The College Solutions Blog

Valuable insights from Lynn O’Shaughnessy
a nationally recognized college expert.

Academic majors

A Dean’s Perspective: Why We Need the Liberal Arts

Today I’m sharing a piece written by Scott Coltrane, the dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon, on the beauty and practicality of a liberal arts degree. The popularity of liberal arts degrees is clearly declining. According to a thought-provoking article I read this month in The New Yorker, only 40% of college students graduate with a...

Why Too Many College Students Aren’t Learning

Earlier this year, I wrote a couple of posts about this reality: many students are graduating from college without absorbing much of an education. From a parent’s perspective that’s a lot of wasted money. And, of course, there are serious ramifications for students who have spent their college years living in a Bud Lite commercial. Here are the two posts:...

Should You Be Worried About Your Child’s College Major?

Should you be worried about your child’s future college major? Many moms and dads are. I want to share three extreme examples of parental majoritis: Parent No. 1 After hearing my talk at a high school last week, a mom confided to me that she was worried about her daughter because she didn’t know what her major would be....

The Ugly Truth About Earning a Business Degree

Is earning a business degree a waste of time? That’s essentially what I said in a piece that The New York Times published today. Here is my post: But Can They Write? The Times asked me and some higher-ed experts, including biz school deans, to write about the value of a business degree because of a story that ran in...

8 Tips for Taking the College Plunge

It’s decision time for high school seniors who typically have until May 1 to decide where they’re going to attend college in the fall. Recognizing it’s crunch time, someone at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, sent me a list of eight tips that Suzanne Holland, an ethics and religion professor at the liberal arts college, compiled. Most...

YouTube Video: Getting the Most Out of College

It’s shocking, but lots of students spend four — or more likely five or six years in college — and they have little to show for it. A bombshell of a book, Academically Adrift, suggests that 45% of college freshmen and sophomores learn little. I’ve written about this phenemonon here: Today, however, I wanted to ask my daughter Caitlin, who...

Do You Need a Coop Program to Get a Job?

I wanted to share with you a question that I received in response to my last post: Is Any College Worth $50,000? The gist of my blog post was that no school is worth a $50,000-a-year price tag and that some affluent families are looking at schools lower on the academic pecking order that provide discounts. That prompted one of...

February 23, 2011

The Best Colleges for Jobs

I have parents ask me variations of this question all the time: What are the best colleges and universities to attend that will ultimately generate jobs for my child? I think it’s rare that going to any particular school, by itself, will result in an automatic job for a new college graduate. I am willing to concede, however, that there...

February 14, 2011

6 Great Ways to Pick College Classes

In one of my college blog posts last week, I was raving about a new book, The Thinking Student’s Guide to College by Andrew Roberts, who is an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University. If you missed the post, here it is: The Thinking Student’s Guide to College Today I wanted to share just a few of the...

February 11, 2011

What Should College Admission Officers Know?

I attended a mini college conference yesterday in San Diego that was sponsored by the Western Association for College Admission Counseling (WACAC). A couple of enthusiastic young admission reps from a pair of Catholic universities back East were the presenters at one of the sessions. I wanted to share one of the questions that the reps fielded. An audience member...