What does the financial aid look like for a school that is generous?

In my last post, I illustrated what a stingy university looks like using statistics that you can find on the College Board. If you missed the post, here it is:

Is This University Stingy?

Today I’m going to use the same tools to illustrate what a school that provides generous financial aid packages looks like.

As I mentioned in a post that I wrote last week  – Where’s the Financial Aid Cash? – it’s primarily the most elite schools in the country that provide the superior financial awards.

Washington University

Unfortunately, most of these institutions accept very few students who need a tremendous amount of aid. An extreme example is Washington University in my hometown of St. Louis, which which provides great need-based aid for its students, but few low-income students attend this institution.

Just 6% of students at Wash U. qualify for Pell Grants, which are primarily reserved for students whose families make $40,000 of less.

There was a damning story in The New York Times on Sunday that explored the underwhelming efforts of elite schools to recruit high-achieving, low-income students.

Where the prices aren’t as crazy

As an example of how you can use College Board resources, I am focusing on St. Olaf College in Minnesota because it is a school that accepts the majority of its applicants (about 60%) and offers excellent aid.

The Midwest is one of the regions of the country where you can typically find better values (i.e. lower prices) than at schools located on the East and West Coast, which tend to be the most expensive.

Exceptions to this affordability rule are Midwestern schools that enjoy extremely high U.S. News rankings, such as Wash U., University of Chicago, Northwestern U., as well as Kenyon, Oberlin and Carleton colleges. They can charge more money  because these institutions, due to their rankings, can attract plenty of wealthy families that will pay $60,000 or close to it for one year of school!

In addition to the Midwest, other more “affordable” regions are the South, Mid-Atlantic and interior West.

St. Olaf Financial Aid Stats

To access St. Olaf’s financial aid statistics, I type the name of the school into the College Board’s search engine and then click on the school’s Paying link.

That’s when I see that the school meet 100% of need, which is the ideal number.

To find additional  financial aid statistics, I click on the Financial Aid by the Numbers link. You’ll see here that 76% of undergrads applied for aid at St. Olaf and 90% of them were determined to have need. All 90% received help. All of these students got their full need met, which is excellent. Finally, you’ll see on the same page what the average need-based loan is. I don’t put a lot of stock in this figure because nearly all schools will include the maximum Stafford Loan for students seeking financial aid, which is $5,500 for freshmen.

You’ll also see what the average need-based scholarships ($28,491). You will also discover that St. Olaf gives merit scholarships to some rich students. In this case the typical scholarship is $12,670.

Bottom Line: When researching schools, the College Board financial aid statistics are a handy resource.

Wisconsin Lutheran University

Where do the best college professors teach?

This is an important question, particularly when you consider that traditional college professors are disappearing. Less than one out of three teachers on college campuses today are tenured or on the tenured track.

Most college students today are being taught primarily by graduate students and part-time faculty. (See my post below about why parents should find this alarming!)

While the cost of college has been spiraling, schools have not been sinking the money into boosting their faculty or improving the teaching.

The teaching talent (or lack of it) among the faculty is not something that families think to ask about. And frankly, if you direct questions about the faculty to a school’s admission office, you can imagine the glowing responses that you would get.  Prospective students should always ask current students their opinions of the faculty.

Rating College Professors

Northwestern College, Iowa

Today I’m sharing a resource to help evaluate faculty from the Center for College Affordability and Transparency. The think tank created the methodology for Forbes’ annual college rankings.

I like Forbes’ college ranking methodology better than US News’ methodology, but any rankings should only be used as a tip sheet. You should never believe that the rankings themselves are relevant.

I want to direct your attention to the underlying components that are used to build the Forbes list. Today I’m focusing on the data used to rate schools (there are 650 in the Forbes cohort) based on a proxy for the quality of teaching. In this case the researchers at the think tank used the millions of ratings that students have given their teachers at RateMyProfessors.com.

25 Schools with the Most Highly Rated Professors

When you look at what schools rise to the top at RateMyProfessor, you’ll find the list packed with liberal arts colleges and a few small universities.

1. Oklahoma Wesleyan University
2. North Greenville University (S.C.)
3. U.S. Military Academy (N.Y.)
4. Carleton College (Minn.)
5. Northwestern College (Iowa) (Not Northwestern University!)
6. U.S. Air Force Academy (Colo.)
7. Wellesley College (Mass.)
8. Master’s College and Seminary (Calif.)
9. Bryn Mawr College (Pa.)
10. Whitman College (Wash.)
11. Whitworth University (Wash.)
12. Wisconsin Lutheran University
13. Randolph College (Va.)
14. Doane College (Neb.)
15. Marlboro College (Vt.)
16. Centenary College of Louisiana
17. Pacific University (Ore.)
18. College of the Ozarks (Mo.)
19. Sewanee – University of the South (Tenn.)
20. Emory & Henry College (Va.)
21. Wabash College (Ind.)
22. Sarah Lawrence College (N.Y.)
23. Hastings College (N.E.)
24. Cornell College (Iowa)
25.Hollins University (Va.)

While there are a few nationally known schools in the top 25, what I like most about the list is that it contains many hidden gems. I wrote more about the schools that earned the highest professor ratings at my blog over at CBS MoneyWatch: U.S. Colleges With the Best Professors

My CBS MoneyWatch post explains how you can discover how each of the 650 top colleges and universities fared on the professor ratings, as well as in other categories.

Here is my previous post on adjunct professors: The Dangers of Being Taught By Part-Timers

I received an email the other day from a college professor that reminded me once again that many wonderful schools exist beyond the cramped clique of institutions that hog most of the media’s attention.

One place to look for promising academic opportunities can be at honors colleges within state universities. Honors colleges are fairly recent phenomenon. According to the National Collegiate Honors Council, 60% of honors  colleges were created since 1994.

Most honors colleges can be found within public universities which formed these colleges to compete for smart students who might normally attend private colleges and universities. (In this post I’ll refrain from commenting about the wisdom of siphoning state finite resources to honor colleges which do not benefit the majority of students.)

If you don’t understand what an honors college is or how to shop for one, I’d suggest reading the following article that Peter C. Sederberg, dean emeritus of the honors college at the University of South Carolina, wrote for the Peterson’s website:

An Honors Program or Honors College: Does the Difference Make a Difference?

Wilkes Honors College

Honors colleges within regional state universities, in particular, can be reasonably priced for residents and nonresidents alike. Which gets me back to the email that I mentioned at the top of the post. Chris Ely, a history professor at the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University, wanted me to know about the honors college at his university. I believe he responded after reading this old post of mine:

30 Liberal Arts Colleges In or Near Cities

Here’s what Ely said:

I am a college professor who came across your blog while looking for colleges for my daughter. I saw that you don’t have my small college listed here although I believe it deserves to be.  We’re the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University.

FAU serves an important purpose in our area, and it’s becoming a significant research university, but it’s distinctly separate from our small liberal arts college.  We’re located 45 minutes north, in the town of Jupiter, and we have an entirely separate curriculum that emphasizes both rigor and interdisciplinary learning.

We have had remarkable success stories.  Every year our undergrads move on to the top grad schools, and many of our students come back to us to tell us how they sailed through grad school after having worked so hard here.  We have produced the first Fulbright scholars at FAU in many years, as well as recipients of the Boren Scholarships  and other honors.  Because we have never been differentiated from Florida Atlantic University, we are perhaps the most hidden gem there is out there.

We are also remarkably inexpensive and we have amazing scholarships.  Please don’t take my word for it but check us out yourself. I hope you will add us to your fantastic list.

Thanks,
Chris Ely

I did a little poking around and found this additional description of the Wilkes Honors College:

National experts on honors colleges can name only one that is both university-affiliated and a free-standing liberal-arts institution: the Wilkes Honors College, operated by Florida Atlantic University on its Jupiter, Fla., campus. Established by the Florida Legislature in 1999, it hires its own faculty members, has autonomy over its curriculum, and focuses almost solely on the liberal arts and sciences.

Bottom Line:

Check out honors colleges within state universities for a more intimate learning experience. Beyond the state flagship institutions, the prices will often be quite reasonable.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price.

In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama struck a blow for higher-ed transparency.

In his address, Obama announced the release of a new College Scorecard that, he said,  “parents and students can use to compare schools based on a simple criteria: where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.”

Every school now has a federal scorecard that contains these five pieces of information:

• Costs.
• Graduation Rate.
• Loan Default Rate.
• Median Borrowing.
• Employment.

Here is what the scorecard looks like:

 Federal College Search Engine

On the same page as the scorecard is a new search engine that families can use to look for schools. It may be a bit more friendly than the one on the federal College Navigator.

Here is what the new website says about the search feature:

Users can search for a college by name or by selecting factors that are important to the student’s college search (e.g., programs or majors offered, awards offered, location, undergraduate enrollment size, campus setting, etc.). To see an institution’s scorecard, click on the institution’s name in the search results. Users may remove search criteria at any time or start a new search by using the “Back to Search” button.

Giving it a Try

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to check out the ScoreCard or the new college search engine. I suspect that are so many people trying to do the same thing today that the site isn’t working properly. I’ll try again later today.

If you do get to take the site for a spin, I’d love to hear what you think of it. Transparency is good and this should only be the beginning. We need a lot more lights shone on the higher-ed industry.

More Thoughts

Later in the day I was finally able to access the site and wrote further thoughts in my CBS MoneyWatch post:

New Yardstick: Making Colleges More Accountable

With New Scorecard, Obama Seeks to Provide  Students a Tool to Compare Colleges

Here are other posts on the new scorecard from The Chronicle of Higher Ed and InsideHigher Ed:

White House’s New Scorecard Oversimplifies Institutions, Liberal Arts Advocates Say

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of the second edition of The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price.

The steady trickle of colleges and universities that have admitted to fudging the figures that they send to U.S. News & World Report could end up changing the college rankings submission rules.

In an interview published today in Inside Higher Ed, Brian Kelly, the editor and chief content officer at U.S. News, said that the college rankings giant is considering requiring an administrator at each institution to verify that the figures dispatched to it are correct.

Schools that have acknowledged sending false figures to U.S. News in the past year include Claremont McKenna, George Washington University, Emory University, Bucknell University and the graduate program at Tulane School of Business. In my book, I mention other schools that have been embarrassed by their own rankings manipulation including the U.S. Naval Academy, Clemson University and Baylor University.

Clearly these aren’t the only schools that have fudged their statistics. In fact, in a 2012 survey of college administrators by Inside Higher Ed, 91 percent of respondents said they believed that other institutions were cheating.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

It is hard to believe that Kelly doesn’t think  that college rankings hanky panky is happening far more frequently than is reported. The staff at US News (it’s no longer even a magazine) is tiny and a source of mine told me that the employees have seen plenty of questionable data that they have never investigated.

Ways to Manipulate the Numbers

Even if an administrator has to sign off on his or her school’s data, there are plenty of ways to game the system.

Baylor, for instance, was embarrassed when the student newspaper discovered that the university, which was fixated on boosting its rankings, asked a freshman class to retake the SAT  before school year started. A freshman who retook the SAT got a $300 credit to the bookstore and those who boosted their score by at least 50 points received a $1,000-year scholarship. An administrator at Clemson shared at a higher-ed conference that the university was manipulating its stats in a variety of ways including marking down other schools as below average.

In today’s article, Jerome A. Lucido, the executive director of the Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice at the University of Southern California, noted that there are plenty of ways to game the system.

Bottom Line:

What families should keep in mind is that college rankings are deeply flawed — without or without cheating. The best ways to use the rankings is simply to generate ideas.

Learn more about college rankings:

How College Rankings Can Hurt You

No. 1 Reason Why College Rankings are Lame

Blaming College Rankings for Runaway College Costs

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of the second edition of The College Solution.

Today’s post comes courtesy of a new website, LiberalArtsColleges.com, which was created by David Kochanek after he realized that there wasn’t a single online source dedicated to all liberal arts colleges.

As some of you know, I’m a huge admirer of liberal arts colleges and both of my children ended up at one.  I believe liberal arts colleges represent the best academic choice for many, many students, but in reality less than 3% of students end up at one of these institutions.

I hope you enjoy the post:

Colleges versus Universities

Many people assume the terms “college” and “university” are interchangeable but these terms describe two very different education environments. Most students say “I’m heading off to college,” even if they are enrolled at a state university and many school titles only add to the confusion. For example, Bethel University is actually a quaint liberal arts college.

So how can you tell which is which and does the distinction really matter?

What’s the Focus?

While both colleges and universities are out to educate America’s finest, universities tend to emphasize research and advanced education programs.

Large universities boast enrollment numbers of anywhere from 30,000 and up, with class sizes ranging from 10 students in a science lab to hundreds of students in a lecture hall. Often times the focus of the faculty (and devotion of resources) goes into research projects, graduate students, teaching assistants and advanced degree programs. This is great for the graduate students and those interested in research opportunities.

On the other hand, small schools are usually undergraduate centric in their focus. They keep enrollments low, usually between 1,000 and 3,000 students. Most liberal arts colleges focus exclusively on undergraduates, which means faculty members are not incentivized to devote their energy to research programs.

Carleton College

To learn more about the difference in focus, we spoke with Eric Sieger, Director of Media and Public Relations at Carleton College. He emphasized the fact that undergraduate students get a great deal of attention at Carleton College.

“Every course at Carleton is taught by a faculty member, not a teaching assistant,” Sieger says. “A student-faculty ration of 9 to 1 ensures that Carleton students have plenty of opportunity for interaction with their professors, in class and out.”

Does Classroom Size Matter?

In big universities, where faculty focus is on research projects and graduate student programs, undergraduates may be tempted to just get by in the larger classes. This is especially true if the professor doesn’t know students by name and in cases where grades are determined by performance on tests and papers, not by participation and class discussion. Students may decide to do just enough to get the grade desired, without ever engaging with professors or classmates.

Liberal arts colleges value the interaction of professors and students. Seiger tells us, “As respected scholars, scientists, and artists, our faculty are at the forefront of their fields. But it is in the classroom that they truly shine.”

Small classes foster an attitude of learning and collaboration and make a “just getting by” approach nearly impossible. One student, Vincent Spinner of Brownsville, MN, shared how the small class sizes challenged him:

“Through small-group collaboration, I learned that our arguments proved to be stronger by combining all of our great ideas and diverse perspectives. Along the way, I learned to concede an idea that I first thought was indestructible.”

Can’t Get Lost in the Shuffle

Davidson College

Bill Giduz, Director of Media Relations for Davidson College, says the real difference between attending a university and a small liberal arts college is the close-knit community.

“What makes Davidson College special is the personal relationships between students and the outstanding faculty,” Giduz says. It is an opportunity for one on one education. “Students have access to these brilliant minds through so many channels… small classes, office hours….”

“Ninety-six percent of our students live on campus,” Giduz says.  The town is small, so students run into professors at coffee shops, the student union and other spots around town.

There is an added benefit – students are well-known on campus.

“People watch out for you here,” Giduz says. “If a student is in trouble academically or emotionally, someone is going to notice and make sure the right person finds out… You simply can’t get lost in an environment like this.”

This sense of belonging— the whole “you can’t get lost here”—is something you can’t get from reading a brochure. At a large school, one of the real risks college freshmen run is feeling like a small fish in a huge ocean. Teenagers who had been captains of track teams and heads of high school newspapers may suddenly find themselves drifting through a university campus, anonymous and uncelebrated.

Loneliness and insecurity can quickly drive students to withdraw or to engage in unhealthy behaviors. This is where being a part of a small college really makes a difference, especially in the crucial freshman year.

About the Author

Rachel Mork is a freelance reporter who covers college and education issues and frequently writes for LiberalArtsColleges.com.

Read More:

Where Professors Send Their Children to College

The Colleges Where PhDs Get Their Start

5 Reasons to Attend a Liberal Arts College