The College Solutions Blog

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

Academics

A Job Near the Beach

Yesterday I shared the news that my daughter Caitlin graduated from college this week. And she did it in four years, which is a rare feat for today’s college students. If you missed the post here it is: Caitlin Graduates from Juniata College Today, I wanted to share what I wrote for my college blog over CBS MoneyWatch that mentions...

What is a Small College?

What Is a small college? In recent posts, I’ve been looking at the size of colleges and explaining why size matters. It drives me nuts that students routinely pick schools by size without understanding the educational ramifications of their choices. Here are my three previous posts on this subject: What’s a Medium-Sized University? What is a Research University? Do You...

What Is a Medium-Sized University?

What does it mean when a teenager says, “I want to go to a medium-sized university?” In the last couple of posts I’ve been discussing the issue of college size. Kids often base a great deal of their decision about college on its size and I’ve been suggesting reasons why that can be a problem. Here are my past two...

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...

Finishing Year One at a Liberal Arts College

I got an opportunity to visit my son Ben this weekend at Beloit College in Wisconsin and I was surprised about what he wanted to talk about when we met up for dinner. Moral relativism. Ben has been studying moral relativism in his philosophy class and he finds the concept intriguing. Over a meal of tacos and burritos (truly dreadful...

Featured image for “Do You Really Need an Ivy League Education?”

Do You Really Need an Ivy League Education?

Do you need to graduate from an Ivy League school or other super elite college to earn the highest salaries? Many families believe that graduates who can put Harvard 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 nearly...

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...