The College Solutions Blog

November 25, 2014

I watched CNN’s new documentary, Ivory Tower, last week, which has prompted me to write a depressing post for Thanksgiving week. The documentary, which filmmaker Andrew Rossi created, highlights some of the key problems that makes it extremely difficult for many college students to obtain a good education and just as importantly, to pay for it. The documentary focuses on...

February 4, 2014

Is your child interested in picking a college major based on those ubiquitous lists of the country’s highest-paying college degrees? Plenty of students are pursuing degrees that they perceive will generate the biggest salaries. I assume that’s why business is the most popular major – more than one out of every five students select it. I can’t resist mentioning that...

May 16, 2013

Parents and teenagers rightly wonder what they are buying when they invest a huge chunk of money into a college degree. It’s hard to know. We have no accurate records of what college students at a specific college or university earn, much less what kind of salaries that grads with a particular major, whether it’s art history or biochemistry, are...

December 11, 2012

Is your child interested in picking a college major based on lists of the country’s highest-paying college degrees? Plenty of students are pursuing degrees that they perceive will generate the biggest salaries. I assume that’s why business is the most popular major – more than one out of every five students select it. I can’t resist mentioning that the blockbuster...

June 1, 2012

I wrote the following college blog post last year, but I think it’s worth repeating because I believe that more teenagers (and their parents) are focused on getting into college rather than making the most of the experience once they arrive. I’d love to know what your thoughts are on this post. If you don’t mind sharing, please use the...

November 18, 2011

What students are the biggest slackers? A report released on Thursday by the National Survey for Student Engagement suggests that business majors may have earned that title. In the survey, which polled college students at hundreds of colleges and universities earlier this year, concluded that business majors and social science majors spend the least amount of time studying.  The typical...

June 14, 2011

Are we trapped in a higher-ed bubble? Some college insiders are offering persuasive arguments that we are. Reminiscent of the recent stock market and real estate bubbles, escalating college prices are continuing to reach new heights. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, average tuition in the past 2 ½ decades has risen by 440 %,...

March 11, 2011

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...

January 28, 2011

The big buzz in the higher-ed world today was the release of UCLA’s annual survey of the nation’s college freshmen. I wrote a post for my college blog at CBS MoneyWatch on the findings of the country’s most comprehensive annual survey of freshmen. Here it is: 25 Facts About Today’s College Freshmen While there were a lot of interesting revelations...

January 18, 2011

Do undergrads learn much in college? Many students don’t. That’s the conclusion of a new book that’s got the higher-ed world buzzing today. The book is Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, which was published by the University of Chicago Press. A pair of professors at New York University and the University of Virginia wrote the book based on...