The College Solutions Blog

June 18, 2012

With the cost of college so daunting, families are understandably more interested than ever in finding schools where their children can grow academically and secure good jobs when they graduate. That’s not an unreasonable request and yet quite a bit of evidence exists that millions of students have not been learning much in college. In fact, the diplomas that many...

September 1, 2011

Is anybody else out there concerned about the popularity of vocational college degrees? I’m talking about degrees like sports management, film production, park & recreation, information technology, homeland security and communications. And, of course, the biggest vocational major of all – business. Vocational degrees have always been around. Until the mid 1960s, there was a balance between vocational degrees and...

June 21, 2011

Today I’m sharing a piece written by Scott Coltrane, the dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon, on the beauty and practicality of a liberal arts degree. The popularity of liberal arts degrees is clearly declining. According to a thought-provoking article I read this month in The New Yorker, only 40% of college students graduate with a...

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...

December 3, 2010

My daughter, who is a Spanish major, will be graduating from college in the spring and like many college seniors, she is stressing about finding a job. While the job market is still ailing, a new national survey of 4,600 employers suggests that jobs will be more plentiful for the graduating class of 2011. According to an annual survey conducted...

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...

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...