The College Solutions Blog

July 31, 2013

When you are researching colleges, here is another question to ask: are the professors hard graders? Do any of the schools on your child’s list favor the anti-grading inflation policies of Princeton University? Or is your child looking at schools that are more like Brown University which has the reputation of giving out easy “A’s.” The grading policies are especially...

January 10, 2012

With crazy amounts of psychic energy being spent on getting teenagers into college, too many students and their parents think getting admitted is the hard part of the college process.  Actually, it’s not. Squeezing as much value out of the college experience once you’re a student is far more important. Unfortunately, however,  many students are graduating from college without learning...

November 10, 2011

Are college students getting smarter? If you looked at the grades they are “earning,” you might assume the answer is yes.  The average GPA in college is 3.1. At private schools, the norm is a 3.3 GPA. In contrast, the typical college student had an average GPA of 2.52 in the 1950s. (That’s just about the GPA that my dad,...

June 9, 2011

Earlier this year, I wrote a couple of posts about this reality:  many students are graduating from college without absorbing much of an education. From a parent’s perspective that’s a lot of wasted money. And, of course, there are serious ramifications for students who have spent their college years living in a Bud Lite commercial. Here are the two posts:...

February 21, 2011

Last month, I wrote a couple of posts about this reality:  many students are graduating from college without absorbing much of an education. From a parent’s perspective that’s a lot of wasted money. And, of course, there are serious ramifications for students who have spent their college years living in a Bud Lite commercial. Here are the two posts: Do...

December 13, 2010

Ivy League schools always hog the top spots in the college rankings, but are Ivy League professors the best teachers? Heck no. I’ve written a college blog post for CBS MoneyWatch that reveals that the undergrads who attend Ivy League schools aren’t nearly as happy with their teachers as you might expect. I drew that conclusion after looking at the...

February 28, 2009

Earlier this month I wrote a blog post that shared a wild story about my son’s precalculus teacher. When the teacher said no late assignments, he meant it. A cancer patient who was taking his class nearly died from the wrong dose of chemotherapy, but the teacher still wouldn’t accept her late paper. I think there are many more teachers...

February 19, 2009

My son Ben, who is a junior in high school, is taking a pre-calculus class at a San Diego community college a couple of nights a week. After the first class, Ben told me that the professor explained quite dramatically that he would not accept any excuses for late assignments. To illustrate how serious he was about this edict, the...