Why don’t we tell our kids the truth about success? We could start with the fact that only a third of adults hold degrees from four-year colleges. Or that you’ll do equally well in terms of income, job satisfaction and life satisfactionwhether you go to an elite private college or a less-selective state university. Or that there are there are many occupations through which Americans make a living, many of which do not require a college degree.
Which Colleges Might Give You The Best Bang For Your Buck?
A recent study took a look at each college in America and calculated the number of low-income graduates who wound up being top income earners. The study comes from the Equality of Opportunity Project and is paired with an interactive tool from the New York Times.
The Real Price Of College (Planet Money)
There's a huge gap between the sticker price and what the average student actually pays after figuring in grants and scholarships. That's true at private colleges around the country. Nationwide, the average sticker price is more than twice as high as the price students actually pay, and the gap is getting wider.
The Misguided Drive to Measure ‘Learning Outcomes’ (NY Times)
In 2018, more and more university administrators want campuswide, quantifiable data that reveal what skills students are learning. Their desire has fed a bureaucratic behemoth known as learning outcomes assessment. This elaborate, expensive, supposedly data-driven analysis seeks to translate the subtleties of the classroom into PowerPoint slides packed with statistics — in the hope of deflecting the charge that students pay too much for degrees that mean too little.
Those Hidden College Fees (NY Times)
The parade of fees on college campuses never seems to end. There are extra charges to start college, such as orientation fees and freshman fees, and extra charges to finish, such as senior fees and commencement fees. Since 1999, mandatory fees have risen 30 percent more than tuition has, said Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor at Seton Hall University who has studied the issue. The average fee at four-year public colleges was almost $1,700 in 2015-16. That’s nearly 20 percent of the tuition and fee average.
Investor's Guide To College Admissions: 10 Undervalued 'Buys'
In many respects, college admission is a classic case of momentum investing. Everyone chases the same schools, which become harder to get into and more expensive each year. But why not consider “hot colleges in the making” under innovative management?
When Choosing a College, How Should Students Gauge the Payoff? (Chronicle)
What you stand to make after college, the government is telling prospective students, ought to be a factor in how you choose that college.
College for the Masses (NY Times)
How much money should taxpayers spend subsidizing higher education? How willing should students be to take on college debt? How hard should Washington and state governments push colleges to lift their graduation rates? All of these questions depend on whether a large number of at-risk students are really capable of completing a four-year degree.
As it happens, two separate — and ambitious — recent academic studies have looked at precisely this issue.
Learn more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/college-for-the-masses.html