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• February 9, 2010 02:46 PM About That Ignorance Thing

  People are very bad about planning for college. According to a report, “Planning for College: A Consumer Approach to the Higher Education Marketplace,” by MassINC, a Massachusetts think tank, paying for college is not only expensive, but incredibly complicated. This might explain why no one does it very well:

  Choosing the best savings plan is challenging. To be clear, parents are not deciding among only three savings options; each of the 50 states has at least one 529 [tax free college savings] plan. Currently, there are a 118 different 529s that anyone can access.

  These savings plans have many parts and it’s very difficult for parents to truly make an informed decision:

  They are managed by different brokerage houses, have different investment strategies, different fees, and varying records of performance. While private websites aim to help families make informed choices, parents must make decisions with complicated or incomplete information.

  What’s more, it’s very hard for families to figure out how much they’ll actually have to pay to send their child to college, despite much effort in this area. And just try to figure out the graduation rate.

  Clearly MassINC is talking about a very complicated problem with many parts to address. A little transparency on the part of colleges might help a lot, however.

  by Daniel Luzer tags college costs, graduation rates, student loans

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• February 9, 2010 02:01 PM Dartmouth Ends Generosity Policy

  

  On January 31 Williams College announced it was giving up on its no-loans policy, saying: “We are operating in unsettled and, for us all, unsettling times. It now seems prudent to reintroduce modest loans for some aided students, beginning with the class that enters in the fall of 2011.” Apparently it was not the last school. From the Chronicle of Higher Education comes news that:

  Dartmouth College announced on Monday the layoffs of 76 people and a return to including loans as part of the financial-aid mix for some students.

  The financial-aid change will affect students from families with incomes above $75,000. Dartmouth eliminated loans from all financial-aid packages two years ago and replaced them with scholarships. But the college’s president, Jim Yong Kim, said on Monday that “financial realities” had dictated the end of that policy.

  About 40 colleges instituted no-loan financial aid policies in the last decade. The endowment at Dartmouth declined by about 23 percent last year, though it still stands at about $2.8 billion.

  In announcing the elimination of student loans in 2008, Dartmouth’s then-president, James Wright, said:

  Dartmouth’s enhanced financial aid program will ensure that all our students are better able to take full advantage of the Dartmouth experience. Building on our more than three-fold increase in financial aid since 1998, I am pleased that we could make this further enhancement to our financial aid program as we seek to keep Dartmouth affordable and to enroll the most talented students from around the world.

  About 70 percent of U.S. households earn less than $75,000 a year.

  Tuition at Dartmouth College is $38,445 a year.

  by Daniel Luzer tags college costs, Dartmouth College, student loans

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• February 9, 2010 01:31 PM Direct Lending to Create American Jobs

  As the College Guide reported last week, student loan corporations are lobbying hard to prevent direct lending, arguing that the change in student loans will put Americans out of work. Well not that many Americans. According to an article in the Scranton Times-Tribune:

  The industry contends that the direct loan program would cost jobs, including at a processing center in Wilkes-Barre operated by Sallie Mae, the largest private student loan company.

  But Sallie Mae and three other lenders already have signed contracts with the government to service loans under the direct loan reform. In order to get that contract, Sallie Mae eliminated 2,000 overseas jobs and returned them to the United States. They are servicing jobs. Under the reforms, the servicing part of the industry will grow.

  In fact it looks like the student loan industry was already taking steps to eliminate American jobs. At least in Sallie Mae’s case, it looks like direct lending might actually bring more jobs to America.

  Private lenders currently make about 75 percent of student loans. Under the House bill, the federal government would essentially eliminate private lenders and school would lend federal education money directly to students.

  The more to direct lending is supposed to save save $87 billion over 10 years. This money would be used to enhance Pell grants.

  by Daniel Luzer tags economy, employment, student loan industry

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• February 9, 2010 10:00 AM Bill Gates Likes Online Learning

  

  According to an article in Business Week the Gates Foundation has essentially announced its support for online education strategies:

  In his 2010 annual letter, recently posted to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website, Bill Gates makes a pretty strong case for incorporating different elements of the Internet — specifically, online video and interactive lessons — into both K-12 and higher education. “A lot of people, including me, think this is the next place where the Internet will surprise people in how it can improve things,” he writes.

  It is a fact that “online learning,” “educational technology,” and “distance education” are buzzwords that are practically ubiquitous among today’s teachers, education gurus, and even high-profile business executives.

  There’s a difference between “buzzword” and “valuable strategy,” however. Gates, as the co-founder of one of the world’s largest computer software companies, isn’t exactly an unbiased observer when considering whether or not computers can improve education.

  In his letter about online education Gates explains how his new interest in online technology came about:

  A number of universities are already putting lectures online for free. I particularly like the physics courses by Walter Lewin and the solid-state chemistry course by Donald Sadoway, both from MIT. When I want to learn a new concept like the Carnot limit on getting usable energy out of heat, I often will watch lectures from different courses to see how it is explained and test my understanding.

  In effect Bill Gates has found that online information often makes collegiate material more exciting, for Bill Gates. If it works for Bill Gates why shouldn’t it work for others?

  But then he also discovered that going to Harvard was a waste of time and he could make six bajillion dollars in computes without a college degree. Dropping out of college has not proven nearly as effective for the rest of the population.

  Gates explains that perhaps the greatest potential for online education has to do with the way computers can make education interactive without greater additional costs. This has been the promise of technology for years. The secret is how to actually apply technology effectively. What’s the next step?

  by Daniel Luzer tags Bill Gates, technology

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• February 9, 2010 09:00 AM Students Protest Anti-Discrimination Statement

  Students at John Carroll University, a Jesuit college in Cleveland Ohio, staged a sit-in on February 3 during a break in the school’s basketball game against Mount Union College. The John Carroll students were protesting the university’s decisions not to include the protection of sexual orientation of in its anti-discrimination statement. Watch a video of the protest here:

  According to an article in Inside Higher Ed the university explained how it reached its decision: “Rather than rely on the limitations provided under current federal and state law, the university strives to achieve a much higher standard based upon its Jesuit and Catholic mission and teachings.”

  Many other Jesuit universities, including Canisius College, College of the Holy Cross, Georgetown University, Gonzaga University, Le Moyne College, and St. Louis University, include sexual orientation in their list of protected categories in their anti-discrimination policies.

  by Daniel Luzer tags diversity, religion, student life

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• February 8, 2010 08:20 PM USC Football Signs 7th Grader

  

  The University of Southern California (USC) has given a middle-school football quarterback from Bear, Delaware an athletic scholarship. The Wilmington News-Journal reports that:

  Friday morning was like no other for [David] Sills, the 13-year-old seventh-grader at Red Lion Christian Academy who Thursday night sent shockwaves through the sports world.

  Sills had made verbal commitment to accept a football scholarship from the University of Southern California upon his high school graduation in 2015.

  Sills, who is 5-foot-11 and 136 pounds, has a very strong passing arm and apparently vast leadership abilities.

  Nothing prohibits coaches from signing children to athletic scholarships. High school students routinely commit to attending colleges on athletic scholarships before they are actually admitted to the schools.

  Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan said on ESPN’s “Pardon The Interruption” that the verbal commitment by Sills was “a classic example of bad parenting.”

  Sills reportedly celebrated the scholarship by going out to dinner with his family at a Friendly’s Restaurant. Sills ordered a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup sundae.

  by Daniel Luzer tags college athletics, Delaware, funny

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• February 8, 2010 07:27 PM Como se dice “financial aid”?

  

  Some American colleges are now using Spanish-language recruiting materials to make their schools more attractive to Latino students. An Associated Press article in the Washington Post reports that:

  Some venerable East Coast universities are trying to ease that burden - and tap the booming pool of Hispanic students - by offering Spanish translations of their admissions and financial aid material.

  Bryn Mawr College, an elite women’s liberal arts school near Philadelphia, recently launched a Spanish version of its Web site. And the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania has begun conducting some college admissions sessions in Spanish.

  While this might seem a policy of limited usefulness—actual admission to (not to mention success in) these schools would seem to require a very secure command of the English language—admissions officials explain the Spanish brochures are geared toward families.

  Both Smith College and Wesleyan University now offer Spanish-language Web pages. This tactic is slow to take off, however. Even some majority Hispanic schools, like the University of Texas at Brownsville (in which almost 90 percent of students are Hispanic), still offer all materials in English.

  About 15 percent of the U.S. population identifies as Latino. Only a quarter of Hispanics between 18 and 24 were in college in 2006. About 44 percent of whites of the same age were enrolled college that year.

  by Daniel Luzer tags admissions, Latinos

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• February 8, 2010 04:18 PM Too Many Colleges in West Virginia?

  

  Like many, many other states West Virginia is trying to save money running its state university system. Earlier the College Guide reported that West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin wanted to freeze tuition at public colleges. Another way to cut costs might be just to close some of them. The Charleston Daily Mail reports that:

  Talk of closing colleges has been going on for years but was recently reignited by a Legislative Auditor’s report on the higher education system.

  The report found, when compared to other states, West Virginia maintains a relatively high number of four-year colleges and universities. The report, while it questioned if the state has the population to justify all of its 11 institutions, did not suggest closing any college.

  It may seem peculiar to suggest that a state where only 17 percent of the population has a bachelor’s degree maintains too many colleges but, according to the report: “The population density within a 25 mile radius of each baccalaureate institution does not support the number of institutions and both baccalaureate and community colleges are competing for the same students.”

  And yet, oddly, West Virginia still has the lowest bachelor’s degree attainment in the United States of America. West Virginia may be a low-population state, but it’s also a very mountainous state. In the days before the state highway system there was actually a geographical reason for numerous colleges.

  But Brian Noland, chancellor of the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, said that closing colleges wouldn’t really save the state much money. He said that shutting even one college would just force other colleges to build more to accommodate new students. Noland does not appear to have cited any numbers to support his contention.

  Both Nevada and Mississippi have considered eliminating several state colleges to save money.

  by Daniel Luzer tags college costs, state universities, West Virginia

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• February 8, 2010 03:09 PM Recession Microeconomics

  

  From the Chronicle of Higher Education comes news that students and recent graduates now display riskier financial behavior than in prior years. According to the article:

  Researchers found that students had higher debt levels than the baseline sample had reported. Among students with an unpaid credit-card balance, the average balance was $152, up from $95 in the earlier report. Among those with education debt, the average grew from $1,041 to $1,932. …The researchers found the gap between debt levels for white and minority students had widened.

  But while the study, “ Arizona Pathways to Life Success for University Students,” which follows more than 2,000 University of Arizona students, indicated that students had slightly better financial knowledge from when the study began, they were also making some very dangerous money decisions:

  There was also a large jump in the use of “risky” coping strategies, like dropping a class, postponing health care, or using one credit card to pay off another, though relatively few students reported these behaviors.

  Admittedly, spending habits at the University of Arizona, one of Playboy’s Top 10 Party Schools 2009, might not necessarily be typical of the national undergraduate population. But it’s clear that there’s a trend in the direction of both more education debt and bad coping strategies.

  It’s always hard to make responsible money decisions when the economy is tanking. It’s interesting to see that undergraduate students aren’t doing much better than the population at large.

  by Daniel Luzer tags Arizona, student debt, student loans

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• February 8, 2010 02:27 PM But What Did Students Learn?

  Auburn University reports that it’s one of the first American colleges to participate in the Collegiate Learning Assessment, or CLA. According to the Auburn press release:

  Recent results from a pioneering study involving more than two dozen colleges and universities across the nation show significant gains in the intellectual and academic skills of Auburn University students as they progress from freshmen to seniors.

  The findings were presented today to the Auburn Board of Trustees, which has supported the university’s involvement in the program for data-based measurement of student learning since the program began in 2005.

  Measuring the actual gains in knowledge students accrue while in college is one thing people who follow higher education have been interested in for many years. Colleges, however, have actively resisted making this information public.

  Auburn reports that its results “place the university in the top third of the 26 institutions that completed all phases of the four-year study.”

  At this point very few schools have completed the full study. Those 26 schools represent less than 1 percent of colleges and universities in the United States. Other schools include Ohio State University, Syracuse University, and George Washington University.

  It will be interesting to see what these other schools found when they looked at student learning over four years of college.

  by Daniel Luzer tags Auburn University, CLA, jobs training

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