The College Solutions Blog

June 24, 2016

As recently as the early 1990s, most students did not take out college loans. Today roughly two out of every three students borrow to pay for college due to the runaway cost of college. The typical student borrower is now leaving school with debt of roughly $35,000. Just the outstanding federal college loan debt now exceeds credit-card debt. Keep this...

August 7, 2013

Any day now President Obama is going to sign legislation that will at least temporarily lower the interest rates on federal student loans. This might sound like a welcome development, but it isn’t because the federal government will be continuing to make huge profits off parents and students who borrow. The legislation could eventually make the financial pain worse for...

July 24, 2012

I’ve been linking my posts to the federal student aid sites for years, but I haven’t done it with any enthusiasm. These websites, which have included information about federal student loans and grants, have been disjointed and borderline unhelpful. The websites reeked of bureaucratic jargon and didn’t provide any context for federal aid programs. I felt sorry for the parents...

July 24, 2012

I’ve been linking my posts to the federal student aid sites for years, but I haven’t done it with any enthusiasm. These websites, which have included information about federal student loans and grants, have been disjointed and borderline unhelpful. The websites reeked of bureaucratic jargon and didn’t provide any context for federal aid programs. I felt sorry for the parents...

May 18, 2012

How can reduce your dependence on college loans? About this time last year, Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of FinAid and FastWeb, sent me some suggestions on how families can reduce their dependence on college loans. I am running the suggestions again along with links to some of my college blog posts that I’ve written on the same topics. Here are...

May 14, 2012

One aspect of the top story that appeared in yesterday’s New York Times shocked me. The number of students who borrow for college is much higher than I thought. I’ve routinely seen estimates that two-thirds of students take out loans for college. The New York Times, however, conducted an analysis that concluded that 94% of students who earn a bachelor’s...

May 14, 2012

One aspect of the top story that appeared in yesterday’s New York Times shocked me. The number of students who borrow for college is much higher than I thought. I’ve routinely seen estimates that two-thirds of students take out loans for college. The New York Times, however, conducted an analysis that concluded that 94% of students who earn a bachelor’s...

November 9, 2011

One of the frustrations of applying to college is the confusing nature of many financial aid awards. Even when a teenager has received a puny financial aid award, schools don’t necessarily want families to know this.  Some parents will look at a misleading financial aid award and think their child has won scholarships to cover much of the cost of...

October 28, 2011

Most of the teenagers who visit my college blog aren’t thinking yet about how they are going to come up with the cash to pay off any future student loans. High school students and their parents are more focused on getting into good schools. I don’t blame them, but payback time is inevitable. And that’s when it’s going to get...

August 19, 2011

How do you cut the cost of college? The best way to shrink college costs is to be an educated consumer. If money is an issue – and it almost always is – you need to evaluate schools to determine which ones are generous and which are stingy. Here are 10 ways that can help you shave significant dollars off...