I received an email over the weekend from a mom who is stressing about whether her accomplished daughter would be better off attending a liberal arts college or a journalism school.

I happen to be a graduate of the the nation’s oldest journalism school at the University of Missouri (see photo) and I’ll share some thoughts after the mom’s note. If you’d like to weigh in,  please use the box at the bottom of this  post.

Regina’s Note:

Hi Lynn,

I enjoy your college blog and I have learned volumes about how to evaluate colleges/universities.

My daughter is a junior, very bright and driven. She has a 3.94 GPA and she attends a very academically competitive Christian school. She’s a varsity level athlete in volleyball and track and field. She hasn’t take the SAT or ACT yet but from the PSAT and PLAN test she scored pretty well. Swarthmore, Reed, and Rensselaer, Dartmouth, Brown and a swarm of other universities have been writing and sending her mailers since her PLAN test in sophomore year.

She is highly involved in athletics and her father and all (4) of her uncles played college football so she has high level of appreciation for the sacrifice and discipline that comes with maintaining top academics and being a high performing athlete.  She thrives in highly charged academic environments. She wouldn’t mind the opportunity to play college level volleyball, but she would only play at a school that benefits her overall plan.

Some Possible Journalism Schools

Based on the research I have conducted from the sources you provide, I believe she would best be served at a liberal arts college since she is a very cerebral and engaging student. I think the opportunity for her to be taught by professors would serve her best overall for her future.

She has a passion, however, to have a career in sports communications/broadcasting/public relations in the industry of professional athletics.  So she had identified Syracuse University and the SI Newhouse School of Communications or UPenn and the Annenberg School for Communication.  We have discussed between the totally different approaches between these two schools. Additionally, they are world’s apart regarding providing for financial need. We are definitely in the category of a family who needs financial assistance. I am a recent widowed mother of two.

What is your advice in this situation? How can an education at a liberal arts college meet the needs of someone determined to make a career in the field of communications/public relations? Does it even matter as an undergraduate? She does plan to get a master’s in mass communication and I know that more students from liberal arts college have success with admission and graduation with higher degrees.

Oh yes, she also does not want to stay in the West. She is determined to go East Coast or  Midwest or New England area but nothing on the West Coast.

Any advice you can give is greatly appreciated. I have been studying the Carnegie Classifications and the College Results online but I’m sure any word from you will help to make the information from these sights more meaningful.

Thanks.

 My Response:

Regina covers a lot of ground here, so I’m just going to number my thoughts.

1. Obviously as a high-achieving student, your daughter enjoys a tremendous amount of options. Only your daughter can answer what type of school she should attend. She sounds like the kind of teenager who would excel wherever she lands. I think the most obvious solution would be to continue to explore both liberal arts colleges and journalism schools. Preferably you can visit and whether or not that is possible, email/talk with professors and students at those schools.

I wrote a post two years ago about this issue when my nephew, Tommy O’Shaughnessy, was debating whether to go to Missouri’s School of Journalism or Truman State University, a public liberal arts college. He is now a sophomore attending Mizzou and he’s hoping to get admitted into the J School. Here is that post:

Which Is Better: A Liberal Arts College or University?

2. I appreciate your daughter’s interest in a liberal arts college which comes with smaller classes and often far more interaction with professors. A student can make the experience at many universities more like a smaller school by qualifying for its honors college.  For instance, the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism encourages top students to apply for the MU Honors College.

3. If she attends a journalism school, ideally your daughter would be in smaller classes once she actually starts taking classes in her major. This is something she should inquire about when talking with students and professors.

4. You don’t need to attend a journalism school to obtain a job in communications. I can’t think of anyone that I work with over at my CBS MoneyWatch gig that attended a journalism school. That said, a plugged-in journalism school can help students find that first job. If you go that route, I would recommend narrowing your search to schools that enjoy tons of ties to the industry and can help with internships and jobs.

5. I question whether your daughter would need a master’s degree in communications. I’m wondering how she would benefit if she already knows how to write and communicate well? (My husband’s got a master’s in journalism degree from Columbia University as a way to get the heck out of Alaska and his dad picked up the tap.)  You might want to think hard about this, particularly with money tight.

6. Just because schools are sending your daughter literature doesn’t mean she would get accepted no matter how accomplished she is. To find out why, read this post that I wrote in September:

Should You Be Flattered By a College’s Red Carpet Treatment?

7. This is obviously a side issue, but your daughter’s chances of playing sports will improve at a smaller school. At Division I universities, student athletes can essentially become employees of the institution. They have little time for anything else and they can be limited to the major they choose because of the sports time commitment. Division III can be a superior choice for a scholarly teenager.

Here is a post that I wrote for US News & World Report on athletic scholarships:

7 Things You Need to Know About Sports Scholarships

9. Use a net price calculator. With money a concern, be sure to use a net price calculator to get a personalized estimate of what each school on your daughter’s list will cost! Here is one of my posts on these calculators:

College Cost Calculators: Getting Wildly Different Answers

8. I flew back to my alma mater in December 2010 after I was asked to be the commencement speaker at Mizzou’s J School. It was a tremendous honor and I’ll never forget it. For all you would-be journalism majors out there, you might be interested in what I had to say:

School of Journalism’s Commencement Speech

Good luck! Anybody else have any suggestions?

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller, and she also writes a college blog for  CBSMoneyWatch and US News. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

What schools produce the most undergraduates who end up heading off to graduate school?

The subject came up yesterday because a friend of mine was telling me about a brilliant teenager who wants to eventually get a PhD in physics. The student lives in California, but the mom wants him to apply to schools in the Midwest where she grew up.

I asked my friend if the teenager had checked out Lawrence University.

“Huh?”

I realize that might be your reaction, but here’s the thing – many of the schools that are feeder institutions for the nation’s PhD programs are liberal arts colleges. While most liberal arts colleges are not well-known among families with teenagers, these institutions — and their reputations — are very well known to graduate schools. Lawrence University, a liberal arts college Appleton, WI, for instance, happens to be 10th on the list among all four-year colleges and universities that produce, per capita, the most physics PhDs. (See chart below.)

PhD Feeder Schools

I bet most families assume that attending a public flagship university or a nationally-known private research university is the best ticket to graduate school. If you look at the following lists of the most successful PhD feeder schools for different majors, you will see a somewhat different story. Not a single public university makes any of the lists. The entire Cal State system, however, is considered the No. 1 producer of humanities PhD’s.

I thought you’d be interested in the list of undergraduate institutions that, per capita, produce the most PhD’s. I pulled the names off the website of  Reed College, a liberal arts college in Portland, OR, that is understandably proud of its impressive record of turning out undergrads who end up earning PhD’s. The statistics cover the years 1997 to 2006 and come from the National Science Foundation and the federal government’s education database.

On the list of schools that have the most undergrads who ultimately earn a PhD  in all disciplines, Reed comes in No. 3 behind Cal Tech and Harvey Mudd College.

As you’ll see in the first column below, seven of the 10 schools, whose graduates earn the most PhD’s by the percentage of students are liberal arts colleges.

Bottom Line:

Students can increase their odds of being accepted to graduate school if they earn their bachelor’s degree at a liberal arts college. On a per capita basis, for instance, liberal arts colleges produce twice as many students who earn a PhD in science than other institutions. That makes sense since students have more opportunities to work closely with their professors, they can actually learn more due to small classes and receive glowing recommendations from their teachers, many of which, graduated from prestigious graduate programs.

What’s even more remarkable about the prominence of liberal arts colleges on the science lists is this: many students major in other disciplines at liberal colleges while students who attend schools like Cal Tech and MIT overwhelmingly expect to pursue careers in the sciences and engineering.

I’ve attached a lengthy essay by Thomas R. Cech, a Grinnell College grad, Nobel Laureate and chemistry professor at the University of Colorado, who wrote a fascinating essay contrasting the science experience for undergrads at colleges versus universities. Cech believes science majors at liberal arts colleges enjoy an advantage over undergrads who attend universities. Here are Cech’s thoughts:  Science at Liberal Arts Colleges: A Better Education?

Read more on The College Solution:

50 Schools That Produce the Most Science and Engineering PhDs

The Shocking Truth About Graduation Rates

Getting Bad News From Johns Hopkins

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller, and a workbook, Shrinking the Cost of College. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

My Upcoming College Workshop:

I will be holding my next two college workshops at the University of California, San Diego on Jan. 28 and Feb. 4. At the workshops — you can sign up for one or both – I aim to share with you ways to help you make smart decisions about picking colleges and making them more affordable. You can learn more here and sign up for the workshops here. Lynn O’Shaughnessy

Last week our son Ben called the house wanting to know if we wanted to Skype. We usually call him every Sunday to find out how he’s doing so whenever he contacts us it’s a big surprise.

His primary reason for calling was to share with us how hard he was studying for his math final exam. He ended up having three hours to complete 10 problems and it was a brutal test.

Ben flew home yesterday afternoon and will probably sleep until noon today. I’m mentioning my son, who is a sophomore at Beloit College, because it’s providing me with an excuse to share a fascinating story that I stumbled across last week in Time Magazine about the study habits of South Korean students. In South Korea, students treat every day as if they were cramming for finals.

Students there study so much after school that there are laws against excessive studying. Here is how the article begins:

One student was quoted in the story as saying, “All we do is study, except when we sleep.”  The typical student begins classes at 8 am. and stops between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m.

Seventy four percent of all South Korean students participate in private after-school instruction. In South Korea there are more private tutors than their school teachers and the most popular ones make millions of dollars of year in online and in-person classes.

Cramming is an entrenched tradition in Asia where typically grades and test scores are what counts to succeed professionally.

South Koreans kicks American kids’ butts on standardized testing and, in fact, beat almost all other nations, but they are paying a price:

This story reminded me of an article I read several years ago in The New York Times about South Koreans’ desire to  get into Ivy League institutions. It highlights residential academies whose focus is to get students into top American universities. Their days begin at 6 a.m. and for some they don’t end until 2 a.m. when the dorm lights are turned off.

President Obama has talked longingly about the South Korean educational system and the South Koreans have talked about Americanizing their system. Too bad we couldn’t combine the American and South Korean systems of education.  Now that would be impressive.

In the meantime, if you child complains about his or her exam schedule, pull out this post.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of a workBook, Shrinking the Cost of College: Great Ways to Cut the Cost of a Bachelor’s Degree. She also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.

Do you assume that most teenagers face lousy odds of getting accepted into a good college?

Lots of families believe that the admission process is stacked heavily against applicants, but this isn’t true. I largely blame the media’s obsessive coverage of the most elite universities for that misconception.

A new report from the College Board, Trends in College Pricing 2011, however, clearly dispels the notion that colleges are impenetrable fortresses that turn away nearly all who dare apply.

If you look at the pie chart below, you’ll see that only 16% of the nation’s four-year colleges and universities reject 50% or more of its applicants. Only 2% reject more than 75% of their applicants.

College & University Acceptance Rates

College & University Graduation Rates

There is a price to pay, however, for students who attend less selective schools. The more exclusive a college or university is, the greater the chance of graduation. I’d argue that the graduation rates at more exclusive schools have far less to do with the institutions and more to do with the kind of students they attract.

The Price of Tuition

Also in the report, I ran across a breakdown of prices that families pay for tuition at state and private schools that I found fascinating. Nineteen percent of college students attending public institutions are paying less than $6,000 a year in tuition. In contrast, 8.1% of students at private schools pay more than $42,000 a year in tuition alone!

Nearly 61% of students attending four-year public universities pay less than $9,000 a year in tuition. Those figures don’t cover room/board, which, in some cases, especially out here in California,  can easily double the price. The Western states charge the nation’s highest dorm fees while the Midwest and the Southwest have the lowest.

Percentage of Student Attending Schools at Different Price Points

Cutting the Cost of College

Now that you know what college prices are like, read below for a few suggestions on how to shrink your costs:

Why Saving for College Won’t Hurt Your Financial Aid Chances

Playing Hide and Seek with Net Price Calculators

College Cost Calculators: Getting Wildly Different Answers

Qualifying for Financial Aid: How Wealthy Is Too Wealthy?

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and Shrinking the Cost of College, a financial workbook. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

What students are the biggest slackers?

A report released on Thursday by the National Survey for Student Engagement suggests that business majors may have earned that title.

In the survey, which polled college students at hundreds of colleges and universities earlier this year, concluded that business majors and social science majors spend the least amount of time studying.  The typical business student devoted 14 hours a week to homework versus 19 hours for engineering students, who were the hardest workers. Frankly, it is hard to be impressed with the average number of hours spent studying among any of the following groups, which are clustered by majors:

Weekly time spent studying

• Business majors 14 hours
• Social sciences 14 hours
• Education 15 hours
• Arts & humanities 17 hours
• Biological sciences 17 hours
• Physical sciences 18 hours
• Engineering 19 hours

While social sciences majors also spent an average of 14 hours a week on homework,  a slightly greater percentage of them (23%) studied more than 20 hours a week. Just 19% of business majors studied that hard.

Seniors spending more than 20 hrs. a week on homework

• Business 19%
• Social sciences 23%
• Education 26%
• Arts & humanities 31%
• Biological sciences 36%
• Engineering 42%

Are College Students Learning Much?

Earlier this year a couple of academics released blockbuster research, which was turned into a book, Academically Adrift, that concluded that business majors learned the least in college. Specifically, the business majors performed the poorest on national exams that tested the college students’ writing and reasoning skills. Does anybody else find it ironic that despite the poor showing, business is the most popular major? Twenty one percent of undergrads earn a bachelor’s degree.

Academically Adrift concluded that 45% of college sophomores did not show any significant improvement in writing or critical reading and thinking after two years years in college and that the same thing could be said for 36% of college graduates!

Lowered Expectations

One reason for these dismal numbers is because too many professors have low expectations for their students. And certainly those lowered expectations only encourage student not to study enough.  According to Academically Adrift, more than a third of students spent less than five hours a week on homework and the average was just nine hours! That’s beyond depressing.

I just texted my son, a college sophomore, to ask how much he studies and haven’t heard back. He told me this week that he’s ready to declare his majors and that he intends to double major in math and art while minoring in physics. It’s hard to imagine selecting more work intensive majors.

Read More on The College Solution:

Expecting More Out of College Students

8 Reasons Not to Get a Business Degree

Why Look Down on a Business Degree

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and Shrinking the Cost of College, a financial workbook. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

When you’re looking at colleges and universities wouldn’t you like to know if their students found jobs after graduating?

Wouldn’t you like to know what kind of success students at a particular school enjoyed in getting into graduate school?

Duh. Of course, you would.

Believe it or not, federal law requires colleges and universities to disclose job and graduate school placement, as well as others pertinent statistics. A new report recently released by the Education Sector and the American Enterprise Institute, however, suggests that many institutions are ignoring these disclosure requirements or doing a poor job of sharing this critical information.

A federal law passed back in 2008 (Higher Education Opportunity Act) mandated that schools provide statistics in a variety of areas, but these are the five area that the think tanks thought were of most important to policymakers and families:

• Employment and graduate school placement.
• Credit transfer policies and articulation agreements.
• Textbook prices for courses taught at the school.
• Private loans.
• Graduation rates of low-income students.

Job and Grad School Success Rates

Here is how the two think tanks summed up the employment and grad school placement requirements:

Colleges must make available to current and prospective students “information regarding the placement in employment of, and types of employment obtained by, graduates of the institution’s degree or certificate programs,” as well as the types of graduate and professional education in which their graduates enroll. In addition, colleges that advertise “job placement rates” as a means of recruiting students must provide prospective students with the most recent job placement statistics.

Searching for the Elusive Statistics

In looking for the information, the researchers examined each school’s website and if the information was missing, they called the colleges. The researchers contacted 152 public and private four-year colleges and universities to see if they were complying with the law.

Compliance was lowest for low-income grad rates – -just 25% had the stats posted. Ninety nine percent had credit transfer information for students who want to transfer to the institution.

Sixty seven percent and 60% of schools respectively shared information about employment and grad school success. A significant portion of this information, however, was vague and not helpful including attempts to meet the federal requirement by sharing alumni success stories.

The report did mention schools that provided meaningful statistics.  The Colorado School of Mines, for instance, provides employment figures for its graduates by industry and degree.

The study also shared employment from Oakland University in Michigan and Iowa State University, but the screen captures for those schools were just as fuzzy when I tried to replicate them. You can find their charts by reading the report, The Truth Behind Higher Education Disclosure Laws.

State Statistics on Employment Success at Universities

The study also noted that some states, such as the Arizona Board of Regents and the state of Florida, are sharing employment information for public universities, which is an excellent practice.

 Job Placement Stats at Florida’s Public Universities

Job Placement Stats at Arizona’s Public Universities

Bottom Line:

When researching colleges and universities, inquire about a school’s grad school and job placement rate. With any luck, you’ll be directed to meaningful information. Also check to see if a particular state collects them.  In the meantime, let’s hope Congress rewrites the provisions to make sure the job statistics that schools do share are required to be helpful.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller, and she has just released an eBook, Shrinking the Cost of College: 152 Ways to Cut the Cost of a Bachelor’s Degree. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook.