The College Solutions Blog

November 24, 2009

I’m going to be surprised if the soaring level of college student loan debt doesn’t become a political issue. The number of student loan defaults and delinquencies are rising. The latest statistics on student loan delinquencies are shocking.  The Student Lending Analytics Blog just crunched the Federal Reserve numbers on student loan delinquencies and came up with these dreary stats: More...

November 23, 2009

The job news is grim for soon-to-be graduating college students. Employers, according to The National Association of Colleges and Employers are expected to hire 7% fewer graduates of the Class of 2010 than they did with the last batch. With this shrunken pool of college graduate jobs, how can soon-to-be graduates get ahead in this jobless recovery? Here are seven...

November 22, 2009

Students at campuses across the University of California system rioted last week after the Board of Regents voted to increase undergraduate tuition by 32% next year. You can see video of the fee hike protest at UCLA here. I want to play devil’s advocate and suggest that tuition hikes at UCLA and the other UC campuses is a good thing....

November 21, 2009

Are college athletes getting smarter? That was the subject of one of my college blog posts for CBSMoneyWatch this week. I don’t think college athletes are getting smarter, but they are graduating from college at higher rates. In fact, the jocks manage to graduate at higher rates than other college students. I was shocked to learn that! 12 Most Popular...

November 20, 2009

Most families do not pay the sticker price for college.  In fact, most parents pay far below the published tuition. About two out of three full-time college students receive grants, otherwise known as scholarships, to attend school. If you just look at private institutions, the number who receive college scholarships is a whopping 80%. I obtained those figures by reading...

November 19, 2009

Are high school students ready for college? Many of them aren’t. According to ACT Inc., only 23% of recent high school graduates, who took the ACT test, were prepared for college. When the ACT examined its latest crop of statistics, the test maker concluded that less than one in four high school graduates was academically prepared in these four key...

November 18, 2009

Wondering if you should apply for financial aid. Here’s the answer: Yes.  You should file for financial aid. During the past few hours, I heard that advice over and over. I was on the phone for a good part of the day interviewing financial aid experts for a story about the upcoming changes to the FAFSA or Free Application for...

November 17, 2009

Here’s something else for parents of college students to worry about:  students living in coed college dorms end up abusing alcohol more. Students living in a coed college dorm are more likely to drink alcohol and they are roughly 2 1/2 times more likely to drink excessively. In a study conducted by the Journal of American College Health, 41.5% of...

November 16, 2009

You can’t hide in college forever. I’m sure that’s what millions of college students are thinking as they contemplate eventually finding a job during the worst job market since the Great Depression. One way to prepare for the inevitable leap into the dreary job market is to become entrepreneurial. Students can launch their own business while they are still at...

November 15, 2009

Here are links to my college blog posts for CBSMoneyWatch for the past week: The Horrors of Defaulting on a Student Loan In some respects, the college admission process can be fun. It’s fun to visit colleges and it’s fun to  receive acceptance letters in the mail. What’s not fun is paying for college. Sometimes that turns into a nightmare...