February 2015

Texas Institutions Take A Bite Out Of Student Debt

Posted on February 27, 2015March 13, 2015 by Brenda P. Salinas in Business, texas

Get the full story on the Texas Standard

In 2003, The Texas Legislature voted to allow public universities to set their own tuition. Since then, tuition has more than doubled and student debt in Texas has skyrocketed.

State Senator Charles Schwertner filed a bill to cap tuition and fees at the state’s public colleges and universities at their current levels. Under the bill they would only be allowed to grow at the rate of inflation. But this bill hasn’t yet come to a vote, and there’s no indication of whether that will happen.

Lauren Asher with the Project on Student Debt says that Texas is doing relatively well compared to the rest of the nation.

“Texas had lower than average than debt compared to the national, it had the 32^nd highest and was 28^th for the share of students with loans,” Asher says.

But one of the reasons why student debt is relatively low is because Texas has a higher share of students who graduate from community colleges, which tend to be much cheaper. Among students who go to 4 year colleges, debt is still a big problem. Texas is among the top states with the highest default rate on federal student loans.

Right now a lot of students rely on Federal Pell Grants, which are about $5 thousand dollars a year. But when you add in not just tuition but housing, food and books, that just makes a dent in what it costs to go to college.

Which is why two Texas institutions are tackling student debt in their own ways. Memorial Herman, one of the biggest hospital systems in Texas, made an announcement saying that on July 1^st they’ll start paying off their employee’s student loans. Ann Hollingsworth is an HR executive there.

”We’ve long had a tuition reimbursement program for people who are currently going to school but we didn’t have anything for people who had gone through school and finished who were struggling with debt,” Hollingsworth says. “We thought, well what can we do to help the people that have just graduated who won’t be going to school anymore, but who are still paying for their education.”

The healthcare field is so competitive in Houston that it just might catch on. But there’s another novel idea in the works. Michael Sorrell is the president of Paul Quinn College, an HBCU south of Dallas. The small liberal arts college is now becoming a work college to make school more affordable for students.

“Being a work college means that every student that lives on campus is required to have a job, probably the simplest way to explain is work study on steroids,” Sorrell says.

Students can perform any job on campus, from administrative positions to groundskeeping. Sorrell says that by basically having students run the school they’ll dramatically cut costs. Between Pell Grants and scholarships, he’s vowing that no student will graduate with more than $10,000 in debt. That’s less than half the state average.

How to Get a Full Turkish Immersion In Texas

Posted on February 25, 2015March 2, 2015 by Brenda P. Salinas in ARts, Austin, culture

Get the full story on the Texas Standard.

At six o’clock every evening, the Raindrop Turkish House in North Austin begins to light up. Dozens of students from all backgrounds come together to learn Turkish language, art, cooking and even calligraphy.

René Flores is a graphic designer who wanted a break from his software package for a change.

“I’ve always been interested in calligraphy and I didn’t get a lot of opportunity to do it when I was in school studying graphic design,” Flores says. “So when I heard about this, you know, it sounded really interesting to me.”

He heard about it in the Austin Community College catalogue. This is the first year that Raindop Turkish House classes are accredited by ACC. Director Ibrahim Server says that came after a six year campaign.

“After that we saw some ACC classes offered, like Foreign Language, and we went to ACC and we talked to them, Server says. “We actually complete the requirements and they also accept our Turkish classes and we start working together after that time.”

ACC doesn’t pay the nonprofit. All of its teachers are volunteers. So what does the Turkish house get out of the deal?

“ACC [helps] us find a lot of students also with a catalog with continuing courses they publish some flyers they publish this class on their websites and they help us a lot finding students,” Server says.

Raindrop House’s first function is to welcome Turkish immigrants to Texas. It’s second is to introduce Texas students to Turkish language and culture – students like Courtney Debower, who takes Turkish conversation classes.

“I went to Turkey when I was in college and I always thought it would be a fun language to learn someday,” Debower says. “So when I moved to Austin I looked at the ACC Adult Ed. Catalog and they happen to have a Turkish Class so I felt like that was a sign that I should sign up.”

Debower will get an official certificate from Austin Community College when she finishes her course.

“It’s been a lot of fun they really incorporate the cooking and the tea and the art classes and all of the culture side that goes with the language,” Debower says.

There are 17 Raindrop Turkish houses across Texas – Houston has the largest one. But Austin is the only city where the art and language classes are accredited by a local community college.

It’s a model that the group wants to export to the rest of the state.

Why Millennials Are Being Left Behind

Posted on February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 by Brenda P. Salinas in Economics

Get the full story on the Texas Standard

If you ask millennials to name some of workplace skills they should have learned in colleges, these are the answers that you’ll get:

“Email organization or running a calendar, things like that,” William Stamps says.

“Writing office memos, sending out appropriate emails,” Sophia Mackris says.

“Team management. Getting to work and understanding how to manage other people.
Mike Curry says.

“How to properly allocate your salary based on savings and long term goals,” Danny Cruz says.

Testing giant ETS is the company behind the new report. Researcher Anita Sands says millennials are behind left behind because colleges aren’t giving students the skills they need. She analyzed literacy and arithmetic skills of workers ages 16 through 65.

“Nearly two thirds of the millennials in numeracy score below what is regarded as a minimum standard,” Sands says. “And that’s a large percentage of the population to lack the skills necessary to participate in the 21^st century in both the workplace and the family and the society overall.”

She’s not talking Outlook calendars – she’s worried about millennials’ information processing skills. Like being able to read something quickly and summarize it, or making a decision on their feet.

Michael Harris says the challenge for this generation is an education system that favors workplace readiness over a robust education. He is the director of the Center of Teaching Excellence at Southern Methodist University.

“Every test we have of CEOs will tell us that they want someone who is a critical thinker, someone that can write effectively, someone that can speak coherently and these are the most valuable skills,” Harris says.

Harris says the role of college isn’t to teach you how to write office memos – you’re supposed to learn that stuff on the job.

“You can learn how to work the fax machine, you can learn how to use the fancy new technology, but that will be out of date about as fast as you learn it,” Harris says. “However, if you know how to process information, how to critically analyze new information, that’s what’s going to prepare you in the long term.”

What you’re supposed to learn to college, is how to learn, he says.

But that doesn’t help frustrated law student Sophia Mackris.

“There’s just things I don’t think we’re being taught in an academic setting, just real world life skills that we’re not being taught,” Mackris says.

It seems like everybody disagrees on how to prepare young people for careers. Educators like Michael Harris think it’s the focus on career readiness and testing that does students a disservice, while the young people in this story think it’s that lack of entry-level skills.

One thing everyone agrees on – the research. This cohort of millennials is more unprepared to enter the workforce than any other in history.

¿Quien Soy?

Posted on February 24, 2015May 22, 2020 by Brenda P. Salinas in Uncategorized

I’m Brenda Patricia Salinas Baker. I’m a trilingual public radio producer living in New York. I was awarded the highly competitive Kroc Fellowship at NPR in 2012. Since then I have reported pieces for NPR’s flagship programs, Marketplace and PRI’s The World as well as a number of podcasts including Life of the Law. I have a B.A. in Economics from Columbia University and I’m pursing my MFA in Creative Writing from The Writer’s Foundry. I was one of the founding producers of the Texas Standard, a daily news magazine show that broadcasts state-wide from KUT in Austin. I helped re-launch NPR’s Latino USA as a full-hour show and have reported original stories for the show as a freelancer. I was a founding producer of the personalized radio start-up 60dB where I reported original stories and helped publishers bring their print-pieces to audio life. I’m now working at Google where my team is re-imagining the future of radio.

I’m committed to building a media landscape where every woman of color has the power to tell her story. I am proud to be an NPR Next Generation mentor, a board member on the Association of Independents in Radio, an Advisory Council member of the PRX/PRI Podcast Creators’ Program and a coach to young woman breaking into the world of public radio. The world needs our stories.

Want to know more? Follow me on Twitter or shoot me a note. Can’t wait to hear from you!

Skoop: A Social Network That Will Only Live For 12 Days

Posted on February 20, 2015February 24, 2015 by Brenda P. Salinas in Social MEdia

Facebook has more than one billion users you can friend. Twitter has 800 million accounts you can follow. But if you want to find information relevant to a small community on those networks, you have to search for it.

Neil Patwardhan says that’s a problem. He founded a new social network called Skoop.

“The growth of macro social networks has gotten so vast that its created a perfect problem and the problem is relevancy,” Patwardhan says, “I mean theres only so many cat videos I can take in my news feed.”

Skoop is centered around specific colleges. For example, if you have a Texas Tech email account, you can login in and find events, free food, buy used books and chat with the people nearby.

Now Patwardhan is taking Skoop to SXSW – But it will only be good for Southby’s 12 days of conferences.

We’re out to prove that a micro network actually makes a ton of sense around a event so no ones ever done a social network around a event before,” Patwardhan says.

If history is any indicator, one conference is a good place to debut a new social media platform. Twitter first launched at South by Southwest Interactive in 2007. Foursquare did it in 2009.

Josh Constine says there’s a lot buzz around social networks that are small by design. He writes for Tech Crunch.

“I think there’s a lot of value and people are excited about micro networks because it means that there’s a more an intimate back and forth conversation rather than a one-way broadcasting,” says Constine.

The problem now is money, as in “how do you make any”?

If you’re a brand trying to advertise on Facebook or Tumblr, the main draw is the sheer number of eyeballs. A small network just can’t compete. Which is why Patwardhan is banking on South By Southwest.

“What you will end up finding out is after South by, having proven our model, we can actually go to event organizers and say listen you need this for your attendees, says Patwardhan,” and we would build that for you we would write label that for you for a fee.”

Right now Skoop doesn’t make any money. It’s in good company, though – Twitter waited 4 years before it turned a profit.

But Twitter didn’t pay a team of people to populate the app with content. Skoop is paying to plug 900 events to plug into its South by Southwest model.

Patwardhan wants to sell users and potential sponsors on the idea that engagement is more valuable than a wide user base.

Tech Crunch’s Josh Constine says that’s consistent with the way people use social media in 2015.

“A lot of people would say that they would rather share to a small group of people but get real feedback, say friends who really read what they wrote, and wrote something back tot hem rather than just broadcasting it out to a ton of people who only shallowly consume it and there won’t be any feedback or conversation or discussion,” Constine says.

But whether that’s a point of view that will generate any revenue, well, that remains to be seen.

Press: Nieman Lab

Posted on February 19, 2015February 20, 2015 by Brenda P. Salinas in Press

So happy to have gotten a Nieman write-up for the Texas Standard.

Here’s an excerpt:

“As a first-of-its-kind effort, if Texas Standard works, it will set a standard for a number of larger states, and perhaps attract the kind of new funders that public media needs. To be sure, many of the top public radio stations have built their own collaborations. What distinguishes Texas Standard, says Oregon Public Broadcasting general manager Steve Bass, is “having a group of stations on board before they launch.”

Texas Tech Makers Piggyback On Apple Watch

Posted on February 18, 2015February 24, 2015 by Brenda P. Salinas in Uncategorized

Get the full story on Texas Standard

Only a handful of people have actually held an Apple Watch in their hands.

Wearables have gotten a lot of hype since then, but a Piper Jaffray survey showed that of the nearly ¼ of Americans who bought a wearable, only 10 percent use theirs every day.

Quartz technology writer Mike Murphy thinks that if any company can make a wearable more – wearable, it’s Apple.

“They’re entering a market where others have failed,” Murphy says, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say we’re gonna see another cultural phenomenon shift here with the watch, but who knows what could happen with Apple.”

But you need an Iphone to use the watch and the same survey showed only 7 percent of Iphone users intend to buy an Apple Watch. That’s the same rate of people who said they’d buy an Ipad in 2012. By now even the pope has one.

Most people don’t just buy an Iphone or an Ipad. They buy a case, adapters, and speakers. Sales of Apple accessories are expected to top 5 billion dollars in 2015.

John Arrow was watching Tim Cook’s announcement. And he saw an opportunity.

“One of the great things about Apple, is whenever they release a new piece of hardware, it creates this whole ecosystem of products and people have built gigantic companies based on that ecosystem,” Arrow says.

The watch will have interchangeable straps and a 2 and a half hour active battery life. Arrow’s company went to work designing a strap that can charge an Apple Watch. It’s a big risk.

First, no one in Arrow’s company has seen the Apple Watch just yet. They have to wait until April just like the rest of us.

“We’ll be out there at 1 AM in line buying up as many as we possibly can,” says Arrow.

Apple stores reportedly ban accessory makers that base their designs on leaked information. So Arrow and his team are designing based solely on the specifications Apple made public.

Second, Arrow’s betting that people will see the battery life as a problem and see his product as the solution.

“I think even though we are the first with a way to charge the AppleWatch on the band, I think there’s going to be others, Arrow says, “What it’s going to come down to is the design, the aesthetics, and the capacity. Those factors are going to be way more important than being first to market. Being first to market doesn’t hurt though either.”

Success will lie mostly with convincing Apple to carry his product inside its stores.

It’s a gamble that could pay off. Mike Murphy.

“But I think there’s always gonna be that secondary market, that opportunist market of people looking to um make products around big selling products. I mean it’s a huge huge industry right now, Murphy says, “The peripheral business for iPods, iPads and iPhones and it’s definitely going to be that way for the watch.”

The biggest question is whether the Apple Watch will live up to the hype.

J.P. Morgan forecasts that 26 million Apple Watches will be sold – Apple factories started production on 5 million this week..

Forget Gentrification, Let’s Talk about Youthification

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Brenda P. Salinas in Uncategorized

Get the full story on the Texas Standard

It’s a cycle that makes hip neighborhoods in Texas forever young

Neighborhoods like East Austin. Nathan Hill is 31, he lives in Windsor Park.

“I moved here 13 years ago, It’s kind of hard to find Austinites now a days, but I think that’s also what makes the city Austin, a lot of people come in so there’s a lot of different opinions, I like the way the citys growing, it’s important that people come here and have fun here,” Hill says.

An urban planning study from the University of Waterloo in Canada found that neighborhoods in Houston and Austin are prime examples of youthification.

Marcus Moos conducted the study.

The problem, says Moos, is that people seem to age out of neighborhoods like Houston’s Heights or East Austin. They move out and get replaced by another wave of young people.

In East Austin, Whilelmina Delco has seen the historically black neighborhood she’s lived in since the 1960s, transformed by young whites and Latinos.

“Now that these folks are moving over here all of these improvements are taking place because we’ve become accustomed to what our communities are,” Delco says, “but now that there’s an influx of people they’re demanding the things that they left in North Austin.”

Things like better transportation, bike lanes and better roads. But the fountain of youth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“One of the issues that may come up over time is that people will find themselves having difficulties sort of aging in place, which is something, that in planning that sometimes we’ve valued in the past,” says Moos

So there might plenty of brew pubs, but not enough parks and benches. You might even struggle to find a home with 2 or more bedrooms and a backyard.

But there’s a question. What if people’s preferences are changing forever? What if this generation of young people wants to stay in urban areas their whole lives?

If people aged with their neighborhoods, that would promote more robust infrastructure. Meaning amenities for people of all ages.

Moos says it’s unlikely to happen.

“At this point, we’re not completely sure whether they’re going to stay, but when we look back historically, what we find is that a lot of these neighborhoods that now have a large share of young people, also had a large share of young people ten years ago, 20 years ago,” Moos says.

But there’s not enough data to know for sure. Which is why the University of Ottowa is taking a massive poll of young people in all the cities on its list.

So, if you’re a young person living in one of these hip neighborhoods, let us know, are you planning on staying just until you have a kid? Or will you still be drinking at your local brew pub even when you’re in a walker?

Why Sales Jobs Go Unfilled

Posted on February 13, 2015February 15, 2015 by Brenda P. Salinas in Business

Get the full story on the Texas Standard

A new report by the Harvard Business School ranked technical sales jobs the most difficult to hire for in America.

Why is it so hard to fill sales jobs? Either people don’t want to go into sales or companies are having a hard time finding the right people.

Ron Feur is the COO of Signpost in Austin. He says that even though an entry-level sales person makes between $40 and $60 thousand a year, it can be hard to find the right person for the job.

“The key difference in sales is the grit factor I think is, is incredibly important. There’s resiliency that you need as a salesperson if you think about it,” Feur says.

Salespeople hear no all the time and they have to blaze their own trail. Their paycheck is all commission, so if they want to earn more they have to sell more.

There’s some research to show that young people are particularly risk-averse. If that’s the case, then young people aren’t going into sales because they would rather have a steady income stream even if it’s less than what they could be making.

Mathew Riordan doesn’t think that’s fair. He organizes a meetup group of salespeople in Dallas called the Closers.

“That some people are risk adverse because they don’t know enough you’re always risk adverse if you don’t know enough so just to say that young people are risk adverse, I don’t think that’s fair,” Riordan says. “I don’t think anybody wants to do anything they don’t know.”

If it’s not the risk, it could be the negative stereotypes about salespeople that are affecting how many young people go into sales.

Sometimes people think of a pushy door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman or someone selling lemon cars to people who don’t know any better when they think about what a job in sales would be like.

So what can companies could do to convince more people to go into sales?

“If you want more sales people and you want them to be better, go into colleges and start educating them,” Riordan says. “Show them real sales people, I mean real professionals. Show them their paychecks I mean that will motivate somebody to learn more.”

How Craft Brews Can Take On The Big Guys

Posted on February 12, 2015February 15, 2015 by Brenda P. Salinas in Business

Get the full story on the Texas Standard

The craft beer industry brings hundreds of millions of dollars into the Texan economy every year, and the number of people it employs is growing rapidly.

Charles Vallhonrat is the executive director of the Texas Craft Brewers Guild.

“Craft beer is really blowing up nationwide and Texas is you know right there with that pace of growth if not outpacing it, says Vallhonrat, “If you look at our smaller members last year they grew by 44 percent in production volume so its tremendous, tremendous growth.“

There are two reasons behind the rapid growth: supply and demand.

The History Of Brew

In 1993 the state legislature passed a law that let brewpubs start operate for the first time – but they couldn’t distribute.

“So you could have a local restaurant and you could have brewery there and you could bottle your beer or put it on keg and people will enjoy it but you couldn’t package it up until this past legislative session when suddenly the legislature relaxed that requirement,” says UT marketing professor Ben Benson. “For just the last less than two years microbreweries have been able to produce craft beers in brewpubs and then distribute them locally or across Texas.”

Beer Snobs Unite

So they’re easier to distribute. Beer snobs like Mark Jackson like them too.

“Yeah I pretty much avoid you know the large scale commercial beers if I can but if I’m going out on the town or if I’m going to the grocery store to pick up a six pack to enjoy a dinner yeah I never drink uh any of those sort of macro breweries,” says Jackson.

His friend Jeff Surles agrees. “A good rule of thumb when you go out to order a beer is anything that has a TV commercial your not going to order that,” he says.

These guys like their beer so much that they’re willing to shell out serious bucks for it.

“You know I’ll take into account the, having been somebody that’s spent the time, money, and energy brewing and I know how hard it can be and how expensive it can be,” says Jackson, “I support that and I’m willing to pay for that so price doesn’t really have too much of a factor.”

Ben Benson says that local love is what it takes for David to take on Goliath.

“We like local brands and the craft breweries are really taking advantage of this and they are seeing this as an opportunity to overcome the big hurdle that the national beer brands represent which is the economies scale that they enjoy,” says Benson.

David v. Goliath

But the big beer companies aren’t beating a retreat. They’re attacking craft breweries on two fronts.

“The large national brands will continue to make the sizeable investments they do in national advertising because that drives a core level of purchase that is sustainable for them,” says Benson, “But the national brands that are also practicing a strategy, if you can’t fight them join them.”

It’s not unusual for brand to start out as a craft brew and then expand until it’s acquired by a big-name beer company. They retain their local brand even though their production might be outsourced to a completely different state.

That’s why beer snob Mark Jackson says it’s important to really know what you’re drinking.

“We are here at a establishment that serves Texas Beers which I think is really neat and its really cool to support your local breweries,” says Jackson.

Jackson adds these days there are so many Texas brews to try, he rarely drinks the same beer twice.