The College Solutions Blog

November 21, 2010

I’ve often wondered why colleges and universities are so fixated on admitting students with extremely high SAT or ACT scores. Some of these teenagers only excel at taking tests and earning top grades, which can lead to awfully uninspiring young adults. I’ve heard admission folks privately lament that kids with high test scores can be duds.  If I was an...

November 18, 2010

I flew up to the Bay Area yesterday to give a college talk to a group of affluent families. I was told that some of the parents in the audience worked for Google, Facebook and other high-tech goliaths. Not all of their children, however, are necessarily as smart as they are. I expect that having high-achieving parents  can put even...

August 1, 2010

It’s been my experience that blog posts that include words like,”Best and Worst ….” or “10 Hottest….” or “20 Tips to….” will generate more traffic to your site. That’s certainly been the case with my college blog over at CBSMoneyWatch. During the past year, the most popular blog post that I wrote for  the network’s financial website was this one:...

July 7, 2010

A double major in college seems like a no brainer to many students today, who want to capture a competitive advantage in the work world. Some academics, however, argue that a double major doesn’t necessarily provide that edge. Even worse, double majoring keeps many students from graduating on time. The double major issue came up when I was talking to...

May 4, 2010

I’m going to veg out on my couch tonight and watch College, Inc., on my PBS station. College, Inc., is a FRONTLINE production that explores the explosive and controversial growth of the for-profit higher education industry. One of the universities profiled in this investigation is the University of Phoenix, which is a darling of Wall Street. University of Phoenix is...

April 20, 2010

I banged out an email full of financial advice this week to a soon-to-be college graduate, who luckily has already lined up a job. She wanted to know if she should start saving for retirement as soon as she graduates. Here’s what I told her: Absolutely! I was thrilled that this young woman was already thinking about retirement. As a...

April 19, 2010

How do you shop for  graduate school programs? With the economy still floundering, more Americans are considering attending graduate school. But how do you find the best ones? Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas A. Benton, an English professor at Hope College made a stab at answering that question. He observed that the  universities receiving the highest graduate...

March 31, 2010

What are the best and worst college majors for students who want to make the highest starting salaries? Engineering students dominate the best college majors by salary. Engineering majors represent eight out of 10 highest-paying bachelor’s degrees. The other two disciplines in the top 10 best college degrees are computer science and information sciences and systems. The best-paying college major...

March 4, 2010

I heard from some high school counselors yesterday, who were furious with me. I wrote a post for my other college blog at CBSMoneyWatch about a new study that suggests that plenty of school counselors would flunk out if they were graded like their students. In the Public Agenda survey, which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,...

March 2, 2010

Yesterday I wrote this post about liberal arts colleges: Which is Better: A Liberal Arts College or a University? At the time, I promised that I’d summarize a thoughtful op-ed piece that Sanford J. Ungar, the president of Goucher College, wrote for the special liberal arts report that ran in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Unfortunately, only Chronicle subscribers can...