You don’t want to be working with someone who looks filthy or smells bad.

If you have to do this you should be in a private place and be direct but very nice about it.

This is still a rough draft and stuff still needs to be added onto this but here’s what I got so far.

The second point why EFC is not a good indicator for Financial Aid is the Bennett Hypothesis.  The Bennett Hypothesis is according to Gillen “colleges will raise tuition when financial aid is increased, with the implication that increases in financial aid will not improve college affordability.”  Basically, this is saying that the more financial aid is offered the more colleges and universities can increase their tuitions.

        To break down the Bennett Hypothesis even further it can follow these sequences of events.  First, the colleges want to improve, and they can do this by increasing their revenue.  The colleges notice that there is a lot more generosity with the financial aid so there is an opportunity to raise the tuition to capture some of the financial aid in order to raise their revenue.  Some colleges will seize the opportunity but the ones that don’t take advantage of it will give in at some point in order to not fall behind.

To help understand this let’s look at some supply and demand graphs supplied by Gillen:

        Key for the graph:

        Q = Students

        $= Money

        T=Tuition

        Taid= new tuition level

        D=Demand Curve

        Daid = new Demand curve

        G = Financial aid in the form of a grant

        S = Supply

Panel A is the supply and demand graph that is most common when associated with the Bennett Hypothesis.  Panel A assumes a college is held back by capacity meaning that the supply is vertical or inelastic.  Then the government offers grants G to each student.  This raises the demand curve up by G.  The point of intersection with the new demand curve and the supply is Taid.  The change in the supply and demand graph is one for one.  That’s why financial aid doesn’t really help make college more affordable, it’s like you’re still paying the same amount.

Panel B is similar to panel A except that the supply is horizontal (perfectly inelastic).  The tuition does not change but there is an increase in the number of students.  Panel C is where it’s a normal supply and demand graph.  The grants offered by the government still shift the demand to the right.  Thus this leads to an increase in the tuition and number of students.

If you’re not convinced with the original Bennett Hypothesis maybe the second version of the Bennett Hypothesis will be more convincing.  The Bennett Hypothesis 2.0 mainly improves on three points according to Gillen:

1.      All aid is not created equal
2.      Selectivity, tuition caps and price discrimination are important
3.      Don’t ignore the dynamic story

The first point is about how financial aid is distributed.  The low-income students who with financial aid such as the Pell Grant will not allow colleges to raise their tuition.  However, financial aid that is available to everyone can make colleges raise their tuition.  The second point is about tuition caps and price discrimination.  Tuition caps are mainly about public colleges/ universities where their tuition is capped so that they can receive funding from the state.  Most colleges will not cap their tuition to improve their student body.  Price discrimination is mainly used by private colleges.  The private colleges will charge more or less to students depending on the student’s financial background.  The dynamic story is changes over time.  In the case that colleges do increase their revenue they will more likely use it to improve their institution.  Then it becomes something of a domino effect, say college A notices that college B is improving their campus and college A is like “hey we need to improve our school so that we don’t lose students to college B” so college A will increase their tuition or costs in order to keep up with college B.  Then a whole bunch of colleges will follow suit.

I’m not sure if it’s too late to do a blog about this but I’m going to blog about in-class recall practice 8.

This time was no different from almost all the other times It took these, I got the classic 6/7 like I usually do.  Not matter how I confident or unsure I feel when I submit my answers I’ll always get a 6/7.

This time around I got question 2 wrong.  The question was:

True or false:

If readers need to be educated or persuaded, you should consider giving your report an indirect organizational pattern.

I picked false because I thought that you’d want to be direct with your audience when you’re trying to persuade your audience.  However, I should have known it was true because I just remembered that persuasive messages just like negative messages you want to be indirect with those.

• Which sections/aspects of the report body are disconnected from or irrelevant to the main issues identified in the executive summary?

“Does that mean SEC schools require a larger amount of contributions to fund their
budget because of shortfalls in other sources of revenue? Or does it mean that some SEC schools
are able to spend more because they choose to take larger distributions from their booster club or
athletic foundation?” is a part of the report body that is disconnected from the executive summary because the writer is suppose to have the answers to this question.

 

• Which sections seem disconnected/unaware of each other?

“Some people also donate money because they want to see their college sports team
strive and win to be apart of the championship.”  This sentence that is part of the reason why people donate section is disconnected from the report because there was a whole section about people donating to the sports teams.  This sentence is not needed at all.

I just finished these and man these were a lot of work.  PWC 9 took me a fair amount of time and I put a lot of effort in it.  It was also nice that by this point the instructions were really clear and I was really familiar with it.  This PWC was like PWC 1, 5, and 7 so had I not had so much of these analyses already it would have took me even longer.

PWC 10 was really similar to the 2nd, 6th and 8th.  I am kind of glad that this time around that we did not have to find our own topic but rather there was 7 to pick from.  This cut down my time significantly because I spend a decent amount of time just trying to find a topic to write about.

I’ll be posting more often with all this stuff we have to do like the sample rough draft examination and those annotated citations or something like that.

1. What are you individually going to contribute to your group’s leadership, work requirements, communication, and decision making (see step 4 above)? What previous experience with group work have you learned from that you can use to make this experience as collaborative and productive as possible?

I am going to contribute to the formal project by putting in my best effort and do the jobs that the rest of my team does not want to do.  For example, if no one wants to be the facilitator, I will be the facilitator.  The work will be divided evenly amongst the four people in my group. I don’t have all the details yet but I think that everyone is going to have one controversy on financial aid to write about for the formal report.  Also, I think that everyone is going to do a slide on their respective controversy about federal financial aid.  A previous experience I had with group work was being in student government in 10^th grade.  I had to facilitate fundraisers and meetings when our president could not make it.  I also have worked in many labs at my time in Windward Community College.  Based off these experiences, I will be able to facilitate and be able to hold my fair share of work.

2. Explain in your own words your understanding of the formal report project, the peer review evaluation procedure (last page of the Formal Report Project Guidelines/Rubrics) and the step 5 questions above:
   1. What aspects of the topic are most important for you to research? Why?
   2. What are your best current options for follow-up research on this topic? (For example, new keyword or subject search options, names of experts, or cited studies/books/other sources)

The formal report project is a multi-part project that consists of a 15-page formal report, a presentation that requires a slideshow with it, a memo and a peer evaluation.  The formal report project will be about a college financing topic.  This can be anything from certain scholarships to financial aid or the GI bill.  The peer evaluation is meant to review how useful you were and the other members of the group were.  The higher the score the more points the group member will get.  This works as a multiplier.  For example, if my group gets a total of 270 points and I get a 90% from the peer evaluation I will get only 243 points or at least that’s how I think it works.

The most important aspects of the topic to research are the controversies and problems about the topic because not everybody knows about the controversies and problems of a topic.  For example, no one would think of financial aid as a topic with issues most would think about the free money that people get from it.  It’s important to know the good and bad about a particular subject.  However, if it’s about a topic that is usually associated with bad news, it would be better in this case to look up the positives of it.

The best follow-up research for federal financial aid would definitely be certain issues such as specific cases, or general issues that a lot of people have ran into.  A new keyword to use would be “problems with financial aid” or “special cases of financial aid”.

3. Review the Team Effectiveness Pit Stop form below, then answer this question: What can I do to help my team achieve 7s on the pit stop form when we fill it out in 3-4 weeks?

I can help my teammates achieve 7s on the pit stop by always encouraging my teammates and never discouraging them.  For example, I will never say that they are stupid.  I will also try to make sure that everyone is on the same page with the goals even if I am not the person who made the goal.  I will also not take complete control of the project nor will I just sit idly by when everyone else is doing all the work.  I’ll make sure that the work is split evenly.  I will also try to make sure that we are all on the same page with the solutions as well and that our solutions incorporate different ideas.  I will give out my honest feedback and receive some in return to make our project as good as it can get.  I don’t think that conflict is going to be too much of an issue in our group but when it does happen it will be resolved very quickly and maturely.  I will listen to everybody’s ideas and make sure that it is understood.  This is one of the ways that we can minimize the amount of conflict that could happen.  Along with listening to other people’s ideas I will trust my teammates in that they will do their part and if this happens conflict will be at a minimum.  If there is a better way to operate or if there is a change in plan that makes us more efficient then we will follow through with it.  I will follow through with this by pitching out new ideas and listening to my teammates ideas.

Hello Donator,

Have you been or seen a play?  Plays are pretty cool right, seeing how people act in live action rather than when its filmed where theres less pressure on them.  If you can you should donate whatever you can to the Windward Community College theater.

You should donate because it’ll make you sound like a great person and gets your name out there more.  For instance, they could rename a portion of the theater after you.  some people might invest in your business and that’ll generate more revenue for you.

Dear Dick,

In this ever-changing world of technology, it is important to stay up with the competition. As a dedicated employee I strive to excel at my job, and I am always trying to improve my performance.  I have been going to school for two years now and at the same time working my full time job.  I would like to continue doing both because I will have a computer science degree in less than a year.

I would like to ask for Tuesdays off so that I can continue to work and finish school.  It will only be temporary and this class is really difficult. It will help my job performance for serving the company in the future.