College & Fraternity Life « JerseySmarts.com

Colleges Are Feeling the Pressure, Too

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

Some colleges are feeling the pressure from the recession, too. The New York Times ran an article the other day talking about how private colleges are beginning to show some concern over their projected enrollments for the coming year. In fact, while early admission enrollments are dramatically up from previous years, regular admission applications are much further down than previous years.

Admissions officers nationwide point to several possible reasons for the drop in applications. Some students have pared their college lists this year. Many more are looking at less-expensive state universities. Many institutions accepted more students under binding early-decision programs, and each such acceptance drains off an average of 8 to 10 regular-decision applications. And some experts suspect that students are delaying their college plans.

I hope that the last sentence here is somewhat correct. I wrote last April about an article talking about how more students are deciding to take time off in-between high school and college. The suggestion above by the New York Times might be the proof to the previous article.

Many students would be much better served by taking this time off and getting an internship or an entry-level job somewhere. So long as high school graduates do not begin to get themselves into a mountain of debt, the option to apply to college and begin a more rigorous study is always available. Now, of course it would not be a good idea to prolong the college activities for too long. But if high school graduates are beginning to think about alternatives to the quick entrance into college, then I think that can only be a good thing.

Besides giving the students a bit more of a real world view on issues (which is often lacking in the academy), the decline in students who immediately enter college could put colleges in a new position where they have to prove the value of their education. In other words, colleges might be put in a position to have to show how each dollar spent by a student (or his/her family) can translate into real dollars earned post-graduation.

Some forward-thinking departments at the local college are already putting these facts out there - or at least trying to generate the right numbers to put out to the public. Talk about a powerful piece of information for the college applicant. Imagine being able to look at a variety of business schools and choose from the ones that have a proven track record of creating the highest paid executives? There’s some education reform that everyone can believe in…

More »

Tags: Admission Applications, Admissions Officers, Decision Applications, Decision Programs, Decline, Drains, Early Decision, Enrollments, Entry Level Job, High School Graduates, Internship, New Position, New York Times, Previous Years, Private Colleges, Proof, Real World, Recession, Rigorous Study, State Universities
Posted in College & Fraternity Life, Money, Jobs, & Finances | 2 Comments »

Should the Four-Year Degree be Abolished?

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

Wick Sloane at InsideHigherEd.com wrote a piece on whether or not the Bachelor’s degree is relevant any more. In fact, he wrote an entire pamphlet on the topic, which is available as a free download at the previous link. Before you judge anything that I write here or the notion that a college education is obsolete, I encourage you to read the brief editorial posted at InsideHigherEd.com. One of the better parts of the editorial:

In MBA speak, the central cost driver of a college education is not health insurance, salaries, rising oil costs, or even costly academic journals. It is the four-year, 36-course structure that determines the cost of a college degree. This model, leading to annual tuitions and fees of $25,000 at public colleges and $50,000 at many private ones, crushes families with $100,000 to $200,000 in cost and debt.

Impossible to imagine the end of the bachelor’s degree packaged into four years? Most of us — households or other enterprises — from time to time take a look at the fundamentals of our budgets and ask, “Is there another way?” As an example, consider the bloodless iPod and MP3 revolution. What happened? A demographic cohort, people roughly 16 to 25 years old who wanted access to one song at a time in a form that could easily be shared among friends, revolted and created a new market when the music industry refused any modifications or price breaks.

Could something similar be brewing in higher education? Maybe a better question is whether something similar should be brewing in higher education?

I financed my own four-year degree and two-year graduate degree and saddled myself with $118,000 in student loan debt in the process. At this point in my life, I’m not bitching about the debt - it’s just a fact of life that I live with (and battle) everyday. Frankly, I think I’m doing pretty good in the battle considering that I started repaying these loans some two and a half years ago and thanks to extra payments against the principal amounts I’ve managed to lower my total amount owed to $105,000. Yeah, it’s still a disgusting number that has stifled my ability to do what other people my age are doing, but I’m making progress.

Since I received a Bachelor of the Arts Degree in English from my undergraduate institution I’ve often wondered about what a college degree really gets a person. Let’s face the facts - the world is built on networks, not on pieces of paper. It’s often a matter of who you know and how you know them that supersedes the competition of two equally qualified job candidates. Keeping this in mind, I’ve always considered my Bachelor’s Degree as my passport; in other words, I think that piece of paper is nothing more than a ticket to get on the train.

Going to college doesn’t “make” you smart. Getting a Master’s Degree didn’t “make” me smart. Sure, getting these two pieces of paper greatly increased my knowledge on a broad variety of subjects, but they didn’t create intelligence where it didn’t previously exist! I was always an excellent student and an eager learner. But high school kids don’t have the access to certain networks that college graduates have available to them.

As an Adjunct Professor at my local college, I encourage my students to take advantage of the opportunities that surround them. Become a member of a campus club, join a fraternity or sorority, take up your Professors on their offers to proofread your work or to stop in and have coffee with them during their office hours. I believe that the main purpose of going to college is to develop the types of networks that will get you ahead in life, not to keep your head stuck in a book. Granted, I do believe that college students have an obligation to be actively engaged in their education. However, the idea of what an “education” is needs to be broadened. English majors should be encouraged to take minors in Business or Information Technology. Those in the Business Department should look at minors in the Fine Arts or Art History.

This mixture of disciplines is not only good for the mind, but it vastly increases one’s social and (eventually) professional network. Unfortunately, not many average citizens can live the American Dream these days by simply obtaining a college degree and announcing to the job market that they’re ready to be employed. Let this be a suggestion to all of my college-age and high school-age readers - take advantage of your time on campus and build a diversified social network. Make the investment now and you’ll be glad that you did later.

More »

Tags: Academic Journals, College Degree, College Education, Course Structure, Fact Of Life, Graduate Degree, Health Insurance, Higher Education, Households, Insurance Salaries, Music Industry, Oil Costs, Pamphlet, Price Breaks, Public Colleges, Sloane, Student Loan Debt, Tuitions, Two And A Half Years, Wick
Posted in College & Fraternity Life, Student Loans | No Comments »

The Cost of Higher Education Continues to Skyrocket

Monday, December 8th, 2008

On Wednesday, the New York Times ran an article entitled, “College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S.” The author, Tamar Lewin, did an excellent job of wrapping up a multitude of issues into a concise presentation. Most of today’s junior and senior high school students (and, in some cases, their families) are facing a tough battle to finance a college education.

The economy is now officially in a recession, better compensated job prospects for parents are bleak, and the private lenders who offer student loans generally fall into one of two categories: part of the larger kickback scandal or no longer making student loans available. The federal Direct Loan service is still a viable option for most college students and college prospects. Yet as the sources of private student loan financing are drying up, the cost of a college education is increasing. Lewin writes:

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

That’s a scary number, huh? Tuition and fees have jumped 439% in a matter of twenty-five years while incomes have only grown by 147%. Those who research the student loan industry as well as the affordability of higher education have got to be giving a double take to those numbers. That’s frightening. More from the New York Times article:

Among the poorest families — those with incomes in the lowest 20 percent — the net cost of a year at a public university was 55 percent of median income, up from 39 percent in 1999-2000. At community colleges, long seen as a safety net, that cost was 49 percent of the poorest families’ median income last year, up from 40 percent in 1999-2000.

Even the community college option is becoming more and more out of reach for the poorest families. What incentive does an elementary school student or a high school student in a troubled school district have to achieve greater success if they can’t even afford to continue their education at the community college level?

In New Jersey, we have the New Jersey Student Tuition Assistance Reward Scholarship (NJ STARS) program. The NJ STARS program, more or less, provides a vehicle for high-achieving high school students to attend the local community college for free. If their grades are acceptable while in the program, they can receive a stipend to finish their education at a 4-year institution. It’s a good deal if you think about it. If the program existed when I was graduating high school and moving on to college, I would have jumped on it immediately. That assumes, of course, that I would have known about the program and that I had the benefit of my current hindsight.

If you have the opportunity I suggest taking a few minutes to read the article linked above. In fact, share it with any college-aged people in your family and if you live in New Jersey, be sure to bring the NJ STARS program into the discussion with your high school-aged family members.

Archive for the ‘College & Fraternity Life’ Category

Colleges Are Feeling the Pressure, Too

Should the Four-Year Degree be Abolished?

The Cost of Higher Education Continues to Skyrocket