The College Solutions Blog

September 15, 2009

What are the best colleges in America? Not so fast with your answer. The best colleges aren’t always the ones that enjoy the biggest, shiniest name brands and monopolize the rankings. So how do you find the colleges and universities that do a fantastic — if unheralded — job of educating students? You’re going to have to dig a little...

January 22, 2009

This is an exciting and nerve wracking time of year for high school seniors as they contemplate getting acceptance packages in the mail. Before making their final decisions, however, high schoolers should examine the freshmen retention rates of the colleges and universities remaining on their list. They should be extremely leery if any of their favorites has experienced a mass...

October 7, 2008

I promised in my last blog that I would devote my next one to learning communities. So I called my nephew Kevin O’Shaughnessy tonight before the presidential debate got started. I wanted to talk to Kevin, who is a freshman at the University of Missouri, about his learning community. Mizzou, as well as an increasing number of schools across the...

October 6, 2008

I’ve always been a nag about college rankings. It’s unfortunate that the first yardstick that many families grab when they are measuring schools is the annual US college rankings by U.S. News & World Reports. Simply whining about college rankings, however, isn’t very helpful, which is why I’m excited about a new report that was released today by the Association...