To All,
It has been a LONG time since I have blogged last and thought it best to get back at it for 2010! This newest version of the FAFSA form is quite simple to complete and for the most part, really has the same stuff involved (assets, income, dates of birth and so on). I will be anxious to see the award letters that come as a result of the newest "simplified" version!
It never ceases to amaze me that the gap is growing in leaps and bounds annually between what parent's can legitimately afford and what the gov't and schools believe they can afford!
recently I had a parent who's student scored in the top 2 SAT scores in his HS senior class! Yet, it was not even enough to pick up a Scholarship at IU because he missed it by less than 200 pts! What is comical is that the school's attitude is that he did a great job and won't have any problem in getting into college!
THEY JUST DON'T GET IT!!!
It was never about just getting admitted.....it was about getting into the best position to be able to afford to go!
What good is it to graduate HS with dreams and aspirations and then NOT be able to afford to attend!
Make it a better day for someone else!
Jon
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Why College Costs Rise, Even in a Recession
The New York Times
9-5-09
If you have paid a college tuition bill recently, perhaps the sticker shock has abated and your children have been good enough to friend you on Facebook so you can see what they are doing on your dime.
What probably still lingers, however, is the desire to ask some pointed questions of the people who are doing the educating. Where does all that money go? And why can’t the price tag fall for a change?
Earlier this year, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities announced with some pride that the average increase in tuition and fees at private institutions this school year would be the smallest in 37 years — 4.3 percent, just a little higher than inflation.
Is this where we are supposed to stand up and cheer?
To get some perspective, I set out to find a college president with an M.B.A. and some experience outside the academy. I found one at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. Its president, Daniel H. Weiss, is an expert in medieval art, but he also worked as a management consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. So he knows his way around a corporate restructuring.
Lafayette does not have the strongest name recognition and tries to set itself apart through its location near both New York City and Philadelphia, its strong engineering program and liberal arts offerings, and by being one of the smallest colleges to compete in N.C.A.A. Division I athletics.
That it is not a top-tier college by most measures, however, makes Lafayette an excellent test case as it and other private colleges cross the $50,000 annual cost threshold in shaky economic times.
Public universities will always appeal on price, and Wellesley and Harvard are likely to remain oversubscribed forever. But Lafayette and colleges like it could have trouble justifying themselves and their cost soon, and the resistance may not simply pass once the economy improves.
Tuition costs have gone in only one direction — up — during Mr. Weiss’s career. “I genuinely believe that we are at a crossroads here in higher education,” he said. “I think we have reached a ceiling that we’re beginning to bump into.”
Mr. Weiss has not had to make any drastic budget cuts so far. He has frozen many salaries, cut some hours in the student dining halls and scaled back a few building projects.
This will seem rather tame to anyone who has lived through even a medium-grade corporate revamping. “We haven’t been good at cutting when we add,” said Robert Massa, Lafayette’s new vice president for communications, speaking of colleges in general. “We just add.”
Rising tuition and income from endowments have made this possible. But the unique structure of universities has also made it inconvenient to do otherwise. “In some ways, higher education is more like a political environment than the management of a private corporation,” Mr. Weiss said. Except that thanks to tenure, it is difficult to vote anyone out of office. Still, he added, “Alienating some of your faculty members, if you can avoid it, is something you shouldn’t be doing.”
This is just one of the reasons why it is so hard to make big cuts to a college’s budget and reduce tuition in turn. Here are some others:
CUTTING DEPARTMENTS The political challenges with faculty make something as seemingly simple and obvious as cutting expensive and undersubscribed academic departments pretty hard. In fact, Mr. Weiss could not remember the last time Lafayette had done such a thing.
But such cuts are practically inevitable for programs that have fewer students. “Fine arts has studio-based production, so capital and facility costs are high,” said Jane Wellman, executive director of the nonprofit group Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability, speaking of colleges in general. “Piano tutoring is pretty much one to one in a room with a piano. Pianos are expensive. Agriculture is expensive because of the lab costs, which means a barn.”
An English student, however, is generally a profit center. “They’re paying for the chemistry major and the music major and faculty research,” she said. “They don’t want to talk about it in institutions, because the English department gets mad. The little ugly facts about cross-subsidies are inflammatory, so they get papered over.”
About all Mr. Weiss will say about this is that he agrees that Lafayette needs to do a better job of discriminating between the things it can and cannot do well. He is too good on the politics to single out any department. But there is little doubt that he and administrators like him will need to give up on some foreign languages, minor sciences or parts of the arts pretty soon.
FACULTY PRODUCTIVITY Professors at Lafayette teach five classes a year over two semesters and work with students on their independent research projects. At some colleges and universities, the number of classes is lower and at others it is higher. Couldn’t Lafayette lower costs by demanding that the faculty perform less research and teach one additional class?
“The question is what is the quality of that interaction,” Mr. Weiss said. “Our faculty must have the opportunity to revitalize their teaching through research. If you’re teaching the same old course the same old way every year, you’re not keeping up with the discipline and not able to animate your own teaching with that experience.”
Not every academic agrees. “Am I, for example, as a tenured professor or any tenured faculty member necessarily, or even probably, a better undergraduate teacher because I am doing research?” asked Burton A. Weisbrod, co-author of “Mission and Money: Understanding the University” and an economics professor at Northwestern. “The answer to that is not clear at all.”
Nevertheless, Lafayette is so certain in its convictions that it grants faculty members a year off every six or seven years for a sabbatical. How does a college defend such a practice to parents who have had to work ever harder to pay the growing tuition bill?
“What parents should be looking for is the opportunity for their children to have their lives transformed by what happens inside the classroom and out of it,” Mr. Weiss said. And that cannot come, he continued, without access to faculty members who have had the opportunity to recharge their own intellectual reservoirs. “At the end of the day, parents should want their children to have that experience, and we believe that’s the cost of it.”
Still, parents are helping to subsidize those sabbaticals. So the optics around this are all wrong in the current economic environment, even if this is one of those things no one can change.
ADMINISTRATIVE OVERLOAD Lafayette, like many colleges, spends more on nonfaculty salaries than it does on pay for the teachers. How did that happen? Mr. Weiss uses the evolution of career counseling as an example. He does not recall whether there was a placement office when he was an undergraduate at George Washington University in the 1970s. “Now there is the expectation, and I don’t think it’s misplaced, that students can get help in entering the workplace,” he said. If Lafayette did not create a rigorous support system, he noted, its graduates would be competing with students from other colleges and universities that had done so. “And therefore, we’ve invested very significantly in new administrative staff.”
Security is another area where costs have gone up. Just a quick glance at a dormitory bulletin board gives a sense of the breadth of what security departments deal with these days. One posting offered detailed instructions on what to do when encountering a bat, and an eye-opening piece of literature called “Active Shooter Survival Tips.”
THREE YEARS Perhaps the biggest cost-saving measure for private colleges like Lafayette would be to allow students to pay the same price per year but graduate in three years instead of four. Hartwick College in New York is already trying this; 13 students have signed on this fall.
Mr. Weiss said this is worth considering, though he had not looked at how the numbers would work. “Although without sounding in any way defensive, we also do offer time for personal development,” he explained. “And that is part of what college is supposed to be. Not only to learn stuff but to have your life changed. For some students, three years is more than enough, while for others four years is not nearly enough.”
He’s right, of course. Or at least that is how college used to be. The question all of us have to ask now is whether the price of that transformative experience is simply too dear — and whether a basic education ought to be the highest (or maybe only) priority.
The New York Times
9-5-09
If you have paid a college tuition bill recently, perhaps the sticker shock has abated and your children have been good enough to friend you on Facebook so you can see what they are doing on your dime.
What probably still lingers, however, is the desire to ask some pointed questions of the people who are doing the educating. Where does all that money go? And why can’t the price tag fall for a change?
Earlier this year, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities announced with some pride that the average increase in tuition and fees at private institutions this school year would be the smallest in 37 years — 4.3 percent, just a little higher than inflation.
Is this where we are supposed to stand up and cheer?
To get some perspective, I set out to find a college president with an M.B.A. and some experience outside the academy. I found one at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. Its president, Daniel H. Weiss, is an expert in medieval art, but he also worked as a management consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. So he knows his way around a corporate restructuring.
Lafayette does not have the strongest name recognition and tries to set itself apart through its location near both New York City and Philadelphia, its strong engineering program and liberal arts offerings, and by being one of the smallest colleges to compete in N.C.A.A. Division I athletics.
That it is not a top-tier college by most measures, however, makes Lafayette an excellent test case as it and other private colleges cross the $50,000 annual cost threshold in shaky economic times.
Public universities will always appeal on price, and Wellesley and Harvard are likely to remain oversubscribed forever. But Lafayette and colleges like it could have trouble justifying themselves and their cost soon, and the resistance may not simply pass once the economy improves.
Tuition costs have gone in only one direction — up — during Mr. Weiss’s career. “I genuinely believe that we are at a crossroads here in higher education,” he said. “I think we have reached a ceiling that we’re beginning to bump into.”
Mr. Weiss has not had to make any drastic budget cuts so far. He has frozen many salaries, cut some hours in the student dining halls and scaled back a few building projects.
This will seem rather tame to anyone who has lived through even a medium-grade corporate revamping. “We haven’t been good at cutting when we add,” said Robert Massa, Lafayette’s new vice president for communications, speaking of colleges in general. “We just add.”
Rising tuition and income from endowments have made this possible. But the unique structure of universities has also made it inconvenient to do otherwise. “In some ways, higher education is more like a political environment than the management of a private corporation,” Mr. Weiss said. Except that thanks to tenure, it is difficult to vote anyone out of office. Still, he added, “Alienating some of your faculty members, if you can avoid it, is something you shouldn’t be doing.”
This is just one of the reasons why it is so hard to make big cuts to a college’s budget and reduce tuition in turn. Here are some others:
CUTTING DEPARTMENTS The political challenges with faculty make something as seemingly simple and obvious as cutting expensive and undersubscribed academic departments pretty hard. In fact, Mr. Weiss could not remember the last time Lafayette had done such a thing.
But such cuts are practically inevitable for programs that have fewer students. “Fine arts has studio-based production, so capital and facility costs are high,” said Jane Wellman, executive director of the nonprofit group Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability, speaking of colleges in general. “Piano tutoring is pretty much one to one in a room with a piano. Pianos are expensive. Agriculture is expensive because of the lab costs, which means a barn.”
An English student, however, is generally a profit center. “They’re paying for the chemistry major and the music major and faculty research,” she said. “They don’t want to talk about it in institutions, because the English department gets mad. The little ugly facts about cross-subsidies are inflammatory, so they get papered over.”
About all Mr. Weiss will say about this is that he agrees that Lafayette needs to do a better job of discriminating between the things it can and cannot do well. He is too good on the politics to single out any department. But there is little doubt that he and administrators like him will need to give up on some foreign languages, minor sciences or parts of the arts pretty soon.
FACULTY PRODUCTIVITY Professors at Lafayette teach five classes a year over two semesters and work with students on their independent research projects. At some colleges and universities, the number of classes is lower and at others it is higher. Couldn’t Lafayette lower costs by demanding that the faculty perform less research and teach one additional class?
“The question is what is the quality of that interaction,” Mr. Weiss said. “Our faculty must have the opportunity to revitalize their teaching through research. If you’re teaching the same old course the same old way every year, you’re not keeping up with the discipline and not able to animate your own teaching with that experience.”
Not every academic agrees. “Am I, for example, as a tenured professor or any tenured faculty member necessarily, or even probably, a better undergraduate teacher because I am doing research?” asked Burton A. Weisbrod, co-author of “Mission and Money: Understanding the University” and an economics professor at Northwestern. “The answer to that is not clear at all.”
Nevertheless, Lafayette is so certain in its convictions that it grants faculty members a year off every six or seven years for a sabbatical. How does a college defend such a practice to parents who have had to work ever harder to pay the growing tuition bill?
“What parents should be looking for is the opportunity for their children to have their lives transformed by what happens inside the classroom and out of it,” Mr. Weiss said. And that cannot come, he continued, without access to faculty members who have had the opportunity to recharge their own intellectual reservoirs. “At the end of the day, parents should want their children to have that experience, and we believe that’s the cost of it.”
Still, parents are helping to subsidize those sabbaticals. So the optics around this are all wrong in the current economic environment, even if this is one of those things no one can change.
ADMINISTRATIVE OVERLOAD Lafayette, like many colleges, spends more on nonfaculty salaries than it does on pay for the teachers. How did that happen? Mr. Weiss uses the evolution of career counseling as an example. He does not recall whether there was a placement office when he was an undergraduate at George Washington University in the 1970s. “Now there is the expectation, and I don’t think it’s misplaced, that students can get help in entering the workplace,” he said. If Lafayette did not create a rigorous support system, he noted, its graduates would be competing with students from other colleges and universities that had done so. “And therefore, we’ve invested very significantly in new administrative staff.”
Security is another area where costs have gone up. Just a quick glance at a dormitory bulletin board gives a sense of the breadth of what security departments deal with these days. One posting offered detailed instructions on what to do when encountering a bat, and an eye-opening piece of literature called “Active Shooter Survival Tips.”
THREE YEARS Perhaps the biggest cost-saving measure for private colleges like Lafayette would be to allow students to pay the same price per year but graduate in three years instead of four. Hartwick College in New York is already trying this; 13 students have signed on this fall.
Mr. Weiss said this is worth considering, though he had not looked at how the numbers would work. “Although without sounding in any way defensive, we also do offer time for personal development,” he explained. “And that is part of what college is supposed to be. Not only to learn stuff but to have your life changed. For some students, three years is more than enough, while for others four years is not nearly enough.”
He’s right, of course. Or at least that is how college used to be. The question all of us have to ask now is whether the price of that transformative experience is simply too dear — and whether a basic education ought to be the highest (or maybe only) priority.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Article from Inside Higher Education
Blow to National Merit Scholarships
September 1, 2009
The University of Texas at Austin is ending participation in the National Merit Scholarship Program, the largest single campus departure in years from the program, which enjoys considerable prestige in some circles but is controversial in others. The university plans to shift the funds to need-based aid.
Last year, Texas was second only to Harvard University in the number of National Merit Scholars it enrolled (281). Some of the scholarships in the program (and all of those at Harvard) are sponsored by companies and other groups, but 213 of those who enrolled at Texas were sponsored by the university, which in recent years has sponsored more of the scholarships than all but a few other universities. (Last year, the University of Southern California sponsored more, 216 -- most colleges don't even top 50.)
The move by Texas comes at a time when some are criticizing the awarding of merit scholarships (and not just through this program) when so many students have clear financial need. Further, some admissions leaders have been criticizing the National Merit Scholarship Program for its reliance on PSAT scores -- and only PSAT scores -- to establish semifinalist status. There is a wide consensus among educators -- including the College Board, sponsor of the PSAT -- that standardized test scores alone shouldn't qualify or disqualify students for scholarships. (That consensus is in some cases more philosophical than operational, as the cooperation of the College Board with the National Merit Scholarship Program suggests.)
In the case of Texas, the decision was based not on concern about testing, but on a desire to focus more aid on students with need.
"We took a look at the economy, and the need level of our student body is up quite a bit. So we decided we needed to redirect the resources so UT stays accessible to everyone," said Thomas G. Melecki, director of student financial services at the university. Texas awards scholarships worth $13,000 over four years to the merit scholars it sponsors through the program (and will keep commitments to all who have been admitted through those starting this fall).
Melecki noted that only about one fourth of the university's National Merit Scholars even bothered to apply for federal financial aid, suggesting most of them don't need the money.
Historically, colleges that have invested heavily in the program have boasted about attracting students with good grades and very high SAT scores (since only those who did very well on the PSAT get considered). Melecki said he wasn't worried about losing talent because "our reputation is going to carry the day." The University of Texas does have other merit scholarships, and some of the students who might have received funds through the national program can still apply for them, he noted.
Further, the university has strong need-based aid programs -- which this shift should bolster -- for the minority of National Merit Scholars who do have financial need.
A spokeswoman for the National Merit Scholarship Corporation said that the organization would have no comment on the move by Texas, but that it planned to talk to Texas officials soon. The last major withdrawal from the program was the University of California, which had been awarding 600 scholarships among six of its institutions until 2005. In the case of the University of California, officials cited the reliance on standardized tests, saying that "using the PSAT exam alone to eliminate the vast majority of test takers from National Merit Scholarship consideration is inconsistent with the principles that standardized tests should be used in conjunction with other factors in measuring merit and that major decisions should not be made on the basis of small differences in test scores."
In April, the National Association for College Admission Counseling announced requests it had made asking the College Board to explain why it has done nothing about the use of the PSAT as the sole qualifying test for National Merit Scholarships, and to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation about why its policies run counter to the stated policies of the College Board and the new NACAC report. Both groups brushed aside the request.
Robert Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, a critic of standardized testing, said the Texas decision was "very significant" because it has for so long been one of the major participants in the program. He predicted that for the reasons Texas and California left, others would follow and said that the testing program runs "the risk of losing more sponsors -- as well as their remaining credibility -- if they do not overhaul their unfair selection process."
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