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.

Yesterday, in writing about the latest college rankings scandal on my college blog, I mentioned that the institutional pursuit of college rankings glory, has hurt millions of students in ways they can’t even imagine. Today I want to elaborate on that observation.

If you missed yesterday’s post, here it is:

Colleges and Universities That Cheat

Millions of students are adversely impacted by the rankings competition because of the actions of the audience that cares most deeply about the numbers – college presidents and their boards of trustees, and by extension, their admission offices. For these folks, US News has provided them with an easy (though deeply flawed) scorecard to measure how their institutions are faring and they are distraught if their school’s ranking stalls out, or worse, drops.

What the Rankings Don’t Measure!

Perhaps aggressive pursuit of higher rankings wouldn’t be a bad thing if the rankings actually measured what sort of job a college or university was doing to educate its undergrads. One of the perverse aspects about the rankings is that turning out thoughtful, articulate young men and women, who can write cogently and think critically won’t budge a school’s ranking up even one spot. Curiously enough, U.S. News doesn’t even attempt to measure the type of learning going on at schools.

Unfortunately, the methodology fueling the rankings are a collection of subjective measurements that students and families are supposed to rely upon to pinpoint the schools doing the best job of educating undergraduates. U.S. News relies on proxies for educational quality, but these proxies are dubious at best.

 Colleges Behaving Badly

Here are just three of the ways that the rankings hurt students and their parents:

1. Rankings encourage colleges to favor affluent students.

Many teenagers end up as collateral damage in the rankings race because schools that are more selective are rated higher, which encourages them to accept more wealthy students. US News awards schools which generate higher test scores and grade point averages from their freshmen. This focus on selectivity has been a boon for affluent high school students, who tend to enjoy better academic profiles. These teens can afford expensive test-prep courses and are more likely to have attended schools with stronger academic offerings. There is a strong positive correlation between standardized test scores and family income.

Before the rankings became so prominent, rich students typically had to pay full price for college. The majority of grants were reserved for middle-class and low-income students, who required financial help. But with the rankings premium linked to top students, private and public institutions began offering merit scholarships to entice smart, wealthy students to their campuses rather than to their competitors. How do you cough up the money for these deal sweeteners? One way is to raise the tuition price to generate extra revenue for these scholarships and another way is to reduce the financial aid to needy students.

The only schools that don’t offer merit scholarships to rich students are the institutions that don’t have to. Wealthy parents whose children get into Harvard or Swarthmore will be happy to write checks worth a quarter of a million dollars or more. The most elite schools boast that they reserve their aid to the families who need financial help to attend college, but most of these institutions offer admissions to a shamefully low percentage of needy students.

2. Rankings encourage admission tricks

US News’ algorithm also favors schools that spurn more students. To increase their rejection rates, some schools will court students through marketing materials and social media that they have no intention of accepting. Here’s another trick: some institutions have made it easy for students to apply via streamlined online applications, which are referred to in the industry as “fast apps.” Schools use this strategy to increase the size of their student body, as well as bump up their rejection rates.

3. Rankings encourage debt.

Sadly, what the rankings giant ignores is how much debt students are incurring at their schools. It’s a terrible omission that is certainly one reason why college tuition continues to defy inflation. US News rewards schools that spend freely and the rankings juggernaut doesn’t care if that requires universities to boost their prices and graduate students with staggering debt.

I wrote a longer post about this phenomenon last year for my CBS MoneyWatch college blog. Here is the link:

Blaming College Rankings for Runaway College Costs

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a fascinating article for The New Yorker last year on college rankings in which he talked about the incentive of institutions to turn their campuses into lavish palaces and stick the bill with the kids:

Finally, I’d urge you to read an article in the Washington Monthly that focuses on George Washington University, one of the countless schools that’s been guilty of this bad behavior. Here is the link:

The Prestige Racket

Read more on The College Solution:

Yawn, Harvard is No. 1 University, But Who Is Always No. 3?

Why US News’ College Rankings Are a Joke

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and She also writes a college blog for  CBSMoneyWatch and US News. Follow her on Twitter.

Join Me at My College Workshop on Saturday!

There are a few slots left for the college workshop that I will be  holding at the University of California, San Diego this Saturday (Feb. 4). At the Finding the Right College Workshop, you will learn specific strategies to increase your child’s admission chances, ways to evaluate colleges and universities, essential ACT and SAT information and, yes,  what you need to know about  college rankings!

You can learn more here and sign up for the workshop here.

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

Time is money and that is especially true when it comes to college.

College students usually don’t graduate in four years and that comes as a shock to most parents. Yesterday I devoted my college blog to explaining how families can find the four-year grad rates of any schools — and just as importantly — compare any institution’s grad rate with its peers. If you missed it, here it is:

The Shocking Truth About Graduation Rates

Today I want to share graduation statistics among general categories of schools. It should be no surprise that students at private institutions  graduate sooner than students at state universities, but there is variation within those two broad categories, according to figures that I pulled from a study from the ACT Research & Policy Issues.

State universities that maintain doctoral programs graduate more students in the traditional four years than schools where the top degree is a master’s degree.  State schools that produce only bachelor’s degrees fare better with their grad stats than state schools that produce master’s degrees. You can witness the same phenomenon with private colleges and universities.

4-year Grad Rates at Private Institutions

• Bachelor-PhD programs               52.9%
• Bachelor’s Degree Only                 48.4%
• Bachelor’s/Master’s Degrees       44.9%

4-Year Grad Rates at Public Institutions

• Bachelors-PhD Programs        29.4%
• Bachelor’s Degree Only           27.6%
• Bachelors/Master’s Degree    23.1%

State Flagships & Private Universities

Why would research-intense schools enjoy the highest grad rates?

Among public institutions, schools that fall into this category include the state flagships and they tend to accept students who arrive at college with better high school grades and test scores. I think a much bigger reason, however, is that flagships tend to enjoy better state funding than the public regional universities that offer master’s degree programs.

As for the higher success of private research universities, frankly there aren’t that many schools that fit into this list and a healthy percentage of those that do tend to be elite such as the Ivy League schools, as well as institutions like Stanford, University of Chicago, MIT and Georgetown. These elite schools are extremely wealthy and only accept exceptional teenagers (mostly of them wealthy), which explains why these students can graduate on time. You could lock these kids in a dark closet and they’d still find a way to graduate on time.

Liberal Arts Colleges

Why would schools that only provide Bachelor’s degrees enjoy better grad rates than schools that also offer master’s degrees? One reason is that a fair number of schools in this category are liberal arts colleges.  Like private research universities, the percentage of liberal arts colleges in the higher-ed universe is tiny. Many of these liberal arts colleges are selective and enjoy more financial resources than schools that offer master’s degree.

The other type of colleges are considered “baccalaureate,” which as a group are less prestigious. These colleges offer more vocational majors such as communications, criminal justice, nursing, and parks & recreation.

I explained the difference between these two types of colleges in this post:

What Size is a Small College?

As you do research on grad rates for potential schools, I’d suggest checking out my favorite place to find four-year grad rates:

College Results Online

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.

Note: I wanted to let you know that 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.

The Shocking Trust About Graduation Rates

I met a teenage girl during the fall who was excited about applying to Hampshire College.

She had visited the campus in Amherst, MA, had met professors and talked with students. She was smitten. She and her mother felt good that they had done their due diligence on the college, but then I asked them a question that drew a blank stare: Do you know what Hampshire’s four-year graduation rate is?

Overlooking Graduation Rates

They didn’t know what it was and that’s strangely common. Every year students apply to schools without ever knowing if they have a good shot of graduating in four years. Most college students, by the way, don’t graduate in what used to be the traditional eight semesters.

When I give talks out here in California and share a Power Point slide with four-year grad rates of some of the state universities, it always triggers a collective gasp from the audience. Really!

Examples:

• San Francisco State: 11.7%
• San Jose State 7.7%
• San Diego State 28.5%, which in the Cal State system is a stellar performance!

Now you might assume that students who attend a liberal arts college that costs $54,000 are going to graduate on time, but that’s a dangerous assumption. I happened to know that Hampshire’s graduation rate is strangely low for an expensive, selective school. The school’s four-year grad rate is 54.8%.

I got that figure from College Result Online, which is my favorite source for graduation rates. At College Results Online, which is brought to you by the Education Trust, you can obtain a college’s four, five and six-year rates. Here are Hampshire’s grad statistics:

Comparing Peer Institutions

One of the features that I particularly like about College Results Online is that the site will generate the names of peer institutions for you so you’ll get  a sense about whether a school’s grad rate is good or not for the company it keeps. Feeling good about Hampshire’s grad rate compared to San Jose State won’t cut it because they are entirely different institutions.

The cool part about the site’s software is that you don’t have to know what a school’s comparable institutions are. Simply hit the Similar Colleges button. When I did that in Hampshire’s case, the software generated this list of peer institutions with their four-year grad rates.

You can see that Hampshire lands at the very bottom. While Hampshire’s 54.8% four-year grad rates is alarming, it looks even worse when compared to some of its peers.

How Grad Rates Are Calculated

You should know that grad rates are a bit misleading for all schools simply because of the way that the federal government collects them. These figures only reflect the graduation rates of students who began as full-time freshmen and graduated four years later. Strangely, the federal government never tracks what happens to part-time students.

Equally odd, full-time students who end up transferring to a different college are counted as non-graduates of their original college. So obviously schools where many students leave will have lower grad rates than others. That’s clearly an issue at Hampshire, which leads to another disquieting statistic. Hampshire’s  freshmen retention is low for a highly selective private school. The freshman retention rate is only 79%. What’s with that?

When you are paying top dollar for a private college, the fact that 21% of students leave after freshman year is something to worry about.

State School Example

Now let’s look at a state university. I picked the University of Texas at Austin simply because Texas is the third biggest draw for my blog after California and New York state. In general, state flagship universities have higher grad rates than the vast majority of other public universities.

A student’s chance of graduating on time at the University of Texas, which draws a far more diverse student body, is about as good as getting “tails” on a single coin toss.  (Twenty three percent  of students at UT are low income versus 12% at Hampshire.) Most Texas students require five years to graduate.  When I see a grad rate like this, I’d want to know who is graduating in four years to assess my own child’s chances of being in that group. Far more students return for a second year at Texas.

Now let’s look at some of the Texas flagship’s peers:

There are some flagship peers that clearly possess better grad rates than UT, but in looking at many grad rates for flagships  over the years, I’d say that’s a pretty typical one.

Bottom Line:

When evaluating schools, always look at graduation rates. Even among schools of similar reputations, the grad rates can be dramatically different. Also find out what it would take at any particular school to graduate on time! Do so could ultimately save you tens of thousands of dollars.

I’m going to write more about graduation rates tomorrow.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller, (the second edition should be out this spring!) and she also has written a handy financial workbook, Shrinking the Cost of College, that’s only available on her website.

There are a lot of expensive colleges and universities in this country, but as I’ve mentioned many times before on my college blog, the sticker price is meaningless.

The only figure that matters is the college’s net price. This is the price you get after any grants (free money) that you receive from a school are subtracted from the sticker price.

The vast majority of schools in this country discount their price. And you certainly don’t have to be an “A” student to qualify! At private colleges and universities, for instance, about 88% of students have received some type of grant.

You can start doing your own research on colleges and their net prices by visiting the College Affordability and Transparency Center, which the U.S. Department of Education launched last year.

On the site you can research the financial aid practices of individual schools by checking out average net prices in different income ranges, as well other valuable information such as a school’s graduation rates, freshmen retention rates and college major offerings. To get start just hit the button on the site that looks like this:

The center has also compiled lists of the five percent of schools in different categories that charge the highest published prices and the highest net prices. The government also shares the lowest-priced schools, but those aren’t necessarily bargains. Some are low-functioning, drop-out factories.

I am sharing with you the private four-year institutions that have the highest net price. (This is certainly not a list that I’d like to be on!!)

Who’s On the List?

As you can see, there are a lot of art schools and music conservatories on the list, as well as many schools from the East Coast, as well as West Coast. I also counted five Catholic universities. The schools on this list won’t necessarily be the most expensive for your child (if you’re lucky), but you need to run the net price calculators on these and any other schools before they land on your college list.

Read More on The College Solution:

Playing Hide and Seek With Net Price Calculators