The College Solutions Blog

October 31, 2011

Do you need to graduate from an Ivy League school or other ultra elite college to earn the highest salaries? Many families believe that graduates who can put Princeton or Yale on their resume will fare significantly better financially than smart students who end up earning their degrees from elsewhere. In a famous study, two economists tackled this question about...

October 20, 2011

The college degree is the only game in town. At least that’s the way it’s been for a very long time. Most Americans believe they need a college degree to succeed professionally and the statistics certainly bear this out. College graduates earn considerably more during their careers. Among Americans ages 25 to 32, for instance, women and men with college...

October 17, 2011

I want to major in art. This is the college major that perhaps more than any other strikes fear in the hearts of parents, who worry that an art degree will condemn their children to a life eating Cheerio’s for dinner and driving old subcompacts with bald tires. The truth is there are a myriad of careers in a wide...

September 19, 2011

Parents always seem relieved when their children decide to major in something practical like business, which is the most popular major in America. While students can succeed in life regardless of their major, families often don’t take that argument seriously. I was thinking about this over the weekend when my husband and I were visiting our son, a sophomore at...

September 14, 2011

Do you have to visit a college before you apply? It’s always better if you arrange a college tour and spend quality time at schools before finalizing your list, but financially it’s often not possible. There are things you can do, however, to help you assess whether a college would be a great match while at the same time letting...

September 2, 2011

What happens when religious teenagers head off to college? It’s a issue that Alex Chediak, an associate professor of engineering and physics at California Baptist University. has given a lot of thought. In his new book, Thriving At College, he offers suggestions on how student can keep and build their faith while in college, as well as succeed in college. I’ll...

September 1, 2011

Is anybody else out there concerned about the popularity of vocational college degrees? I’m talking about degrees like sports management, film production, park & recreation, information technology, homeland security and communications. And, of course, the biggest vocational major of all – business. Vocational degrees have always been around. Until the mid 1960s, there was a balance between vocational degrees and...

August 31, 2011

Before my son Ben left to start his sophomore year at Beloit College, we talked about the advice in a chapter of The Thinking Student’s Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education. I’ve mentioned before how much I love this book and I think every college-bound student should read it. Andrew Roberts, an assistant professor of political...

August 25, 2011

This week, I’ve been focusing on colleges and universities that are pricey. Here the the posts if you’ve missed them:  Is That Flagship Worth the Price? Attending Expensive East Coast Universities The majority of students limit their college choices to schools within two hours of driving distance, but those who want to look elsewhere tend to salivate over the same...

August 11, 2011

Some things about college are easy to measure. It’s easy to determine the win-loss record of the football or basketball teams. It’s easy to find out how many kids graduate in four years. (Nationally only about 35% pull this off.) It’s easy to determine if the campus is pretty or if the dorm food sucks. It’s awfully hard, however, to...