The College Solutions Blog

September 16, 2010

When I visit college campuses, I can’t help but notice that an alarming number of students are overweight. In fact, I just read a story in The Chronicle of Higher Education, that stated that a third of college students are overweight. If your jeans don’t fit at age 20, I hate think how much your waist band will stretch by...

August 15, 2010

Saturday evening I said goodbye to my son Ben, who officially started his four years at Beloit College. I am grateful that the send-off was better than the one that Scott Bierman, the president of Beloit College, experienced years ago when he dropped his second daughter off at Kenyon College. As the drop-off day wore on, Bierman told a gathering...

August 11, 2010

I’m getting up before dawn tomorrow. My son Ben and I are catching a 6:45 a.m. flight to Chicago. Ben will be starting college on Saturday and he’s nervous. But hey, aren’t all college freshmen nervous? Coincidentally, I found a great blog post today, written by two college professors, who shared ways that college freshmen can increase their confidence. Here...

August 4, 2010

How do you outfit a dorm in advance when you can’t load the car with stuff and head off to college? That’s the dilemma that a lot of college students  face if they are attending school far from their homes — my son included. His school is 2,050 miles  from our house in San Diego and airline baggage rules are...

July 14, 2010

Are you jealous that your child is in college and you’re stuck at home paying for it? I feel that way sometimes and so do many of my friends. But when I get nostalgic about my own days at the University of Missouri, I realize that I have conveniently forgotten about a certain aspect of college life. At some point,...

May 14, 2010

What are the most expensive textbooks in America? This week I provided the answer. At my other college blog over at CBSMoneyWatch, I wrote a post that contained the names of the 12 most expensive college textbooks. The most expensive one — Acta  Philosophorum The First Journal of Philosophy  – cost $1,450 retail. The next priciest textbook is Encyclopedia of...

March 26, 2010

Where are America’s green colleges? Every year GreenReportCard.org attempts to provide the answer with its College Sustainability Report Card. There are lots of ways to find green colleges. If you visit GreenReportCard, you’ll be able to filter for  green campuses in more than 100 ways. To make the search far less intimidating, you’ll find on the organization’s home page the...

March 22, 2010

Never underestimate the ability of college students to drink. Out here in San Diego this weekend, thousands of college students on spring break participated in something called Floatopia. Floatopia drew up to 6,000 college students, who showed up with their swimming suits and beer coolers ready to dodge San Diego’s prohibition on drinking on its beaches. The students cleverly skirted...

February 28, 2010

Want to know what college students are reading? The Chronicle of Higher Education recently surveyed dozens of colleges and universities across the country to compile this top 10 college reading list. You won’t find any heavy literature on this list that includes three books dripping with zombie and vampire antics. I’d recommend reading No. 2 and No. 6. I’m on...

February 25, 2010

Beginning this week, it became much harder for college students to obtain a credit card. Many college kids who aren’t 21 yet must get a cosigner to obtain a student credit card. Frankly, I think that’s a good thing. A far better alternative to that first credit card in college is a debit card, which you can use just about...