The College Solutions Blog

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...

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...

November 19, 2010

When I talk to California teenagers who are interested in attending college outside of the state, their preferred destination is usually the East Coast. As a native Midwesterner it is disheartening that so many Californian teenagers dismiss so much of the country as simply real estate that makes flights from California to New York or Boston way too long. While...

September 7, 2010

My family lives in California where roughly 84 percent of the state’s college-bound students enroll in public colleges and universities here. With such a strong tradition of students staying put for college, my son Ben wasn’t surprised at the reaction he routinely received this spring when students at his high school in San Diego asked him this question: “Where are...

July 18, 2010

I’ve talked to a lot of teenagers, who are interested in liberal arts colleges as long as they are in cities or at least close to metropolitan areas. Unfortunately for these kids, many liberal arts colleges are in rural areas. My daughter Caitlin is fully aware of this reality because she attends Juniata College, in Huntingdon, PA, which is a...

June 8, 2010

I got an email this week from a California mother who was happy that her child would be a attending St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a wonderful public liberal arts college, in the fall. Her husband, however, remained skeptical. He worried that his daughter would be jeopardizing her chances of going to graduate school if she went to an obscure...

April 1, 2010

Surprise. Surprise. The Ivy League and other elite universities have just gotten even more selective. The Ivy League schools will be notifying applicants today whether they won the higher-ed lottery. And, according to some preliminary numbers gathered by The New York Times, more applicants will be receiving bad college admission news this year than ever before. Or, what is more...

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...

March 1, 2010

Which is better — a liberal arts college or a university? Last night I had a conversation with one of my nephews, who is torn between attending Truman State University, a wonderful public liberal arts college, or the University of Missouri in Columbia, which happens to be my alma mater. I’m proud of Tommy for being so thoughtful in trying...

January 22, 2010

If you haven’t seen the campy You Tube musical called “Why I Chose Yale, you might want to check it out. I imagine that watching it will only increase the anxiety of any parent or high school student who thinks Yale (or some other Ivy League school) is the only higher-ed trophy worth bagging. If you feel that way, or...