The College Solutions Blog

December 26, 2013

I will be launching a six-week, online course called Cutting the Cost of College beginning Feb. 12. Please scroll to the bottom of this post to learn more and email me at Lynn@TheCollegeSolution.com if you want further notifications! Lynn O’Shaughnessy Before spending an obscene amount of money on a bachelor’s degree, families want to know if their children’s job prospects...

December 6, 2013

When I talked to my son Ben yesterday, he was dreading next week when he had exams, a paper and a presentation due.  It was the same story when my nephew called to chat. With so many students taking finals in the coming days, I thought I’d rerun an old post about how students can boost their chances of doing...

August 28, 2013

I created a slideshow for my college blog at CBS MoneyWatch today that shares 10 tips for writing a winning college essay. Minerva, my eight-year-old golden retriever, illustrates Tip. No. 3. Please check it out! LO I wrote the following post in August, 2011, but with college students heading back to school, I decided it was well worth running again....

March 7, 2013

Today I’m sharing a post written by David Kochanek, who is the publisher of LiberalArtsColleges.com, a site dedicated to providing students and parents with the information they need to make intelligent college decisions. In his post he examines the the beauty of pursuing a liberal arts degree from the perspective of Williams College, an elite institution, which has tracked where...

February 26, 2013

Where do the best college professors teach? This is an important question, particularly when you consider that traditional college professors are disappearing. Less than one out of three teachers on college campuses today are tenured or on the tenured track. Most college students today are being taught primarily by graduate students and part-time faculty. (See my post below about why...

February 5, 2013

Today I’m sharing a guest post from Stuart Nachbar, a former executive at a major education software company, who is the creator of a valuable website called EducatedQuest.com. On this website, you’ll find a growing number of in-depth profiles of state universities that Nachbar writes after campus visits that includes lengthy interviews. I have never seen anyone squeeze so much...

December 3, 2012

Today’s post comes courtesy of a new website, LiberalArtsColleges.com, which was created by David Kochanek after he realized that there wasn’t a single online source dedicated to all liberal arts colleges. As some of you know, I’m a huge admirer of liberal arts colleges and both of my children ended up at one.  I believe liberal arts colleges represent the...

November 28, 2012

In my last college blog post I wrote about how some colleges and universities are exploiting their nontenured professors. If you missed it, here it is: The Dangers of Being Taught by Part-Time Professors This is such an important subject for families with college-bound teenagers that I’m sharing more information courtesy of Josh Boldt, an adjunct professor and the creator...

November 26, 2012

When your teenagers reach college, who will be teaching them? Chances are excellent that many of your children’s professors will be part-timers or full-time professors without any chance of getting tenured. The number of adjunct professors on college campuses has soared in the past decade. Today only thirty percent of college professors have tenure or are on the tenure track....

November 19, 2012

Parents and teenagers are understandably interested in colleges and universities that prepare students for eventual jobs. What schools, they wonder, will give their grads an advantage in the job world? It’s a tough question to answer because the statistics that schools share about their graduates’ success in finding jobs are often wrong. To learn more about this sad reality, read...