NEW YORK — President Barack Obama ‘s call for a longer school day and year for America’s kids echoes a similar call he made a year ago to little effect, illustrating just how deeply entrenched the traditional school calendar is and how little power the federal government has to change it. Education reformers have long called for U.S. kids to log more time in the classroom so they can catch up with their peers elsewhere in the world, but resistance from leisure-loving teenagers isn’t the only reason there is no mass movement to keep schoolchildren in their seats. Such a change could cost cash-strapped state governments and local school districts billions of dollars, strip teachers of a time-honored perk of their profession, and irk officials in states that already bridle at federal intrusion into their traditional control over education. “If you extend the school year for, say, five days, you’re paying for another week of salaries, another week of utilities and another week of fuel for, in South Carolina , 5,700 school buses,” said Jim Foster, a spokesman for the South Carolina Department of Education. Obama told NBC ‘s Matt Lauer on the Today show Monday that the U.S. school year is too short. OBAMA: GOP would reverse education progress REPORT: Poor science education hurts U.S. economy “The idea of a longer school year, I think, makes sense,” he said. He did not specify how long that school year should be, but said U.S. students attend classes, on average, about a month less than children in most other advanced countries. U.S. schools through high school offer an average of 180 instruction days per year, according to the Education Commission of the States. That compares to an average of 197 days for lower grades and 196 days for upper grades in countries with the best student achievement levels, including Japan, South Korea, Germany and New Zealand. Many education experts say American kids should spend more time in school. “There’s a growing awareness that American kids are being shortchanged academically by the short school day and the short school year,” said Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at New York University . Today’s American kids have a long summer vacation because previous generations needed the summer off to work on family farms. Now researchers say the tradition causes a “summer learning loss” as kids put aside the books for the summer. The problem hits low-income students especially hard. A Johns Hopkins University study found that disadvantaged kids fall back during the summer break, while better-off kids hold steady or continue to learn. Charter schools that aim to bring low-income students up to grade level, such as the KIPP academies and the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City, generally offer a longer school year and a longer school day. In most cases the charter schools have leeway to set their own schedules, in part because their teachers are not covered by union contracts. At traditional public schools where teachers and other employees are usually represented by unions, lengthening the school day or the school year would be subject to collective bargaining, and more hours would cost more money. “It has to be negotiated, and it takes money,” said Janet Bass, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers . “Right now teachers and all other school staff are compensated based on the number of hours they work.” Some states embrace the idea. In Massachusetts , the state issues grants to districts with plans to constructively lengthen instructional class time, said Kathy Christie, chief of staff at the Education Commission of the States. Obama’s Education Department already is using competitions among states for curriculum grant money through its ” Race to the Top ” initiative. “The federal carrots of additional money would help more states do it or schools do it in states where they don’t have a state grant process,” Christie said. But the federal budget is hard-up, too. And while many educators and parents believe students would benefit from more quality learning time, the idea is not universally popular. Texas already forbids school from starting before the fourth Monday of August, a provision designed to save money on utility bills and increase business for tourist destinations and other summer attractions. “Ultimately the states, not the federal government, should have the final word on this and other public school decisions,” said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry . In Kansas, sporadic efforts by local districts to extend the school year at even a few schools have been met by parental resistance, said state education commissioner Diane DeBacker. “The community was just not ready for kids to be in school all summer long,” DeBacker said. “Kids wanted to go swimming. Their families wanted to go on vacation.” In some states, the school year already starts well before Labor Day and in others nearly stretches to the Fourth of July. Parents are similarly divided. Parent Irene Facciolo in Montpelier, Vt., said kids need the summer break and learn while they’re away from school. “I really feel like they need the time to regenerate,” she said. But Laura Spencer of Orlando, says she would rather have her 10-year-old daughter learning than hanging out. “Summer is a lost opportunity,” said Spencer, who believes having kids out of school for three to four months makes an already flawed education system worse. Associated Press reporters Erica Werner in Washington; Tom Breen in Raleigh, N.C.; Donna Gordon Blankinship in Seattle; April Castro in Austin, Texas; Alan Scher Zagier in Columbia, Mo.; and Lisa Rathke in Montpelier, Vt., contributed to this story. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The gender gap among college majors once dominated by men is narrowing, and younger generations of women account for nearly half of science and business graduates, a USA TODAY analysis of new Census data shows. In 2009, about 47% of science and engineering degree holders ages 25 to 39 were women, compared with 21% among those 65 and older. For business majors, about 48% of younger graduates were female — more than double that of older generations. MAP: Participation in 2010 Census FULL COVERAGE: Census 2010 VIDEO: 10 strange facts about the Census The data, released Tuesday in the government’s annual American Community Survey, come as women this year for the first time outnumbered men in the nation’s workforce of 130 million. “Larger percentages of these professions are attracting women,” says Betty Shanahan, executive director of the Society of Women Engineers. But, she says, disparities persist among strictly engineering majors, where more than four in five are men. In the sciences, women account for a majority of graduates in psychology and the biological sciences, 2007 data from the National Science Foundation show, but trail in engineering and computer science, around 18% of both majors. “Girls see (engineering) as a very ‘white male’ profession, which it is, and they don’t get messages about how they can balance their personal lives and a very exciting career,” Shanahan says. This Census tallied, for the first time, the number of bachelor’s degrees among women and men 25 years or older. Among all majors counted — humanities, business, education, science and engineering — women under 40 had greater parity among men when compared with older generations of Americans. Still, gender pay inequities persist in the workforce: Among full-time workers in 2009, the new Census data show a woman’s median earnings were roughly 78% of a man’s ($35,549 compared with $45,485). Newer Labor Department figures from the second quarter of 2010 show women earned about 83% of a man’s median weekly wage. Overall, the new Census data show more Americans are earning college degrees, a likely byproduct of the recession. Those with a bachelor’s degree or higher rose from 27% in 2006 to almost 28% in 2009.

For the typical student attending a four-year public university, the financial investment in college begins to pay off at about age 33, a report says Tuesday. Compared with a high school graduate, the typical four-year college graduate who enrolled in a public university at age 18 has earned enough by then to compensate for being out of the labor force for four years and for borrowing enough to pay tuition and fees without grant aid. Unemployment rates have increased faster among people with a high school diploma but no college degree, the report says, and college grads are more likely to exercise, volunteer, vote and read to their kids, and are less likely to be obese or smoke. “Questions have intensified about whether going to college is worthwhile,” says Education Pays , released by College Board Advocacy & Policy Center. “For the typical student, the investment pays off very well over the course of a lifetime — even considering the expense.” This is the third such report since 2004; the 2008 report was criticized by Charles Miller, former chair of a higher-education commission under President Bush , as being a “cheerleader” instead of giving “a clear and accurate picture of the dangerous financial deterioration of our higher-education system.” This year’s report says the solution is not to advise students to skip college but to provide better information and advice — and more generous financial support. “If it wasn’t clear before, it should be abundantly clear now that a college graduate is far more competitive in today’s workplace,” College Board president Gaston Caperton says. Among findings: •Median full-time earnings with a bachelor’s degree in 2008 were $55,700, $21,900 more than high school graduates. •The unemployment rate for college graduates rose from 2.6% to 4.6% between 2008 and 2009, while it rose for high school graduates from 5.7% to 9.7%. •In 2008, 8% of high school graduates 25 and older lived in households getting food stamps, vs. just over 1% of those with a bachelor’s degree. •14% of male high school graduates earned as much as or more than $65,800, the median earnings of male four-year college graduates in 2008, and about 20% of male four-year college graduates earned less than $39,000, the median earnings of high school graduates. Estimated cumulative earnings: Age High School Graduate Associate Degree Bachelor’s Degree 18 $22,724 $0 $0 19 $44,787 $0 $0 20 $66,207 $23,683 $0 21 $87,003 $46,677 $0 22 $107,194 $69,001 $25,718 23 $126,796 $90,675 $50,687 24 $145,827 $111,717 $74,929 25 $170,661 $141,208 $109,573 26 $194,772 $169,839 $143,208 27 $218,181 $197,636 $175,863 28 $240,908 $224,624 $207,568 29 $262,973 $250,826 $238,348 30 $284,395 $276,751 $268,232 31 $305,193 $301,921 $297,246 32 $325,386 $326,358 $328,274 33 $344,990 $350,083 $358,398 34 $364,024 $373,117 $387,644 35 $385,122 $398,802 $424,613 36 $405,607 $423,738 $460,504 37 $425,494 $447,949 $495,350 38 $444,803 $471,454 $529,182 39 $463,548 $494,274 $562,027 40 $481,748 $516,430 $593,917 41 $499,418 $537,941 $624,877 42 $516,574 $558,825 $654,936 43 $533,229 $579,101 $684,119 44 $549,399 $598,786 $712,452 45 $565,622 $619,403 $740,133 46 $581,372 $639,420 $767,008 47 $596,663 $658,854 $793,100 48 $611,509 $677,722 $818,433 49 $625,923 $696,040 $843,027 50 $639,917 $713,824 $866,905 51 $653,503 $731,091 $890,088 52 $666,693 $747,855 $912,595 53 $679,499 $764,130 $934,447 54 $691,933 $779,932 $955,662 55 $703,901 $795,167 $975,834 56 $715,521 $809,959 $995,419 57 $726,802 $824,320 $1,014,434 58 $737,755 $838,262 $1,032,894 59 $748,388 $851,799 $1,050,817 60 $758,712 $864,941 $1,068,218 61 $768,735 $877,700 $1,085,112 62 $778,467 $890,088 $1,101,514 63 $787,915 $902,115 $1,117,438 64 $797,087 $913,791 $1,132,898

Shopping for colleges? Location may be more important than you think, according to a new index of 75 “best cities” for college students. “The education and experiences you get extend beyond the walls of the campus,” says Kerry Lynch, senior fellow at the non-profit American Institute for Economic Research , whose 2010-2011 College Destination Index is out Wednesday. “Most students and their parents think about location in a vague way. They have a general impression of locales, but they don’t have much solid information, and it’s hard to compare one to another. And that’s what we’re trying to do — so they can get a picture of that,” Lynch says. The organization identified 222 metropolitan statistical areas with at least 15,000 students, based on U.S. Census Bureau standards, and then chose the top 75. It then ranked cities in four population categories, from the largest metro areas to small college towns. The rankings are based on 12 criteria in three general categories: academic environment (with an eye toward factors such as student diversity and degree attainment), quality of life (arts and leisure, cost of living, etc.) and professional opportunity (such measures as earning potential, unemployment rate, entrepreneurial activity). The index is “based on objective data that we get from the U.S. Census Bureau or the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics or the National Science Foundation , so it’s not colored by the schools providing data or by surveys of students and professors,” says Lynch. The index is free on the organization’s website (aier.org) ; it also is publishing a companion guide, 2010-2011 College Destinations ($10) , which profiles the top 40 cities in the index — 10 in each of the four population categories. Top 10 major metros areas (Populations over 2.5 million) 1. San Francisco 2. New York 3. Washington 4. Boston 5. Seattle 6. Baltimore 7. Los Angeles 8. San Diego 9. Minneapolis-St. Paul 10. Philadelphia Top 10 midsize metros (Population 1 million to 2.5 million) 1. San Jose 2. Austin 3. Raleigh, N.C. 4. Hartford, Conn. 5. Portland, Ore. 6. Pittsburgh 7. Salt Lake City 8. Rochester. N.Y. 9. Buffalo 10. Nashville Top 10 small cities (250,000 to 1 million) 1. Boulder, Colo. 2. Ann Arbor, Mich. 3. Bridgeport, Conn. 4. Trenton-Ewing, N.J. 5. Gainesville, Fla. 6. Madison, Wis. 7. Durham, N.C. 8. Santa Cruz, Calif. 9. Honolulu 10. Fort Collins, Colo. Top 10 college towns (under 250,000) 1. Ithaca, N.Y. 2. State College, Pa. 3. Iowa City 4. Ames, Iowa 5. Champaign-Urbana, Ill. 6. Charlottesville, Va. 7. Corvallis, Ore. 8. Bloomington, Ind. 9. Lawrence, Kan. 10. Logan, Utah Source: American Institute for Economic Research

LAS VEGAS — The annual convention of the Career College Association was just gearing up for the day Thursday when word started circulating that the U.S. Senate’s education committee planned to start this month a series of hearings on the increasing flow of federal student aid money to for-profit higher education . It was a stark reminder — in case anyone here really needed it — that the rapidly growing college sector faces a level of federal scrutiny probably unmatched since the early 1990s, when Congress approved a set of changes to the Higher Education Act aimed at reining in perceived abuses of the financial aid programs by what were commonly referred to as “fly-by-night trade schools.” Just how much today’s environment felt like d?j? vu from 20 years ago depended on whom you talked to here. To many financial analysts, investor types and others who focus on stock prices or otherwise take a short-term view, the mood was one of steady-state alarm, focused on the cloud of intensified federal regulation that has loomed over colleges for the last year. Those in this group believe that the for-profit sector has a target on its back, with a coalition of consumer advocates, short-selling investors (who profit if stock prices fall), and ideological government bureaucrats pushing an aggressive, activist agenda. To some observers who’ve worked in and around the industry longer, though, the current round of federal scrutiny (in the form of potentially tough new rules) — while unfair in their eyes — is a far cry from the ’90s, for a few reasons. First, they argue, for-profit colleges are too embedded in the fabric of higher education, and too essential to meeting President Obama’s goals for increasing the country’s college completion rates, to be dealt with in a way that would seriously damage their ability to contribute to that effort. FOR-PROFIT: Sector leads way in e-textbook use COLLEGE BLOG: New student group support for for-profit association Second, during the purge of the early 1990s, for-profit colleges were singled out for scrutiny, with policies put in place that focused specifically on reining them in. This time around, while some federal policymakers clearly have special concerns about for-profit colleges, higher education leaders in all sectors are feeling (and in many cases bristling at) heightened scrutiny from federal, state and other policymakers who see higher education as underperforming and costing students and taxpayers alike too much. “I don’t know anybody in our sector who doesn’t think that the ’92 amendments, and all the trauma they brought about, ultimately had a positive outcome and changed the nature of quality assurance in this sector for the better — though it was clearly something we resisted at the time,” said Elise Scanlon, a Washington lawyer who spent nearly 20 years as an accreditor of for-profit colleges. “Right now it’s hard to see what could come out of this round that would make things better for us, but it is clearly part of a push for better information about quality in all of higher education, at a time of increasingly scarce resources.” Mood of the meeting By many measures, the advocates for for-profit (or “private sector,” as they prefer to call it) higher education who gathered here for the annual meeting of the sector’s main advocacy group could be feeling good. Enrollments in the institutions have grown to nearly 10% of all postsecondary students, and the economic downturn of the last year has enrollments booming. The exhibit hall at the meeting here was bristling with companies of all sorts seeking to sell their services to the institutions, a reflection of their steady and sturdy growth. Bottom line (as it were), business is booming. And yet, that very same enrollment growth — and the fact that it is driven in significant part with Pell Grants and federal student loans — has given new and added urgency to consumer advocates, federal regulators, and others who believe that the for-profit institutions are charging students too much for an education of inferior quality. (A series of critical news media stories have focused on dubious practices.) Those concerns have been at the forefront of the Education Department’s push since last winter to consider a new mechanism for ensuring that vocational programs are helping their graduates find “gainful employment,” among other rules aimed at bolstering the “integrity” of the federal financial aid programs. The department’s favored approach, which would judge programs based on a ratio comparing the incomes of graduates to their monthly payments on their student loan debt, has been vehemently opposed by many career college officials, who say that instituting such a policy could force the closure of many programs and potentially cut off access to college for tens if not hundreds of thousands of students. Lobbyists for and leaders of the colleges have been feverishly opposing the gainful employment regulation (as well as some of the department’s other expected rules), arguing that department officials do not have sufficient evidence and/or justification to support the approach, urging the Obama administration to reconsider. COLLEGE: What if higher ed just isn’t for everyone? OBAMA GOALS: Community colleges like new attention They appear to have made at least minor advances in slowing down the department’s progress in recent days. On Friday, the Office of Management and Budget placed a cryptic note in the Federal Register concluding that the department’s proposed program integrity rules could have a major economic impact, a designation that requires the Education Department to strengthen the evidence it must provide to justify the need for the regulation. In announcing a June 24 hearing (and “a series” of others to follow) by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the panel’s chairman and long a critic of corporate higher education, cited on Thursday the rapid expansion of for-profit colleges and of the federal student aid funds flowing to them. “Students at for-profit institutions are borrowing more, and more frequently, than their peers at nonprofit schools, and according to the Department of Education, one in five students who left a for-profit college in 2007 defaulted on their loan within three years,” the committee’s news release said. “We need to ensure for-profit colleges are working well to meet the needs of students and not just shareholders,” said Harkin. “We owe it to students and taxpayers to make sure these dollars are being well spent.” For-profit college leaders said they welcomed the chance to tell their story. “Nontraditional students are the new tradition in higher education, and federal student aid is helping millions of working adults get the skills and abilities they need to compete in a global workforce,” Harris Miller , president of the Career College Association, said in a statement. “For these students to be successful, however, change is needed. Private sector institutions are bringing important innovations to postsecondary education, and we welcome the opportunity for a full and open exchange with the committee. These hearings will give our inclusive educational institutions an opportunity to address myths with facts and figures.” To critics of the colleges who see them as under siege from federal policymakers and others, that may sound like bravado. But it’s a view shared by some others who’ve seen for-profit higher education survive previous tough scrutiny, as in 1992. “Back then, lots of people said, ‘Oh my god, the world’s going to end, it’s going to put us all out of business,’” Nancy Broff, a Washington lawyer and former general counsel of the Career College Association, said of the 1992 renewal of the Higher Education Act. “The reality is that this is a very adaptable and resilient group of people and institutions, and they have learned to adapt. And they will this time, too.” Leaders in the sector express confidence that even as federal policymakers seek greater oversight of the institutions, they will avoid steps that could severely impair the colleges’ ability to meet Americans’ demand for higher education, especially at a time when many public institutions are cutting their enrollments because of budget gaps. The country cannot come close to President Obama’s college completion goal without help from the private sector colleges, they say. “The long-term trend is that we need more [higher education] capacity,” said Daniel Hamburger, president and chief executive officer of Devry, Inc. “In the end, I’m confident that smart people will generally find solutions that are in students’ best interests.”