Jonah and I are sick as dogs this morning. I think it's strep throat, but I have to wait until 8:30 to set up doctor's appointments for us. In the meantime, I'm playing with Obama's College Scorecard.
I started getting sick on Monday night, so I wasn't completely conscious during all of Obama's State of the Union speech, but my ears picked up when he said that he was putting together a interactive College Scorecard, which will inform students about which colleges provide them with the most "bang for their buck."
Wahoo!!! Love this.
At first, I was a little worried about what data that was going to go into the chart. Also, I thought that choosing schools doesn't necessarily need a fancy chart, just common sense rules. Some helpful rules:
- Don't get an AA degree anywhere but at a super cheap community college. Go to a local community college, live at home, and get a part time job.
- Don't take out anymore than $15,000 in loans.
- Try your damnest to get done in four years.
- Don't choose a school based on the college atmosphere.
- Never get a Masters Degree in anything, except if it is guarenteed to increase your salary.
- Never get a PhD in anything.
- Never get any degree in a profession that doesn't require a degree. (You don't need an AA degree in party planning, for example.)
- I would like to tell people to avoid schools where the professors don't actually teach any courses, but it's hard to find positive examples anymore.
That said, some people really don't know which schools are ripping them off and which ones aren't. I can tell right away, but not everybody has that experience.
I'm playing with Obama's College Scorecard this morning. It's a little buggy, but it's interesting. I like how it focused in on the variables that I think are the most important – finishing in six years, student default rate, and all that. What do you think?
Apt. 11d 
All your tips were great Laura.And I agree limiting debt is so important- I really worry about young people who go into so much debt when they plan on going into a career where it will take their whole lives to pay it off.My worry is that many 18-20 yr olds won’t listen to these tips or Obama’s “bang for your buck” site. As a parent of almost teenagers, I already worry how I will handle it if they want to go to a college that will be financially iffy for them (maybe one where students can’t get the classes they need to graduate and end up being there for 6 years). Do you outright say no? (of course, I’ll plan to guide their choices in the first place and hope to steer them away from colleges that won’t work from a financial or personal standpoint but sometimes teens don’t heed parental advice).
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Do you outright say no? Of course, you do.
My kid will be going to college with MY money. We won’t give him to money to go to an Animal House school. Just not happening. Our money will go to a school that has real professors, not slaves, teaching him. He will have a job. He will commute to school if it will save money. He will study his ass off and get scholarships. End of story.
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“Do you outright say no? Of course, you do.”
A lot of the really bad stories involving parents cosigning for the huge loans, so it is possible to refuse to cosign and avoid at least some of the trainwrecks.
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Personally I thought the score card was very cool, however I worry about how all this data is going to benefit us.
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The data isn’t going to benefit anyone. It will be gamed just like the U.S. News rankings are gamed.
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The only good reason to go to Chico State is if you can live at home and commute. Also, never go to any school whose student fees are paying for a $50 million stadium.
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I think the advice is realistic. But, I think it’ll be another example of separating the 99% from the rest.
If enough families make those decisions, it’ll hollow out a broad swathe of middle tier schools. What will they do? My guess, is, the first budget cutting will be in the labor force. Was it you — laura — who tweeted a link to a report showing that investment in sports arenas and health clubs pay off for those middle tier schools, economically? Your short list is to tell people not to chose colleges that way, but I don’t know that the consumption decisions will skew enough to shift the economics.
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•Don’t choose a school based on the college atmosphere
I don’t really agree with that one. You wouldn’t choose a job without regard to the atmosphere. It seems harsh to tell an 18 year old to live in an unpleasant environment for the next four years.
Also, there needs to be a more complicated set of rules for Ph.D.s:
1. Don’t spend any money on a Ph.D.–if you can’t get a free ride, you won’t be able to get a job.
2. Don’t go to a school that isn’t one of the top ten in the field.
3. If possible, get a degree that could get you a non-academic job (e.g., Economics), not something that doesn’t exist outside the academy.
Most of Laura’s other rules I agree with.
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Every family should carefully consider finances. However, don’t assume that the “expensive privates” are more expensive than publics.
Amherst College:
Cost: 17,574 per year
96.3% graduate
1.3% default
typical borrowing: $10,569
UMass Amherst:
$16,145 per year
67.4% graduate
4.1% default
typical borrowing: $19,680
I assume Amherst has more families who pay in full, without borrowing. Or they take out a second mortgage, rather than a non-dischargeable student loan.
In any case, families should encourage their kids who have scores in-range to at least apply to a few “super-reaches.” They can be less expensive than the colleges with lower sticker prices.
The students should also look for merit scholarships. How much college costs depends upon the student. A student who tests well enough to be a National Merit Finalist could be looking at an entirely different array of costs than a student whose SAT scores are at the national average.
A current list compiled by parents of NMF scholarships: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/15297679-post727.html
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“You wouldn’t choose a job without regard to the atmosphere. It seems harsh to tell an 18 year old to live in an unpleasant environment for the next four years.”
It doesn’t have to be unpleasant, but it also doesn’t have to look like an Ivy league school with spa-like amenities. The dorms can be made out of cinder blocks. Twenty kids can share a bathroom. They don’t need extensive landscaping and faux Gothic buildings. All that is crap. It is completely bullshit that a generation of kids thinks they deserve a Harvard atmosphere, even if they weren’t good enough students to get into Harvard. That’s why kids are piling up huge amounts of debt at colleges that are more spa, than school. It has also created a whole generation of pansy-assed kids who are too spoiled and too entitled to get a job out of college.
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I agree with most of your “common sense” advice. But I’m extremely worried about the scorecard. Not so much the “buck” part (which is self-evidently measurable for the most part) as the “bang” part.
How do you measure “bang”? I think you can’t, at least not without reducing it to numbers like employment rates and, most concerning of all, salaries. What if some of the most important benefits of a college education (the kinds of critical thinking skills that lead citizens to question information and opinions they read or hear; the kinds of research and information literacy skills that allow them to follow up on that response by checking multiple sources of information; the skills in analysis that enable one to look at a problem from multiple perspectives; experiences with collaborative problem-solving, with understanding and respecting diversity; awareness of the deep historical and cultural context for so many contemporary problems and conflicts; the communication skills to participate in public debates and discussions)?
A “scorecard” implies numbers and it implies a competition, not unlike the kinds of statistics kept on professional athletes or on corporate financial performance. And once an evaluation system is defined in terms of numbers, it becomes almost impossible to argue with that system without also resorting to the use of numbers. I’m really afraid this scorecard is going to end up measuring tuition in proportion to graduates’ salaries, as if a college education has been most productive if it has resulted in the largest income.
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“Critical thinking” is far and away the most important skill in business, so if there is a major that teaches it, employers will gladly hire those grads. It isn’t clear to me that a major in education or communication or gender studies teaches critical thinking.
(Although I hasten to add that a serious engagemement with Catharine MacKinnon or Monique Wittig would require critical thinking: it’s just not clear to me that most gender studies majors have had that sort of engagement with classic texts.)
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I don’t know, my husband is a PhD scientist working in industry (not academia) & he’s pretty glad he got his doctorate! I think it really depends on the field. If you want to be a paleontologist or archaeologist it’s really common to be a *double* doctorate these days.
My husband has 2 bachelor degrees, a master’s, and a PhD and got out of school with a total student loan debt of exactly $0. Hooray for scholarships & fellowships!
My fear is by saying “never get a PhD in anything” it would scare away students from the sciences, where often you actually *do* need a PhD if you want to advance to a senior scientist/leadership role.
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“I would like to tell people to avoid schools where the professors don’t actually teach any courses, but it’s hard to find positive examples anymore. ”
I’m sorry, Laura, but that’s crap and you know better than to peddle such nonsense. Very few colleges and universities have any faculty (who aren’t full-time administrators) who don’t each any courses at all, and even most of those that do (typically the flagship institutions) are raking in millions of dollars in grants to support the broader institution. Sure, there may be one or two rubber room professors on a 0-0 in the whole country because they can’t be trusted to do their jobs, but that’s not the case at any institution I’ve ever worked at.
Now, if your complaint is that most of the students won’t see any star professors outside the context of a 1000-student lecture or MOOC-style course, that’s valid as far as it goes (largely to the land grants and public flagships, and to a lesser extent the declining number of large private universities that don’t have their star faculty teaching small first-year seminars) – but again wouldn’t apply to the thousands of teaching-focused institutions in America, which are the places where most students will end up anyway if they follow your advice.
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That’s not crap, Chris. The CUNY system, which I know very well, is extremely well stocked with adjuncts. Something like 70% of their classes are taught by adjuncts. Now, I’m sure that many adjuncts are fine teachers, but they are totally being exploited and I refuse to contribute to that.
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I agree that some of these “common sense” points need to be more complicated. If you can get a Master’s without accumulating any debt, why not do it, if it relevant to your career goals? Many private colleges have much more to give out in financial aid than public universities do–the most expensive in my neck of the woods, Johns Hopkins, just got another multimillion dollar donation from Mayor Bloomberg, much of which is earmarked for financial aid. I’m not sure what you mean by “atmosphere,” but I think it’s ludicrous to think campus life and ethos are not going to be factors in a decision.
However, I completely agree that parents need to hold the pursestrings and be firm and clear about what they will and will not pay for–it’s your job to set reasonable limits for your kid, just like it always has been.
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It’s very hard to get an MA without accumulating debt. Most colleges look at MA programs as cash cows. Honestly. Sure, get a Masters in American studies as my brother did for the fun of it, but expect it to cost a lot of money and don’t expect any exployer to appreciate it. If you have money and time to burn, then why not?
Atmosphere will be a factor in a decision about schools, but it shouldn’t be THE factor. Nobody should go into six figure debt to a attend a private, non-elite college just to get the atmosphere, when there are perfectly fine public schools down the road.
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“It is completely bullshit that a generation of kids thinks they deserve a Harvard atmosphere, even if they weren’t good enough students to get into Harvard. ”
I’m pretty much agree with that sentiment, and think that parents who are tying themselves into knots to find a way to pay for their kids to have ivy covered buildings need to get a backbone. But, there are some students for which the ivy will cost less and others who can easily afford it.
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Irony: I got a Masters in American Studies and didn’t pay/borrow a dime for it! There are still fellowships and teaching assistantships that allow people to get MAs for free, and everyone I went through the program with is happily employed, many using their degrees or having gone on to do further graduate work. It’s less exploitative than adjuncting, because you are getting a degree in exchange for your labor.
I’m a big fan of public universities, having done my bachelor’s and master’s work at them, but I think they are just as interested in providing atmosphere these days as private colleges are.
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” But, there are some students for which the ivy will cost less and others who can easily afford it.”
Oh absolutely. If you have the means, spend the money on private schools. If your kid is smart enough to get a good scholarship, then wonderful. My big beef is with the less-selective, expensive schools (of which there many in this area), where kids seem to be accumulating a lot of debt and not coming out with education or credentials.
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cranberry — are you using some kind of estimated cost calculator? ’cause my numbers say the cost of tuition/room board at Amherst is $55,000 and $23,100 (in state) at UMass Amherst. Even out-of-state it’s $36,000.
Amherst is a full-need school, so whether you pay that amount or not depends on your financial picture (not your merit, beyond being accepted at Amherst). We would be full pay at both schools, and out of state, so there’s a 20K savings for choosing between the two (and, chosing our own satisfactory state university v paying for Amherst would be a 30K+ difference. We’d still pay for Amherst, if our kids wanted to go there (and, it would be pretty much purely for atmosphere and perks and not needs).
The ability to make those choices is going to continue to amplify SES differences.
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“My big beef is with the less-selective, expensive schools (of which there many in this area), where kids seem to be accumulating a lot of debt and not coming out with education or credentials. ”
A big variable for me would be the proportion of students who default on student debt. I would have a very tough time paying for a school that fits in that category (and NYU might not make the cutoff). I suspect that many of the schools you’re talking about are far below it.
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EXCELLENT rules!! (I think Penelope Trunk would have actually agreed with several, though she’s becoming more and more radical re. school is useless period).
awesome discussion too. Gotta come back and read all the comments more slowly.
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bj, I used the white house’s College Scorecard, through the link in Laura’s post.
“Average net cost” may not be your net cost. On the other hand, if you are full pay once your children reach college aid, you may find some colleges willing to discount tuition. I regard many “merit scholarships” as a discount on tuition which helps colleges fill their classes with students with the test scores they want.
So don’t automatically assume that merely being able to pay full cost means you must pay full cost. Colleges vary widely in the offers they’re willing to make.
There are also the famous merit scholarships . Morehead-Cain. Boston University has a few Trustee Scholarships which cover all four years (including summers.) The University of Virginia Jefferson Scholars.
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That’s a tough decision about merit scholarships, assuming that you are a parent in the income bracket where full payment will be expected. A merit scholarship means that the child is going to drop down a notch from where he or she would otherwise go, be it from Yale to Virginia, from Virginia to BU, from BU to Villanova, or whatever.
In our case, we only have one child, and we can afford the best school she got into (Wake Forest), and I have never regretted the money–admittedly not my own–spent on my degree, so our decision was easy. But I sympathize with those in different circumstances who make different decisions.
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Actually, a place like Amherst also gives money away in grants and scholarships. If you’re a kid with good grades and test scores, the privates often cost what publics do.
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Let me just say that the whole thing is complicated. Geeky Boy ended up applying only to the good state schools–got into one, waiting for others. If he’d applied and gotten into a good private liberal arts school without scholarships or other aid, we probably would have figured out a way to swing that. Much as I like state schools, I know some of the faculty at elite liberal arts schools are excellent teachers and researchers, and there’s no adjunct issue. That would probably be a bad financial decision for us, but maybe a good one for Geeky Boy.
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I believe that Amherst, along with a number of other schools, like Harvard, Princeton, Yale does not offer grants and scholarships because you have good grades, only if you have financial need. Amherst is generous enough that the cost of attendence drops to 36K, even if you make 200K a year (according to their cost calculator). But if you make 360K (like the rich person), you’ll be full pay at Amherst, and a state college will cost less.
I don’t find the decision about merit scholarships tough, if you can afford to pay. Like a lexus and private schools for many, they’re a luxury, but if you can afford them, there’s nothing wrong with buying them.
But, if you haven’t been saving for college all along (which means saving 250K+ for each kid), but you make a generous salary and are used to spending i(like the rich person), you are in a bind, because finding 60K a year is not easy (even if you make 360K).
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The comments so far are from a very informed perspective about college. I’d like to understand more about how valuable this information will be to first-generation college students, disadvantaged students and others who do not have the benefit of family/community knowledge about the process of choosing a college.
Overall, I think the money to create the scorecard could have been better spent helping schools put into place a robust career and education planning curriculum such as Roads to Success:
http://www.roadstosuccess.org/materials/facilitators-guides/grade-7
(I am not affiliated with Roads to Success but am familiar with their curriculum).
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Thanks for the reality check that indeed, we data wonks attach a lot more usefulness to databases than they provide to a regular person.
I agree that first-gen, disadvantaged students need someone to show them how to navigate their own personal circumstances, not just access to all the data. We information junkies get very excited by all the information we can collate and make available — and making that info available is a great thing. But, it’s not a replacement for an expert guiding you, especially when you lack the expertise to do the analysis yourself.
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