Fa-La-La-Links!

It’s December 1 (not sure how that happened) and there are already radio stations playing holiday music 24-hours a day. Here’s a few interesting pieces to help you forget that year-end is right around the corner and that you’ve already heard “Jingle Bell Rock” nine times too many.

• The student loan landscape is a tricky one. Take everything you qualify for? Take as little as you can? What’s the right amount? Joanne Jacobs at Community College Spotlight comments on the rock and hard place where students find themselves: those that are debt averse may reduce the likelihood of graduating, but many who borrow and never graduate won’t be able to pay back their loans. Jacobs’ answer is providing students with financial literacy training that helps them balance reasonable debt against future incomes.
• Today, Inside Higher Ed has a great overview of the American Association of Community College’s (AACC) new Voluntary Framework of Accountability (VFA) standards. AACC is lifting VFA up to the field as rigorous and fair measures of what works at community colleges. You can download the vetted and pilot-tested Metrics Manual here.
• Today’s Inside Higher Ed also included a counterpoint to the call for standardize success measures. Susan Bernadzikowski and Jennifer Levi, faculty at Cecil College, argue that such standards ignore the success of students who take much longer to graduate, but who are doggedly determined and do complete. We’d like to know what you think about how colleges can accelerate students’ progress through developmental education, without punishing those who, out of necessity, go at a slower pace. Bernadzikowki and Levi would like to hear from the students, faculty, and anyone else on the college front lines about what’s missing from the completion agenda discussion. They’re collecting them at Stories from Higher Ed—get your 200-300 words in by December 30 and you could be included in their book. 
• This EdWeek blog post might suggest a new topic for student success courses: sleep management tips, because not enough sleep can decrease academic performance and increase the chance of car accidents, illness, depression, and anxiety. Lesson #1: put your phone on silent when you are sleeping.