The College Solutions Blog

June 29, 2009

If you are stressing about how to pay for your child’s bachelor’s degree, the news today from an association of private colleges and universities isn’t going to make you break out the champagne at dinner tonight. In a self-congratulatory press release, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, announced that the average tuition increase among private colleges and universities...

June 20, 2009

Today I’m providing links to the three posts that I wrote this week for CBSMoneyWatch.com where I also write about college. Hey, why be a slave to one time-consuming college blog when you can have two?? 1. Three-Year College Degree In this post, I wrote about what may be a nascent trend — the three-year college degree. Since I’ve been...

June 17, 2009

Here’s a grim statistic:  Fewer than 60% of four-year college students graduate in six years. Of course, noncompetitive schools, which accept nearly all comers, drag down the national graduation rates. For instance, only 18% of students at Mountain State University in Beckley, WV, which accepts all its applicants, graduate in six years. In contrast, 97% of Harvard students have earned...

June 10, 2009

Are colleges favoring rich kids more than usual? A story in The New York Times suggests that private schools, which are hurting financially, are favoring affluent students whose parents can write fat tuition checks. The article focused on Reed College, which is an academically celebrated school that’s a magnet for iconoclastic students. With its endowment in the crapper and more...

April 21, 2009

Just thinking about what it takes to get into college today can be exhausting.  High school kids are supposed to take challenging classes, study for the dreaded SAT/ACT, round up teacher recommendation, complete applications, nag their parents to fill out financial aid forms ….it never seems to end. But today was a triumph for the two seniors who ride in...

March 13, 2009

A double major in college seems like a no brainer to many students today, who want to capture a competitive advantage in the work world. Some academics, however, argue that double majoring doesn’t necessarily provide that edge. Even worse, double majoring keeps many students from graduating on time. The double major issue came up when I was talking to a...

February 28, 2009

Earlier this month I wrote a blog post that shared a wild story about my son’s precalculus teacher. When the teacher said no late assignments, he meant it. A cancer patient who was taking his class nearly died from the wrong dose of chemotherapy, but the teacher still wouldn’t accept her late paper. I think there are many more teachers...

February 16, 2009

More than 820 colleges and universities no longer require students to submit their SAT or ACT scores to be considered for admission.While that’s wonderful news for anybody who bombs on the SAT or ACT test, there is an ugly side to the test-optional movement that you should know about. I began wondering a few months ago about whether the published...

January 24, 2009

Don’t have the money to pay for an expensive college road trip? Schools are increasingly making it easier for high school students to get a feel for their institutions without leaving their homes. That’s the conclusion that I drew after reading a new study conducted at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, which explored higher ed’s embrace of new media. Here...

December 22, 2008

An increasing number of high school seniors are deciding to skip applying to private colleges and universities because they worry that the costs will be too high in these hard economic times. That was the gist of a story in today’s New York Times. While it’s always essential to apply to financial safety schools, families could be cutting off their...